To have one’s book, much less one’s first book, reviewed by a scholar of the stature of Steven Grosby is no small honor. Whatever Professor Grosby’s ultimate judgment of the work, it is flattering that he would take the time to read it.
Still, it is curious that that time yielded a review in which my book’s treatment of liberalism—a ten-page section—is somehow secondary to its larger point, viz., the problem of religious liberty is a perennial tension between divine law and human law, and that natural law can serve to mediate that conflict. Grosby, on the other hand, avers that I “fram[e]” the book’s argument “by indicting liberalism.” This is “shoddy,” to Grosby, because it treats liberalism “as if it were a coherent doctrine.” Not really.
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