I was fortunate to have known Fr. Robert Araujo in the last decade of his life before his premature passing in 2015. For a time, we were working together on a translation of the great natural law scholar Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio’s “Saggio Teoretico di Diritto Naturale” (“Theoretical Essay on Natural Law”) into English (which, regrettably, we never finished). Taparelli was one of the major intellectual influences on Pope Leo XIII. Even as late as 2015, Bob was working on a large piece on the implications of Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom for the contemporary legal landscape.

I am in consequence very happy to notice this new book, a collection of essays in celebration of Bob’s life and work: Priests, Lawyers, and Scholars: Essays in Honor of Robert J. Araujo, S.J. (CUA Press), edited by Stefanus Hendrianto, S.J.

Robert J. Araujo, SJ, is a Catholic legal scholar. For more than twenty-five years, Fr. Araujo was a legal practitioner who devoted his life to defend the Church teaching in American public life and international arena. The present volume brings together twelve essays by noted scholars in honor of Fr. Araujo. The volume displays the influence of the Catholic intellectual tradition across issues such as natural law, Catholic social teachings, constitutionalism, religious freedom and public international law―in this way, the volume highlights the interconnectedness of philosophy, theology, law, and politics in the Catholic intellectual tradition.

A fascinating entry in the “church and state in the early Christian world” catalog, here is Basil the Great: Faith, Mission and Diplomacy in the Shaping of Christian Doctrine (Routledge), by Nicu Dumitrascu. The author focuses specifically on the church-state implications of Basil of Caesarea’s life and thought in the 4th century. I know St. Basil only a little bit because of his opposition to Arianism and other heresies. But this treatment looks like a splendid source to fill up all the many holes in my knowledge about this figure and period.

Regarded as one of the three hierarchs or pillars of orthodoxy along with Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, Basil is a key figure in the formative process of Christianity in the fourth century. While his role in establishing Trinitarian terminology, as well as his function in shaping monasticism, his social thought and even his contribution to the evolution of liturgical forms have been the focus of research for many years, there are few studies which centre on his political thought. Basil played a major role in the political and religious life between Cappadocia and Armenia and was a key figure in the tumultuous relationship between Church and State in Late Antiquity. He was a great religious leader and a gifted diplomat, and developed a ’special relationship’ with Emperor Valens and other high imperial officials.

Nationalism is often in the news today and it has (again) become an object of academic study. Most of these treatments are highly critical of nationalism, particularly as respects contemporary political developments. But here is a very interesting looking new book by Yoram Hazony that defends nationalism–or at least certain features of it: The Virtue of Nationalism (Basic Books). Hazony discusses the importance of nationalism in the Protestant movements of the 16th century, which drew inspiration from the Old Testament to separate from the internationalist (and Catholic) Holy Roman Empire. It is nationalism, Hazony seems to argue, that guarantees certain freedoms as well as genuine pluralism. Worth checking out.

Here’s one that we missed when it was published in 2016, but that a colleague noticed in reading this recent review: Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us About Evolution (OUP), by philosopher Michael Ruse. As a general matter, claims by the religious that American law incorporates a scientistic, secular religion have been rejected by the Supreme Court and have been met with skepticism. But Ruse seems to argue that we should embrace the idea that the Darwinian “revolution” was primarily spiritual and exactly a secular religion.

The Darwinian Revolution–the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including humans are the end product of a long, slow, natural process of evolution rather than the miraculous creation of an all-powerful God–is one of the truly momentous cultural events in Western Civilization. Darwinism as Religion is an innovative and exciting approach to this revolution through creative writing, showing how the theory of evolution as expressed by Darwin has, from the first, functioned as a secular religion.

Drawing on a deep understanding of both the science and the history, Michael Ruse surveys the naturalistic thinking about the origins of organisms, including the origins of humankind, as portrayed in novels and in poetry, taking the story from its beginnings in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century right up to the present. He shows that, contrary to the opinion of many historians of the era, there was indeed a revolution in thought and that the English naturalist Charles Darwin was at the heart of it. However, contrary also to what many think, this revolution was not primarily scientific as such, but more religious or metaphysical, as people were taken from the secure world of the Christian faith into a darker, more hostile world of evolutionism.

In a fashion unusual for the history of ideas, Ruse turns to the novelists and poets of the period for inspiration and information. His book covers a wide range of creative writers – from novelists like Voltaire and poets like Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century, through the nineteenth century with novelists including Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and H. G. Wells and poets including Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and on to the twentieth century with novelists including Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, William Golding, Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson, and poets including Robert Frost, Edna St Vincent Millay and Philip Appleman. Covering such topics as God, origins, humans, race and class, morality, sexuality, and sin and redemption, and written in an engaging manner and spiced with wry humor, Darwinism as Religion gives us an entirely fresh, engaging and provocative view of one of the cultural highpoints of Western thought.