Gilbert Meilaender

The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy by J.B. Scheewind Cambridge University Press, 624 pages, $69.95 cloth, $24.95 The autonomy whose invention J. B. Schneewind explores in this long and magisterial history of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century moral philosophy is Kantian . . . . Continue Reading »

Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America’s Top 100 Schools Compiled by the Staff of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Introduction by William J. Bennett. Eerdmans, 680 pages, $25 In February 1997 the Chicago Tribune carried a front-page article on recent moves in some . . . . Continue Reading »

Human Cloning: Religious Responses Edited By Ronald Cole-Turner. Westminister/ John Knox. 151 pp. $15 The nature of public policy debates in the United States in recent years has tended to exclude-or, at least, to suggest that we ought to exclude-religious considerations. They are suspect in the . . . . Continue Reading »

“One is sometimes (not often) glad not to be a great theologian. One might so easily confuse it with being a good Christian.” Thus C. S. Lewis wrote in Reflections on the Psalms. Similarly, Lewis’s religious writings are full of asides to the effect that he is not a theologian and that what he . . . . Continue Reading »

In his engagingly titled book, What’s Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton argued that his fellow citizens could not repair the defects of the family because they had no ideal for which to aim. Neither the Tory (Gudge) nor the Socialist (Hudge) viewed the family as sacred or had an image of . . . . Continue Reading »

There are moments when a person says something that should have been obvious but which has been left unsaid-and we wonder why the rest of us have failed to see or say it. That, at least in part, is my reaction to a thesis put forward by Jonathan Mills in a little book titled Love, Covenant & . . . . Continue Reading »

On November 6, 1997, the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper died at the age of ninety-three. Hearing that news reminded me of the first time I read his work. In a graduate course I had been assigned to read some sections on the virtues from the Summa Theologica and then, in addition, to read . . . . Continue Reading »

Although it is sometimes forgotten that a worthy human life can be lived by those who do not work, or do not work for pay, it is still true that work is one of the most fundamental of human experiences. Necessary for human existence, it is also an activity in which we struggle to find meaning and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays. HarperSanFrancisco, 508 pages, $25. This book is both a reviewer’s dream and nightmare. From one perspective it is simple to review. Long as the book is, its contents can easily be outlined, so clear and carefully developed is Hays’ . . . . Continue Reading »

The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology by Oliver O’Donovan. Cambridge University Press, 304 pages, $68.50. Granting, of course, that there are countless books I have not read, and with apologies in particular to the friends whose books I have read, The Desire of . . . . Continue Reading »