Reviews

Reviewed by Brian Glenney, Philosophy, Gordon College Life evolves according to something like PANDA: Progressive complexity, Ancestors in common, Natural selection, Descent with modification, Ancient earth. The phenomenon of natural selection, for example, reveals that living things with the most adaptive traits continue to exist. But some aspects of how adaptive traits become selected remain…

Reviewed by Thomas Trzyna, English, Seattle Pacific University Christian Scholar’s Review is a generalist journal, so the purpose of this review, above all, should be to recommend the poetry of one of the twentieth century’s most talented poets, W. H. Auden. Auden had the musical and compositional skills of Robert Frost and W. B. Yeats,…

Reviewed by Philip D. Byers, Residence Life, Bethel University David R. Swartz has produced a book that is at once innovative historiography and enlivening prose. Using the 1973 Thanksgiving Workshop of Evangelical Social Concern and its resulting “Chicago Declaration” as his framework, Swartz narrates and analyzes the mid-twentieth-century progressive movement in American evangelicalism. Examining many…

Reviewed by Bernadette Waterman Ward, Literature, University of Dallas Susan Colón’s concise, clear book argues that Victorian realism is particularly fertile ground for parables and thus undercuts many common presumptions in literary studies. Her opening chapters are theoretical, dealing first with creating a working definition of parables and secondly with dismantling some illusions about the…

Reviewed by Crystal Downing, English and Film Studies, Messiah College Several years ago I began a book review with these words: “Movies can elicit profound, sometimes dismaying, reflections about the reciprocal influence between religion and society, faith and culture, belief and behavior. Rarely, however, do filmgoers consider the influence of religion on the production of…

Reviewed by Christopher Tollefsen, Philosophy, University of South Carolina Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler’s new book is a follow-up to their earlier, more academic, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology. It is written with a view to the “people in the pews” (xiii), but they argue for the same essential positions with many…

Reviewed by Charles Andrews, English, Whitworth University The hoopla in the Charles Dickens bicentenary has sustained a wealth of publications popular and scholarly on this most distinctly English of the great English writers. Gary L. Colledge contributes to this celebration a book that is a curious blending of scholarly intervention and popular plea to Christians…

Reviewed by Ryan Scruggs, Theology, Alberta Bible College Achieving some sense of mastery over a given discipline in the academy today is daunting for scholars, never mind for students or the general public. Without training, entry into a field such as medieval mysticism or philosophy of religion can feel like being dropped into a foreign…

Reviewed by W. Brian Shelton, Historical Theology, Toccoa Falls College Unbeknownst to many, a liberal arts curriculum consisting of the trivium and the quadrivium did not exist in antiquity. This was instead a medieval development, owing its pedigree to antiquity and in large part to Augustine, who set out immediately after his conversion to solidify…

Reviewed by Leah K. Clarke, Counseling, Messiah College You are a Christian psychotherapist asked to provide consultation on a case. The client in question is a middle-class Caucasian male, a nontraditional college student, and a veteran. He presents you with academic struggles, poor social connections, and doubts about his faith. He also has a difficult…

Reviewed by Shaun C. Henson, Theology and Religion, University of Oxford Distinction and novelty are necessarily rarer descriptors for books on the dialogue between science and religion nowadays, due partly to a thematic overlap caused by the sheer number of them in production in recent decades. Alexei Nesteruk, a senior lecturer in mathematics at the…

Reviewed by Louis Markos, English, Houston Baptist University C. S. Lewis knew his Aquinas well. Not only was he familiar with Aquinas’s proofs for the existence of God; he was well aware that the Angelic Doctor could only conceive of two possible reasons to doubt God’s existence. In Part I, Question 2, Article 3 of…

Reviewed by Edward C. Polson, Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, Messiah College. In Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat examines some of the most significant changes that have occurred in U.S. religious life since the 1950s. He explores the impact that the declining significance of both…

Reviewed by David A. Hoekema, Philosophy, Calvin College “In spite of the indispensable use of images in our yearning to make sense of reality, there has not been sufficient attention to the aesthetic in the debate between theism and naturalism” (3). This opening comment conveys the motivation for a wide-ranging and provocative book by a…

Reviewed by Tom Lehman, Economics, Indiana Wesleyan University Imagine a situation in which someone you know to be innocent is wrongly accused of crimes she did not commit, and the prosecution in the case is the actual perpetrator of those crimes. However, the accused innocent is not particularly appealing, is not always cooperative, is easily…

Reviewed by George F. Pickens, Theology and Mission, Messiah College Even though I have been a student of World Christianity since before that term was widely used, I confess that the idea of reviewing yet another volume which claimed to examine Christianity around the world was not initially appealing. For a myriad of reasons, interest…

Reviewed by Carl A. Ruby, Student Life, Cedarville University In the final chapter of Amanda Rose’s narrative account of the consequences of our nation’s current approach to immigration policy she observes, “The U.S.– Mexican border is a place of extreme behavior, a place where social and economic ills are played out with terrifying and tragic…

Reviewed by Benjamin B. DeVan, Ethics and Theology, Durham University “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This aphorism traditionally attributed to King Solomon especially applies to books about sex, which proliferate in print and online faster than the proverbial jackrabbit, and exponentially exceed in number Solomon’s “seven hundred wives of royal…

Reviewed by David Grumett, Divinity, University of Edinburgh From a range of historical and social anthropological fields, the contributors to this collection examine how Christians have used food to deepen their spiritual discipline, define their common identity, and spread their faith. Their eleven chapters cover widely diverse contexts, from a medieval Vallombrosan monastery to current…

Reviewed by Brian Glenney, Philosophy, Gordon College A tribal shaman, an atheist scientist, and a religious philosopher enter a bar. After getting drinks, the ground begins shaking violently and all three quickly duck under the table. The shaman pours out his beer to appease the angry god. The scientist guzzles his, anticipating the worst, and…