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Reviews

Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Peter J. Leithart is the organizing pastor at Trinity Reformed Church, a Christ Reformed Evangelical congregation, and the Dean of Graduate Studies and Senior Fellow of Theology for New Saint Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho. Deep Exegesis is a clear, optimistic, and well-written book, with wide-spanning and interdisciplinary implications. Impressively, Leithart returns frequently to his exegesis…
Reviews

Beauty for Truth’s Sake

Stratford Caldecott’s finely-written book, Beauty for Truth’s Sake, advocates a return to (Christian) Pythagoreanism as the founding spirit of liberal arts education. Caldecott understands true education as centered on the liberal arts, which he interprets in the spirit of their classical roots as trivium and quadrivium. He argues that education has been disenchanted, because it…
April 15, 2010
Reviews

Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” W. B. Yeats’ oft-quoted line is useful in capturing any number of problems. When applied to the Christian life, it can suggest that we did not try hard enough to understand how — with Christ at the center — everything can hold together (Colossians 1:17). When applied to…
April 15, 2010
Reviews

Buddhism: A Christian Exploration and Appraisal

Philosophers Keith Yandell and Harold Netland offer an excellent historical and apologetic study of the Buddhist tradition. Chapter 1 describes its origins in India under the title “Early Buddhism.” Chapters 2 and 3 chart changes and innovations as “The Dharma Goes East” to China, Tibet and Japan and as “The Dharma Goes West.” Chapters 4…
April 15, 2010
Reviews

Hunting the Unicorn: A Critical Biography of Ruth Pitter

Once a moderately well-known poet and public intellectual in Britain in the middle of the twentieth century, Ruth Pitter has been almost forgotten save as a footnote in biographies of C. S. Lewis. Yet her work won the Hawthornden Prize for Poetry and the William E. Heinneman Award. She was the first woman to receive…
April 15, 2010
Reviews

Why Evolution is True & Why Evolution Works (And Creationism Fails)

On May 28, 2007, the recent creationist organization Answers in Genesis opened its 27-million-dollar Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Although the organization projected 250,000 visitors to the museum in its first year, 404,000 people paid to see the museum during its first year of operation. Despite the economic slow down in 2008-2009, almost one million…
April 15, 2010
Reviews

Christianity and Human Rights: Christians and the Struggle for Global Justice

In Christianity and Human Rights Frederick Shepherd has assembled a strong collection of contributions to one of the fastest growing areas of research in international relations, political thought, development studies and the study of religion: the history, theory and future practice of human rights. Shepherd’s volume is particularly worthy of attention because of three features:…
April 15, 2010
Reflection

A New Philosophy of Darkness

Over the course of history, darkness and creatures associated with the dark have long beenvilified. Yet according to Adam Barkman, this vilification has often resulted in both aesthetic and ethical injustice. At the root of these injustices is humanity’s constant failure both to keep the literal and the metaphorical separate and to remember that all…
April 15, 2010
Review Essays

The Empire of Theory and the Empires of History

Theory and history offer two contrasting ways for apprehending the large and multifaceted concept of “empire.” The six books under consideration sort themselves according to their respective tendencies to treat “empire” theoretically or historically. A concept of “empire” driven by theory will show centripetal trajectories and risk becoming reductionist while historical concepts will expand to…
April 15, 2010