CS. Lewis is hard to like and easy to love. As a solitary, clever, and bookish child he was a study in precocity, a model prig. “I have a prejudice against the French,” he announced, a four year old, to his father. Why? “If I knew why it wouldn’t be a prejudice.” At the age of nine he was . . . . Continue Reading »
Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine by robert dodaro cambridge university press, 262 pages, $75 In the year 412 Augustine received from the pagan pro-consul of Africa a series of questions about the Incarnation and other Christian teachings. The topics arose out of regular . . . . Continue Reading »
Suppose that words were all you had. Suppose the great edifice of Western civilization had collapsed around you—all its truths, all its certainties, all its aspirations smashed to meaningless shards. Suppose . . . oh, I don’t know, suppose that it was 1919, and the First World War had just . . . . Continue Reading »
It has been forty years since my revered teacher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, popularly known as “the Rav” by his followers in the modern wing of American Orthodoxy, presented his paper “Confrontation” to the Rabbinical Council of America. The paper was later published in the Council’s . . . . Continue Reading »
In the course of his long life, French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) adopted a series of different political positions while remaining consistent in his philosophical theology. What is one to do with an intellectual whose political engagement ranged from an early flirtation with the . . . . Continue Reading »
We’re Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents’ Divorceby constance ahrons harpercollins 304 pages $24.95 It is often said that those who are concerned about the social and personal effects of divorce are nostalgic for the 1950s, yearning for a mythical time . . . . Continue Reading »
As Christianity spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, it became apparent that the biblical doctrines concerning God, morality, and future retribution had similarities with the philosophical speculations of the Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics. The Fathers and medieval theologians had no . . . . Continue Reading »
The just war tradition came into being during the Middle Ages as a way of thinking about the right use of force in the context of responsible government of the political community. With deep roots in both ancient Israel and classical Greek and Roman political thought and practice, the origins of a . . . . Continue Reading »
Artistic License: Three Centuries of Good Writing and Bad Behavior by brooke allen ivan r. dee, 244 pages, $26 I’ll write because I’ll give You, critics, means to live; For should I not supply The cause, th’effect would die. Robert Herrick’s quatrain is a reminder which critics do well to . . . . Continue Reading »
Within the next two or three years, the Supreme Court will almost certainly climax a series of state court rulings by creating a national constitutional right to homosexual marriage. The Court’s ongoing campaign to normalize homosexuality—creating for homosexuals constitutional rights to . . . . Continue Reading »
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