J. Daryl Charles

The receptive ecumenical outlook can, among other things, help us discern between true and false ecumenism. Eduardo Echeverria models this receptive mode in his latest book. Continue Reading »

It is the issue that simply will not go away¯at least not in the post-Christian, post-consensus West. It is the issue that breeds a nasty recurring tendency to divide, and divide, and then divide some more. It is the issue to which (seemingly) every General Assembly, every major synod, and . . . . Continue Reading »

In this hour of “new day” presidential politicking, it is difficult to distinguish prophecy from wishful thinking, especially among those in the electronic and print media. Take, for example, the purported radical shift in alignment among religious conservatives that was reported as a . . . . Continue Reading »

Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics by Stephen J. Grabill Eerdmans, 328 pages, $38 Stephen Grabill not only shows himself to be an astute observer of culture past and present, he also demonstrates a commitment, historically and ethically, to “think with the . . . . Continue Reading »

It is hard to make generalizations about Protestant theology, given the inherently splintered nature of Protestantism and the multiplicity of theological fads found within its borders. Nevertheless, people who otherwise have very little in common theologically are remarkably joined in their . . . . Continue Reading »

Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision by David F. Wells Eerdmans, 228 pages, $25 It is almost sixty years since Hans Urs von Balthasar, in a penetrating essay titled “ Patristik, Scholastik, und Wir ,” observed what he considered to be the “late autumn” . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture By Wendy Kaminer Addison-Wesley, 292 pages, $22 “I feel,” wrote Freud, “that the irrational forces in man’s nature are so strong that the rational forces have little chance of success against them.” Thus, for human beings, . . . . Continue Reading »

Someone has quipped that an evangelical can be defined as someone who says to a liberal, “I’ll call you a Christian if you’ll call me a scholar.” Though Wheaton College historian Mark Noll knows all the one- liners about evangelicals, this one does not make his book. Evangelicals’ . . . . Continue Reading »