What Augustine found in the Neoplatonists I have glimpsed in the New Statesman, but like him I do not find there anyone who says ‘Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’
Category Archives: Book Reviews
The nth greatest story ever told
H. Richard Niebuhr famously summarised liberal theology as describing how ‘a God without wrath brought men [sic] without sin into a kingdom without judgement by the ministration of a Christ without a cross.’ I have no interest in engaging in theological polemic here. I raise this rather because Flynn’s narrative arc is the other way around – she describes wrath without a God, judgement without a kingdom, and, most disturbingly, a cross without a Christ.
Care, Ovaltine, and Multiplicity
Carl R. Trueman’s new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, is a conservative thinker’s attempt to understand how western society’s attitudes towards sex have shifted so much, so quickly. Trueman is careful to avoid diatribe – this is not a book about how far ‘off-base’ modern society has drifted, or one proneContinue reading “Care, Ovaltine, and Multiplicity”
Exhaust fumes, earwax, and ecclesiology
Who are you? More precisely, what is it that constitutes you? This is the question that lies behind Daisy Hildyard’s elegant and probing The Second Body, published by the stylishly minimalist Fitzcarraldo Editions. We’re generally pretty confident to call our physical bodies part of ourselves even though they’re inhabited by a huge array of micro-organisms,Continue reading “Exhaust fumes, earwax, and ecclesiology”
Angry Pragmatism
The Coronavirus crisis has elevated a range of things in the popular consciousness – that song from Tangled, professional football in Belarus (which was, for a while, the only live sport available), Rishi Sunak’s startling good looks, and, more seriously, social issues from unequal access to education to the disproportionate impact of the virus onContinue reading “Angry Pragmatism”
No Such Thing as a Free Thinker
If Rory Stewart is remembered for one thing, it will be the effort he spent in disabusing people of the idea that a No Deal Brexit was a thing – an ‘Anglo-Saxon fact’. As an idea, he argued, it had gained a lot of traction as an ostensible solution to a keenly felt problem. ButContinue reading “No Such Thing as a Free Thinker”
Male bias and female ‘otherness’ for (crash test) dummies
Who is the reigning Olympic 100m champion? I suspect that readers will know the answer immediately, even instinctively. There is, though, a second correct answer to this question – Elaine Thompson. This is more than just a snarky bit of pedantry. A question as simple as the one I posed above should obviously scream ‘twoContinue reading “Male bias and female ‘otherness’ for (crash test) dummies”
The Making of the Western Minds
Readers unconnected to the Twittersphere may be unaware that, in a recent furore around eugenics, hardened New Atheist Richard Dawkins concluded “we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it.” A quirk, perhaps, of language – Dawkins was hardly begging a God in whom he doesContinue reading “The Making of the Western Minds”
Yikeiatry 