Beauty Is as Beauty Does
by J. A. GrayOn Beauty by zadie smith penguin, 464 pages, $15 (paperback) In On Beauty, British writer Zadie Smith has turned her attention to the post-September 11 United States and has been widely praised for the result, which is a big comic novel that builds a topical tale on a classic foundation. . . . . Continue Reading »
American Satyricon
by R. R. RenoWe live in what we like to think of as a very sophisticated society. International commerce keeps the economy humming day and night. Silicon chips grease the wheels of calculation and communication. Medical centers are engaged in perpetual expansion as research facilities grow at a furious pace. . . . . Continue Reading »
The Radical Orthodoxy Project
by R. R. RenoNovelty provides cheap thrills, and a student of Christian theology is rightly skeptical of agendas and programs that claim to renew Christian faith and practice with new concepts, new paradigms, and new theologies. Much that modern theology has hawked as “new” and “renewing” has led to . . . . Continue Reading »
Babel Undone
by Richard J. MouwA few decades ago I published a short piece in Christianity Today about something I had observed on a Chicago expressway. I had been following a car that exhibited a Playboy bunny decal in its rear window; then as I went to pass the car I also noticed a plastic statue of Mary on . . . . Continue Reading »
After Modernity, What?
by Wilfred M. McClayPostmodern Times:A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Cultureby gene edward veith, jr. crossway, 234 pages, $11.99 We acquire language through repetition, and in everyday life the repetition of a word helps fix its meaning. But not always. Especially not in the academic world, where . . . . Continue Reading »
How the World Lost Its Story
by Robert W. JensonI It is the whole mission of the church to speak the gospel. As to what sort of thing “the gospel” may be, too many years ago I tried to explain that in a book with the title Story and Promise, and I still regard these two concepts as the best analytical characterization of the church’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Judaism and Postmodernity
by Alan L. MittlemanRenewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew by eugene borowitz jewish publication society, 319 pages, $24.95 Eugene Borowitz, the leading theologian associated with the Reform movement of American Judaism, has written an important and ambitious book. Renewing the Covenant: A Theology . . . . Continue Reading »
Tradition and Creativity in the Writing of History
by Gertrude HimmelfarbFor the historian, as for the philosopher, the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns is being superseded by a quarrel between the Moderns and the Postmoderns. If the great subversive principle of modernity is historicism—a form of relativism that locates the meaning of ideas and events . . . . Continue Reading »
On the Death of Literature
by Carol IannoneThose who began to study literature before the radicalization of the university in the 1970s learned that literary criticism was not only a valid undertaking in itself but a way to understand the larger culture and, indeed, the human condition in general. For a time, it seemed that just as much of . . . . Continue Reading »
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