Review Essays

Dale Goldsmith recently retired from Oklahoma Panhandle State University where he was Vice President for Academics for 8 years; prior to that he was Vice President for Academics and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at McPherson College in Kansas. He is also an ordained Presbyterian (USA) pastor. Introduction The year 2011 saw the publication of…

Jordan J. Ballor is a research fellow with the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty and executive editor of the Journal of Markets and Morality. He is the author of Covenant, Causality, and Law: A Study in the Theology of Wolfgang Musculus and visiting professor of business at Kuyper College. He is…

Nicholas Wolterstorff needs no introduction to readers of Christian Scholar’s Review. He has done as much as anyone alive to promote the kind of integrative scholarship that is CSR’s raison d’être. The project of Christian higher education, in general, does not have a more able spokesperson. Wolterstorff’s writings on Christian scholarship and Christian higher education…

In the arts, most of us will be familiar with the notion of a “classic.” If we take a college course in English literature, the history of art, or Western architecture, we will likely be introduced to human artifacts that are widely regarded as so important, so influential in shaping our culture, that a basic…

My education in film came in my 20s when a friend named Paul recognized our town’s need for an “art-house” theater: a place where foreign and independent film might provide an intelligent alternative to Hollywood fare. (That was the era before VCRs and DVDs made foreign films readily accessible.) Renting the cafeteria of a Montessori…

These outstanding and quite different contributions to the dialogue between faith and learning in the general area of contemporary psychology share the fundamental conviction that drives the faith/learning dialogue: that the grandeur and scope of Christian truth and of the Gospel of Jesus Christ defies any minimalist constraints to the merely spiritual or to the…

Introduction What is occurring at the interface between religion and science is more important than ever before.As a theologian and religious studies scholar, I note that most of my colleagues have notbeen thrilled about treating “religion” as a noun, at least not since the publication of WilfredCantwell Smith’s The Meaning and End of Religion (1963;…

Introduction “Before the end of the eighteenth century, man did not exist.”Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1994 ), 308. So claimed Michel Foucault in his intellectual archaeology of modernity, The Order of Things. Indeed “man,”I am framing this with the gender-specific term “man” in this…

America is a very moralistic country, with entire cable channels devoted to gossiping about moral lapses and crime. Our colleges and universities, by contrast, have a reputation as value-free zones, with professors who refine their skepticism about value judgments and students who are indulged in whatever behaviors they choose. This is how we train our…

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…

Introduction Entering into the cathedral of Notre Dame for the first time, with its towering arches, brilliant stained glass windows, and intricate architecture, a sense of awe and wonder rush through the eyes, evoking contemplation of the cathedral’s magnificence. The flood of emotions can be overwhelming. These emotions are no less present when standing at…

In the wake of the collapse of Enron, together with the more recent financial crises stemming from the prevalence of pragmatic ethics, an approach whose moral bankruptcy has caused financial bankruptcies, there is a growing desire to return to finding some basis for moral absolutes. In her 1958 article “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Elizabeth Anscombe, while…

I. Introduction Although mountains reaching over 13,000 feet beckon in the distance, little to nothing is immediately present that can halt the advance of a wind that punishes all who dare to cross this isolated though immortalized swath of land. An occasional scrub tree is all that stands in defiance of this wind that serves…

Wayne Booth was a critic, theorist, and funny-wonderful dreamer. One night during World War II, while serving in Europe as what he called a “clerk-rifleman,” he had a dream that raised him far above the conflict with the Nazis. His autobiography relates it this way: The night heavens are alight, with three huge overlapping circles,…

An Alternative to Realism Scientific realism is the view that the aim of science is to produce literally true theories about the world. Although realism is probably the commonest philosophy among scientists, and perhaps even dominates among philosophers of science, alternative views abound, even after a century of serious inquiry about realism in science. I…

The Prestige, a 2006 film about competition and revenge between two antagonistic Victorian era magicians, takes its title from the last of the three acts that characterize all successful illusions. Every magic trick begins with Act 1, “The Pledge,” when the magician presents to the audience some rather ordinary and unsurprising object or situation; for…

In September of 1930, the German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrived in New York for his first visit to America. As a teaching fellow at Union Theological Seminary, the young Bonhoeffer spent the next year meeting colleagues like Jean Laserre, a French pacifist, and Frank Fisher, a black seminarian who introduced Bonhoeffer to Abyssinian…

Introduction In a recent article in SEEN, the journal of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA), Beverly Roberts Gaventa poses the question, why bother with Mary? With this simple question, Gaventa identifies the attitude harbored by many Protestant Christians today. For some, however, this casual disregard moves to the level of uneasy suspicion and apprehension…