Line Through the Human Heart: On Sinning & Being Forgiven

A Line Through the Human Heart presents a philosophical and theological response to the cultural upheaval of the sexual revolution. James V. Schall examines how distorted views of desire, freedom, and identity undermine the human person and the moral order and proposes Christian anthropology as a path toward healing and truth.

“Fr. Schall offers us a 21st century syllabus of errors all too common in our culture and country: errors about who and what man is as a rational creature in a fallen world; errors about the reality of sin and the need for forgiveness and mercy. Here, as in his other books, Fr. Schall shows that true happiness for man consists in knowing who he is and ‘what is’—that he find the truth about God, man, and the world.” — FR. KENNETH BAKER, S.J., editor emeritus of Homiletic & Pastoral Review

“At a time when sin and forgiveness—as well as the related roles of punishment, mercy, and compassion—are widely misunderstood, Fr. Schall draws on the Great Philosophical Tradition and Christianity to illuminate the connection between sin and free will. With his customary clarity, logical rigor, and concision, he explains why justice requires the acknowledgment of wrongdoing and punishment, demonstrating that any attempt to define sin away results, ironically, in a world at war with reality, in which forgiveness would be impossible.” — ANNE CARSON DALY, scholar and educator, former president of Mount Saint Mary College

James V. Schall, S.J., is Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University. He is currently in residence at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center, Los Gatos, California. Among his books are: The Mind That Is Catholic; The Sum Total of Human Happiness; Reasonable Pleasures; and On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs.