That extraordinary writer of stories about the “Christ-haunted” American South, Flannery O’Connor, was frequently asked why her people and plots were so often outlandish, even grotesque. She answered, “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and . . . . Continue Reading »
Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biographyby jean grondintranslated by woel weinsheimeryale university press, 512 pages, $35 It is reasonable to be dubious about biographies of philosophers, even when they are good. For what, after all, is the life of a philosopher? How much a novelist lived the events he or . . . . Continue Reading »
“History is God’s theatre, . . . God’s jousting place.” Martin Luther In the spring of . . . . Continue Reading »
The Resurrection of the Son of God by n. t. wright. fortress. 740 pp. $39 The past decade or so has produced numerous challenges to reading the Bible as a trustworthy historical witness. Scholars in the field of Old Testament studies question every detail of the pre-exilic corpus. As for the New . . . . 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 »
evil in modern thought: an alternativehistory of philosophy by susan neiman princeton university press, 358 pages, $29.95 René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, begins his Meditations(1641) on the self and its place in the world by supposing that a demon, no less powerful than God, . . . . Continue Reading »
Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Mythby Stephen F. Knott University Press of Kansas, 336 pages, $34.95 Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth is a book from which one can learn a great deal, but neither about Alexander Hamilton nor the persistence of myth. It is concerned with . . . . Continue Reading »
I know it is a fact, but it is nonetheless hard to picture: Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would now be seventy-three years old. Everybody of a certain age has memories, if only of television images; many were there when he spoke, others marched with him in Selma or Montgomery, and some of . . . . Continue Reading »
The Public Square Students of the political philosopher Leo Strauss are fond of quoting the master to the effect that the American polity is built on foundations that are low but solid. When the discussion turns to the constituting ideas undergirding our political institutions, and the ideas that . . . . Continue Reading »
With the death of Sydney Ahlstrom and the retirements of Robert Handy and Martin Marty from the classroom, Mark Noll has surely become our leading teacher-historian of American Christianity. George Marsden may be his superior in charting the history of American fundamentalism and the Christian . . . . Continue Reading »
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