David Bentley Hart

The year 2003 marked the centenary of the birth of Evelyn Waugh, which Knopf has chosen to observe by reissuing all seven of his “travel” books in one handsome, inexpensive Everyman’s Library volume. Most of these titles have been out of print, or only sporadically in print, since they were . . . . Continue Reading »

Where Taras Bulba should be ranked among the works of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)—or, for that matter, among the monuments of European literature—is by no means settled. Ernest Hemingway called it “one of the ten greatest books of all time,” while Vladimir Nabokov, who adored the . . . . Continue Reading »

Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England Volume III: Accommodations. By Maurice Cowling. Cambridge University Press. 766 pp. $100. Maurice Cowling (b. 1926) has never gained wide celebrity in Britain and is all but unknown beyond its shores, even though he is arguably among the twentieth . . . . Continue Reading »

As modern men and women—to the degree that we are modern—we believe in nothing. This is not to say, I hasten to add, that we do not believe in anything; I mean, rather, that we hold an unshakable, if often unconscious, faith in the nothing, or in nothingness as such. It is this in which . . . . Continue Reading »

In the February issue First Things published the Erasmus Lecture of 2000, “Papacy and Power,” by George Weigel. The monumental political influence of the pontificate of John Paul II, Weigel argued, is the result of a long and complicated history in which the papacy has successfully contended . . . . Continue Reading »

Among recent Christian attempts at a theology of the election of Israel, Scott Bader-Saye’s book must be accounted one of the better efforts; indeed, where it specifically addresses the theology of election, one of the best. In seeking to frame an account of God’s everlasting covenant with . . . . Continue Reading »

Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection By Louis Dupré. Eerdmans. 147 pages, $20 The nine essays that constitute this volume are all concerned, in some fashion or another, with questions of religious experience: its form, its nature, its susceptibility (or resistance) to philosophical scrutiny, . . . . Continue Reading »