Jerry L. Walls

A book by Donald Ray Pollock is always an entertaining ride, by turns riveting, hilarious, revolting, and poignant. But reading Pollock can be surreal if you grew up a mile down the road from him in Knockemstiff, Ohio. Continue Reading »

I suppose it is appropriate for a book on eternal life to be long. Given the ground Alan Segal, a professor of Jewish studies at Columbia University, covers, Life After Death had to be long. Ten years in the making, Segal’s book explores the development of belief in the afterlife in ancient . . . . Continue Reading »

A few years ago, the journalist Philip Nobile wrote an article near the first anniversary of the death of Princess Diana in which he raised what he termed “an indiscreet theological question.” “Where is she now?” he asked. According to Christian theology, the options were heaven, purgatory, . . . . Continue Reading »

Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evilby john g. stackhouse, jr.oxford university press, 190 pages, $25 The problem of evil is a perennially baffling intellectual puzzle that has generated countless monographs, articles, and anthologies. It would be a grave oversight to dismiss these . . . . Continue Reading »

Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics By Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches University of Notre Dame Press. 230 pp. $29.95 Virtue is making a comeback. The success of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues in 1994 is perhaps the most notable . . . . Continue Reading »

The author of this book did not intend to write it. Originally this material was supposed to be merely an introductory section of a one-volume history of hell in the Middle Ages. But his fascination with a collection of literature that was both richer and more abundant than expected led him to a . . . . Continue Reading »