Penguin Books, 1955, 272 pages.

Summary: A sound, lucid, and accurate description of Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical system by the Jesuit scholar F. C. Copleston (1907-1994). The book is strictly limited to Thomas’ philosophical system and suggests that Thomism is a perennial philosophy. 

Thomas denied that humans have innate ideas and attempted to develop a system that allowed Christian philosophers to remain in the church while philosophizing. Or as Copelston summarizes Pope Leo XIII encyclical letter Aeterni Patris:

[Leo XIII] was not asking them to shut their eyes to all thought since the thirteenth century but rather to penetrate and develop the synthesis of a thinker who combined a profound and living belief in the Christian religion with a real trust in the power of the human mind and in the value of philosophic reflection, uniting in readiness to see truth wherever it might be found with a fidelity to fundamental rational insights which prevented any surrender to passing fashion just because it was fashionable (246).

Reprint of the 1887 edition; Naphtali Press, 2003, 304 pgs.

Summary: A thoughtful and essentially accurate critique of materialistic philosophy and theology of the 19th Century by Robert L. Dabney (1820-1898).

Dabney’s modern fame rests on his having been Stonewall Jackson’s chaplain during the Civil War and as the author of the book A Defense of Virginia and Through Her the South. Not having read the book, I understand that it espouses at least a paternal racism similar to modern liberalism and likely very much worse as he defends the institution of American race slavery.

Dabney’s racism aside, The Sensualistic Philosophy points out over and over again that materialism as a philosophical theory only works if materialism is assumed as the only possible system.

The Sensualistic philosophy is that theory, which resolves all the powers of the human spirit into the functions of the five senses, and modifications thereof. It is the philosophy, which finds all it rudiments in sensation. It not only denies to the spirit of man all innate ideas, but all innate powers of originating ideas, save those given from our senses. It consequently attempts to account for every general and every abstract judgment, as an empirical result of our sensations, and consistently denies the validity of any a priori (11).

Anchor Books, 1962, 510 pgs.

Summary: Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922 -   ) is an historian of the Victorian period. She is especially concerned with promoting the virtues of the Victorian era in the political and public square and correcting Freudian, Relativistic, and wrongheaded historical research. She and her husband Irving Kristol worked to help develop neo-conservatism in political and academic thought in America. Dr. Himmelfarb is a socially conservative Jew.

Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution is a biography of both Darwin and the Darwinian revolution. The material is laid out with great personal sympathy for Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and should be of much value for those interested in the personality, habits, and family of Darwin.

At the same time Himmelfarb is obliviously not amused by Darwin’s philosophical commitments, his persuasive methods, or the common historical narrative that an onrush of new facts caused the current acquiescence to Darwinism.

According to Himmelfarb, there are deep rational problems with Darwin’s theory. Darwin openly “‘defended the procedure’ of inventing a theory and seeing how many classes of fact the theory could explain” (157).  The correspondence to reality was secondary to explanatory power. The most accurate theory in Darwin’s conception was the one that could explain the most facts under his assumed conditions.

London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1958, 429 pgs.

Summary: Richard Hooker (1554-1600) in 1584 became the master or rector of the Temple in London. The Temple was a prominent church that was Puritan friendly because of the patronage of a prominent noble and a diplomat. Prior to the coming of Hooker a simpler worship service had been allowed and maintained by Walter Travers (1548-1635). Travers’ ordination was through a continental presbyter, and he refused to be ordained under Anglican orders. He was thus disqualified by the Anglican hierarchy from becoming rector. Travers was left on as a lecturer or reader.

Hooker quickly established the worship of the main church services along the lines of the Anglican prayer book. Travers and the Puritans attempted for a time to run a parallel church service. Hooker and Travers soon began preaching against each other in opposing services leading to charges and counter charges of sin and incompetence. Archbishop Whitgift (1530-1604) silenced Travers and was supported by the Privy Council in 1586.

The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was the fruit of the public dispute between the Puritans and the Anglican over church polity, the Book of Common of Prayer, and the entailed ceremonies. The main focus of the first four books is epistemology, hermeneutics, and inconsistencies in the Puritan/Presbyterian critique. The three issues are intermixed and the editors have provided citations of Hooker’s quotes and allusions from Travers and Thomas Cartwright’s (1535-1603) defense of Presbyterian practice and government; the critical apparatus from Keble’s Hooker’s Works is also included.

London, G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1913, 381 pgs.

Summary: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the author of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, recovered from his opium addiction and recorded his insights of traveling from a pantheistic Unitarian as a young man to an evangelical Anglican at the end of his life.

Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection was designed to assist young philosophically orientated pastors and lay leaders in the church of England to overcome modernity and believe and teach “the faith once handed down to the saints.” He organized the book as an unfolding series of aphorisms which introduce the necessary philosophical concepts, reinforces them, and then introduces the theological distinctions necessary for the faith and salvation.

He has four basic insights: ethics from a Christian perspective are found in an ascending chain of prudence, morality, and spiritual religion; understanding and reason are different; the human will is supernatural and therefore outside of natural chains of causation; there is an absolute difference between the material and the spiritual. The latter is the most primary insight.

James Clarke and Co. Ltd, 1971, 131 pgs.

Summary: A collection of important, but somewhat rare scholastic works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) which tend to correct misunderstandings about Edward’s Trinitarianism and adherence to covenantal thought. These works were not included in the most available collection of Edwards’ writings.

Edited by and with an introduction by Paul Helm, but first printed and collected in the United States by E. C. Smyth in 1903. Helm’s introduction is, as always, clarifying and helpful.

The volume contains the “Treatise on Grace,” “Observations Concerning the Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption,” Appendix, and “An Essay on the Trinity.”

All of the works display Edwards’ understanding of the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Father thinks of himself and begets the Son, the Son and the Father love each other thus spirating the Spirit.