Review and Response

Jennifer M. McBride is Board of Regents Chair in Ethics and Assistant Professor of Religion at Wartburg College. I am grateful for Professor Goodson and Mr. McDowell’s engagement with my book and grateful for the opportunity for conversation in this journal with its roots in evangelical institutions. The driving questions of the book – including…

Matthew Lundin is Assistant Professor of History at Wheaton College. “The irony could hardly be greater: history itself tends to inhibit historical understanding and hence human self-awareness” (9). Thus does Brad Gregory, in the introduction to his powerfully argued account of the origins of modernity, critique the hyper-specialization rampant in the historical profession. By parceling…

Brad S. Gregory is the Dorothy G. Griffin Associate Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Notre Dame. I am grateful to Matthew Lundin for his articulate review of The Unintended ReformationBrad S. Gregory. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society.Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012.…

A Christian master teacher can render challenging technical material in understandable, thought-provoking prose, arguing for her thesis in an edifying way that deepens the reader’s understanding, all while sustaining a theologically- and biblically-grounded engagement with her topic. Jenell Williams Paris gives evidence of being such a Christian master teacher in this attractive volume replete with…

I am grateful for the chance to respond to any book review, especially one as carefully considered as Stanton Jones’ review. In a time when arguments seem to have a shelf life of minutes, and respondents click “send” before they have digested that which they critique, words from a colleague who has taken the time…

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Miroslav Volf insists that they do, or at least that worthy exemplars in each tradition do. “I am not inquiring about the God of a small band of terrorists and war-mongers, but ... of the great Christian and Muslim teachers” (150). A native of Croatia, Volf is…

I am grateful to Benjamin DeVan for writing an extended review of my book. I am flattered that he described the book as “brilliant.” But he has also raised significant issues and leveled serious criticisms. At one point he even seemed to suggest that my failings in the book match in gravity the most egregious…

Dan Treier’s perceptive analysis and helpful interaction with my book touches on a number of important points. From my perspective—and I recognize that this is not the way Treier himself would want to put it—I would even say that his fine review sacramentally participates in eternal truth! I am certainly grateful, therefore, for the review…

In Heavenly Participation, Hans Boersma, one of today’s leading evangelical theologians (and, in the interests of full disclosure, a friend to this reviewer), provides an accessible and compelling distillation of his recent project. The argument should be especially interesting for readers of this journal, since Boersma’s book is perhaps the most theologically responsible version of…

Huge pleasures ... sometimes (if we are careless) not even acknowledged or remembered, invade us from . Hence the unreasonable happiness which sometimes surprises a man at those very hours which ought, according to all objective rules, to have been the most miserable.C. S. Lewis, Present Concerns: A Compelling Collection of Timely, Journalistic Essays (New…

When I was growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, I knew the end was near. “The thrilling sense of imminent doom”...the fear of communists...the expectation of“Rapture any moment” informed my life, just as it did Grant Wacker’s, though, perhaps, with less referencing of McCarthy and Eisenhower and more of Brezhnev, Khomeini, and the Red Army hockey…

When I was growing up in the 1950s in a small town in southwest Missouri, I knew the end was near. That thrilling sense of imminent doom partly stemmed from my parents’ ardent premillennialism; we expected the Rapture any moment. But it also stemmed from the daily newspaper. And with good reason. The communists—commies, we…

I am grateful to Stewart Goetz for his thoughtful engagement of my short article (“The Pursuit of Happiness: C. S. Lewis’ Eudaimonistic Understanding of Ethics,” hereafter, “Pursuit”) within this wide-ranging and insightful account of C. S. Lewis’ ethics. I also thank the editors of this journal for the opportunity to respond, in order, hopefully, to…

Steven D. Smith’s The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse is an important book.Steven D. Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Harvard University Press, 2010),280 pp. $26.95 (hardback), ISBN 9780674050877. I will be offering a point or two of criticism. That, however, takes nothing away from my judgment that Smith’s book is an intellectually imaginative and compelling…

It is an honor to have The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse reviewed by a person and scholar of the stature of Nicholas Wolterstorff – and a relief to see that the review is generally favorable. Wolterstorff presents the principal arguments of the book succinctly and sympathetically and offers some perceptive criticisms. These criticisms prompt me…

Patrick McNamara, Associate Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, has made a thoughtful and nuanced contribution to a growing field centered on questions concerning brain activity required for, and involved in, religious life. In a field spanning the disciplines of neuroscience and religious studies, it is often hard to find a perspective…

First let me thank the editors of Christian Scholar’s Review for allowing me room to respond to the extended review of my book on the neuroscience of religious experience.I also thank Professors Runyan and Kreitzer for their very thoughtful and stimulating review. My overall sense from reading their review is that there is much on…