J. Budziszewski

While history shows that evangelical political engagement in America has been consistent, its impact has been checkered. This new work offers a brief history of evangelical political thought over the past fifty years and assesses recent evangelical forays into politics. J. Budziszewski examines the theological, political, and ethical reflections of four key figures--Carl F.H. Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and John Howard Yoder--to whom today's evangelical political perspectives can be traced. While appreciative of the contributions of each of these thinkers, Budziszewski feels each failed to develop a systematic political theory as compelling as those offered by the secularist establishment. He then offers his recommendations for the evangelical political movement, arguing that, in addition to Scripture, the evangelical political movement should be informed by the tradition of natural law. Summary chapters from four expert respondents follow: David L. Weeks (Azusa Pacific University) responds on Henry, John Bolt (Calvin Seminary) comments on Kuyper, William Edgar (Westminster Seminary) responds to the Schaeffer section, and Ashley Woodiwiss (Wheaton College) offers remarks on the Yoder portion. The book includes an introduction by Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an afterword by Jean Bethke Elshtain, who summarizes the dialogue and offers her own keen observations.

"Everyone in every time and place is interested in sex. Our own time is obsessed by it. One would think that a society obsessed by sex would understand it very well. But the truth is that obsession drives out understanding. We no longer understand even the common sense of sexuality, the things that were common knowledge in supposedly less enlightened times. Acclaimed philosopher J. Budziszewski remedies this problem. His wise, gracefully written book about the nature, meaning, and mysteries of sexuality restores lost wisdom. On the Meaning of Sex corrects the most prevalent errors about sex, particularly the errors of the sexual revolution, which by mistaking pleasure for a good in itself has caused untold pain and suffering. In restoring the meaning and purpose of sex, the author reclaims what Dante calls 'the intelligence of love.'" -- Publisher's description.

Although St Thomas Aquinas famously claimed that his 'Summa Theologiae' was written for "beginners", contemporary readers find it unusually difficult. Now, amid a surge of interest in virtue ethics J. Budziszewski clarifies and analyzes the text's challenging arguments about the moral, intellectual, and spiritual virtues, with a spotlight on the virtue of justice. In what might be the first contemporary commentary on Aquinas's virtue ethics, he juxtaposes the original text with paraphrase and detailed discussion, guiding us through its complex arguments and classical rhetorical figures. Keeping an eye on contemporary philosophical issues, he contextualizes one of the greatest virtue theorists in history and brings Aquinas into the interdisciplinary debates of today. His brisk and clear style illuminates the most crucial of Aquinas' writings on moral character and guides us through the labyrinth of this difficult but pivotal work.

After almost a century of unrest, the King James Bible was intended to end the violent upheavals of the English Reformation. But deep-seated discord forces a leading translator to confront the betrayal of his youthful religious ideals for the sake of social peace. The play begins with a heated debate about last-minute revisions to the new version, taking place in the Holborn house of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes in 1610. It then backtracks first to Flanders in 1536 to show us the outlawed William Tyndale smuggling his biblical translation out of prison, and then to Yorkshire in 1586 to demonstrate the unresolved tensions inside the Protestant Reformation. At the heart of the play is a long scene in which Andrewes debates at length with the ghost of Tyndale, who had been burnt at the stake almost 70 years earlier.

Natural law is a fact about human beings, and a theory that humbles itself before this fact. Yet it is something else as well -- a sign of contradiction, something that exasperates, offends, and enrages. The transient cause of such rage is the suicidal proclivity of our time to deny the obvious, but a more enduring cause is the Fall of Man. Our hearts are riddled with desires that oppose their deepest longings, and we demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible. In The Line Through the Heart, popular philosopher J. Budziszewski threads a path between these various abysses. Among his questions are how the knowledge of good is related to the knowledge of God, how things that seem to run against the grain of human nature can become "second nature", and whether natural law can be reconciled with Darwinian evolution. Turning to politics, he takes up such topics as who counts as a human person, whether human dignity is compatible with capital punishment, what courts have made of the United States Constitution, and how an ersatz state religion can be built in the name of Toleration. Written in Budziszewski's usual crystalline style, The Line Through the Heart makes the natural law and its implications clear for both scholars and general readers. - Publisher.

"Natural moral law stands at the center of Western ethics and jurisprudence and plays a leading role in interreligious dialogue. Although the greatest source of the classical natural law tradition is Thomas Aquinas' Treatise on Law, the Treatise is notoriously difficult, especially for nonspecialists. J. Budziszewski has made this formidable work luminous. This book - the first classically styled, line by line commentary on the Treatise in centuries - reaches out to philosophers, theologians, social scientists, students, and general readers alike. Budziszewski shows how the Treatise facilitates a dialogue between author and reader. Explaining and expanding upon the text in light of modern philosophical developments, he expounds this work of the great thinker not by diminishing his reasoning, but by amplifying it"--

"Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose This monumental, line-by-line commentary makes Thomas Aquinas's classic Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose accessible to all readers. Budziszewski illuminates arguments that even specialists find challenging: What is happiness? Is it something that we have, feel, or do? Does it lie in such things as wealth, power, fame, having friends, or knowing God? Can it actually be attained? This book's luminous prose makes Aquinas's treatise transparent, bringing to light profound underlying issues concerning knowledge, meaning, human psychology, and even the nature of reality"--