The Seven Deadly Sins Today

Rating:
Summary: Rather Disappointing
Review: Henry Fairlie is on the right track, but his effort is marred by his political ambiguity and, especially, by his inability (albeit not unwillingness) to believe in God. Moral law is based on religion, and religion is based on belief in God. Mr. Fairlie's refusal to fully accept this premise blunts the point he wishes to make: Our culture is crumbling under the onslaught of the Seven Deadly Sins in ascendancy (and the situation has deteriorated considerably and visibly since this book first appeared).

Leaving aside his mystifying choice of Vint Lawrence as an illustrator, the only time Mr. Fairlie fails miserably (indeed, it almost cost him a star) is in his pompous and almost incoherent chapter, "The Paths of Love," where he makes such risible statements as: [page 209] "In nothing has our science made us more free than in the fearlessness of its search for truth and its willingness to confront it." Oh, please.

The bottom line? Mr. Fairlie's effort is a worthy one, just not as successful as one would have wished.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, beautifully-written, tough, and timeless.
Review: It is difficult to praise this book sufficiently. Henry Fairlie's 1978 book has thankfully been reprinted by the University of Notre Dame Press for a new generation. Fairlie presents the Seven Deadly Sins--Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust--as they manifest themselves in contemporary Western (especially American) society and in individual lives. Whether or not one is religious in orientation (Fairlie characterized himself as a "reluctant unbeliever")this book offers a disciplined optimism in suggesting that "The understanding that we sin is a summons to life."

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, beautifully-written, tough, and timeless.
Review: It is difficult to praise this book sufficiently. Henry Fairlie's 1978 book has thankfully been reprinted by the University of Notre Dame Press for a new generation. Fairlie presents the Seven Deadly Sins--Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust--as they manifest themselves in contemporary Western (especially American) society and in individual lives. Whether or not one is religious in orientation (Fairlie characterized himself as a "reluctant unbeliever")this book offers a disciplined optimism in suggesting that "The understanding that we sin is a summons to life."

Rating:
Summary: Rather Disappointing
Review: Whatever happened to sin? as another book's title has it. Despite our best efforts to discard or "outgrow" the idea, sin remains a woven-in part of the human tapestry. We have not made ourselves into exceptions to human nature, and we are very like other people. Such is the thesis of the late British expatriate journalist Henry Fairlie, who also used to write for The New Republic. His style is very grave, like a less colorful G. K. Chesterton, or an even more disaffected Allan Bloom. He describes himself very aptly as "a reluctant unbeliever". Yet, while he cannot accept that we can in some way grieve the Supreme Being, he is sensitive enough to see the wreckage that sin visibly causes in our earthly lives. "Sin is the destruction of one's self as well as the destruction of one's relationships with others," he says. What makes this be sin rather than just some ordinary failing of character is that sin perverts something indefinably fundamental in us, from which all the rest of our humanity proceeds.

And so off he goes, incisively describing and deploring each of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. His heartfelt, well-supported exposition should win understanding and respect from believers, and should give unbelievers pause. His politics sometimes trip up his argument. "Even our socialism is sinful..."--as if a political system based on breaking the Eighth and Tenth Commandments could ever be anything but sinful. But such missteps do not impede this pilgrim's progress

What does bring everything to a screeching halt is the final chapter, "The paths of love". Here his agnosticism brings him up short, and he is quite at sea trying to formulate a counter-balance to the awful fact of sin. One hopes that he eventually realized before he died that he didn't have to re-invent the wheel. An incredibly brave near-classic from a modern "pagan worthy".

Rating:
Summary: Pointed, tough, and, given the author's position, brave
Review: Whatever happened to sin? as another book's title has it. Despite our best efforts to discard or "outgrow" the idea, sin remains a woven-in part of the human tapestry. We have not made ourselves into exceptions to human nature, and we are very like other people. Such is the thesis of the late British expatriate journalist Henry Fairlie, who also used to write for The New Republic. His style is very grave, like a less colorful G. K. Chesterton, or an even more disaffected Allan Bloom. He describes himself very aptly as "a reluctant unbeliever". Yet, while he cannot accept that we can in some way grieve the Supreme Being, he is sensitive enough to see the wreckage that sin visibly causes in our earthly lives. "Sin is the destruction of one's self as well as the destruction of one's relationships with others," he says. What makes this be sin rather than just some ordinary failing of character is that sin perverts something indefinably fundamental in us, from which all the rest of our humanity proceeds.

And so off he goes, incisively describing and deploring each of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. His heartfelt, well-supported exposition should win understanding and respect from believers, and should give unbelievers pause. His politics sometimes trip up his argument. "Even our socialism is sinful..."--as if a political system based on breaking the Eighth and Tenth Commandments could ever be anything but sinful. But such missteps do not impede this pilgrim's progress

What does bring everything to a screeching halt is the final chapter, "The paths of love". Here his agnosticism brings him up short, and he is quite at sea trying to formulate a counter-balance to the awful fact of sin. One hopes that he eventually realized before he died that he didn't have to re-invent the wheel. An incredibly brave near-classic from a modern "pagan worthy".