Category: Reviews (Books)
Natural Law from Noah to Milton Friedman: A Review of David Vandrunen, “Politics after Christendom”
In recent decades, Protestant theologians have rightly restored Natural Law to its vaunted place in their ethical and theological lexicon. Among those legions to be credited with restoring it is David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and...
The One God of Katherine Sonderegger
“Theology awakens a grateful heart.”[1] Thus the first words of Katherine Sonderegger’s remarkable Systematic Theology fall. I began reading theology years ago out of a longing to know the Lord. Desire drove study. It still does.
Deus Ex Machina Reversed
J.R.R. Tolkien’s attempted science fiction Time-traveler was began in contest with CS Lewis (who chose to work on space travel). But Tolkien posited the impossibility of time travels, and we see his hostile skepticism toward analogue machine technology when he...
Two Cheers for Gregory’s Augustinian Civic Liberalism
In a recent essay, “Liberalism, the American Right, and the Place of Love in Politics,” Jake Meador attempts to move beyond the terms of the recent, ostensibly existential, debate within American conservatism. The opposition between libertarian proceduralism — represented by...
Cats and Sixty Foot Whales: Reflections on Children’s Books
The most expensive preschools in America bear a pine-scented resemblance to those senna-tinted photographs of a world before plastics, albeit with no unseemly hint of poverty. Within the world of Waldorf, Montessori and Wild Forest schools the hand dominates the...
The Education of Ross Douthat: Reviewing The Decadent Society
“History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions” -T.S. Eliot, Gerontion “TRUMP HAD A CEILING HE ALWAYS HAD A CEILING I TOLD YOU HE HAD A CEILING I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU I TOLD...
Book Review: The Wonderful Decree by Travis James Campbell
Of the making of many books there is no end. Of the making of books on divine predestination there is also no end. Travis James Campbell’s recent book The Wonderful Decree focuses its attention on divine election and God’s desire...
Seeing Jack: The Prodigal in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
‘For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?’ In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate...
Augustine Amongst the Strong Gods
This is a time of ferment on the American right; that much has become abundantly clear. The post-Reagan consensus built around social conservatism and economic libertarianism is failing, trampled down by an economy that has left middle America behind and...
Revisiting the Kingdom: Ten Years After “Desiring the Kingdom”
It has been over ten years since the publication of philosopher James K. A. Smith’s paradigm-shifting, Desiring the Kingdom—Smith’s first title in what would become his three book Cultural Liturgies series. When it was first released, Kingdom received well deserved...