The Library of Liberal Arts Press, Inc, 1965, 162 pgs. 

Summary: Four basic, short, and fundamental works of Thomas of Aquinas (c. 1225-1274). Thomas in many ways developed the current Roman Catholic explanation of their practice and continues to frame conservative and moderate papal theologians’ thought. Thomas’ influence on Protestant and Reformed thought remains significant. 

Thomas’ main effort was to bring the defense of current religious practice within the forms of Aristotelian insight. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, and a natural and speculative philosopher. His work influenced all subsequent academic theology and philosophy in the West. 

The translator and editor Robert P. Goodwin provides a competent introduction to Thomas’ life and thought. Further, he reduced the complexity of On the Virtues in General and On Free Choice by removing Thomas’ collection and discussion of past authorities, including I assume Scripture references. The Principles of Nature and On Being and Essence are monographs on the stated topic. 

Reprint, Kessinger Publishing, nd; Edinburgh, Charles Elliot: 1781 

Summary: A basic undergraduate level introduction to traditional or formal logic by the pastor and hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674-1748). The book was used in colleges up until the mid to late 1800s. 

Logic is the movement of ideas from apprehension to the relationship of ideas as judgment to deductive inferences that are repeatable and testable by others. Formal deductive logic allows us to learn or confirm new truth from already established truths.

The formal system was developed by Aristotle and was the norm in the West until mid-1800s. The system remains a powerful tool for analysis. Watts offers a helpful introduction to logic by showing us how to move from simple apprehension to definitions or terms, from terms to judgments written as the four propositions (All S is P; Some S is P; No S is P; Some S is not P) to deductive inferences. 

I will at a later date attempt a more careful explanation of deductive logic, but for the purposes of this review I will highlight some of the theological/philosophical issues within Watts’ Logic.

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2009, 204 pgs.

Summary: John N. Oswalt (1940-     ) is distinguished professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He has a written a careful assessment of the uniqueness of the biblical conception of God and how this distinguishes the Bible from similar forms of ancient near-eastern religious texts.

The Bible unlike any other ancient source views God as absolutely independent and transcendent of the cosmos and any other order. There is then no non-personal congruence between the created reality and God. He is God not a man. 

Oswalt, following Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) in The Religion of Israel, then defines myth and mythological thinking as finding continuity between the deity and the cosmos. The gods of the pagans are produced and to some degree controlled by the material world or a power above them, because they are of the same process or controlled by the same ultimately impersonal force. Thus the Bible exists as a text that describes a unique relationship between God and creation in opposition to that described in mythological literature.

Translated and abridged by Mosehe Greenberg (1928-2010).

The University of Chicago Press, 1963, 451 pgs.

Summary: Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) was an Israeli philosopher and biblical scholar. The majority of his publications were in modern Hebrew and remain untranslated.

Kaufmann sets out and as far as I am able to discern succeeds in creating a completely secular and academic framework for the uniqueness of the Jewish conception of the relationship of the divine with creation over and against the pagan religions. The Deity of the Jews is not contingent on nature or any process unlike all other known examples.

He may provide the most powerful possible academically palatable argument for the uniqueness of a worldview springing from such a conception of deity.

Penguin Books India, 2003, 205 pgs. 

Summary: The book is a critical introduction to the basic sources of the modern Hindutva movement: Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883), Siri Auronbindo (1872-1950) , Swami Vivekanda (1863-1902), Vinayak Damadar Svarkar (1883-1966). The author Jyotrimaya Sharma is a professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad. 

Hindutva is political philosophy and way of life for the purpose of establishing the hegemony of the Hindus. Sharma describes it as an odd mixture of 19th century nationalism as expounded by an Italian revolutionary Mazzini (1805-1872), and British and German liberalism from about 1870, enframing the Veda.  

The Veda are the four most basic and ancient Hindu texts. Sharma argues that Hindutva sidelines the pacifist texts in addition to the Veda and suggests that the movement is a threat to Jainist and Buddhist.

Translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnson

Fleming H. Revell, 2004, pgs. 320.

Summary: At the behest of the Pope and the Catholic party, Desiderius Erasmus (1466/9-1536) wrote a little book called Diatribe de Libero Arbitrio defending a semi-Pelagian to Pelagian view of the will (cf. Pelagius, Roman Commentary review) in 1524. According to Erasmus the fallen human will has enough residual goodness within itself to cooperate with grace or perhaps to do some small good without grace.

Erasmus was latitudinarian on salvation. He wasn’t terribly concerned if people believed the Catholic gospel, Luther’s gospel, or whatever Erasmus held as his private beliefs, as long as there was civil peace. The Diatribe is an attempt to establish peace—private leisure for Erasmus to study and European religious accord.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) responded with The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio) in 1525. Luther was stringent on the gospel: believing the wrong gospel sent one to hell. And Luther was willing to overturn the whole world so that some might believe and be saved.

The Bondage of the Will is Luther’s master piece. He speaks, fights, and thinks with fire that warms, burns, and delights in turn. Nowhere is he more brilliant, earnest, more systematic, or more careful in his exegesis of Scripture. Luther argues with the Bible in hand, his scholastic credentials fully exposed and exhibited, his native Saxon wit sharpened by wide classical reading, and a heart softened by the Spirit.