In “Till We Have Faces,” the story of Orual and Psyche which Lewis weaves is so powerful because it presents us with the hope that even the greatest cruelty perpetrated by selfish love can be forgiven by true love. Picture the scene, cliché as it is: A young teenager’s parents have just refused her permission [...]
Western Civilization is undeniably in decline and indeed its very existence is in doubt. Yet these thoughts ought not to drag conservatives down into a morass of defeatism. Though the hour is late, a remnant must run to the barricades and shield itself and whatever is left of Western Civilization from the barbarians at [...]
We must respect the difficulty and danger of the jobs of those who protect us and stop willfully blinding ourselves to the unpleasant realities around us. Let us defend, support, and celebrate our police and our military; without them, our world would be a far more perilous place. This semester, I am happily exercising [...]
Joseph Pearce’s “C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church” presents a compelling case in suggesting that its subject evolved “into a very Catholic sort of Protestant.” Though C.S. Lewis never became a Roman Catholic, his later works betray a growing affinity for Catholic teaching. C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, by Joseph Pearce (220 [...]
The Bible provides a different and seemingly antithetical model of poetry from that given in Greek literature. It demands one’s whole heart and one’s whole viscera. Nonetheless, without in the least giving up a faith in Scripture, Westerners still find within themselves qualities that only the classical vision can express. What has Athens to [...]
The paradoxical heart of G.K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday” is the tension that exists between the childlikeness demanded by Christ and the childishness that St. Paul tells us to avoid. The first is the wisdom of innocence, or the sanity of sanctity, whereby we see the miracle of life with eyes full [...]
What, exactly, is Faerie? While not quite the realm of the supernatural, it is the realm of grace (and its enemies), and it can be, even in its greatest beauty, dangerous in the extreme. It is also, by its very nature, sacramental, tangible, and incarnational. On March 8, 1939, just five months shy of [...]
As we all deal with the latest pandemic, it’s good to know that we can call on experts to help us through—and eventually out—of it. But it’s also good to know that we can also call on non-experts to help us as well. Included among them might even be a non-expert who had his [...]
An endearing story about fathers and sons—and almost certainly an autobiographical understanding of J.R.R. Tolkien himself and his own, mostly imagined father, as well as Tolkien and his son Christopher—”The Lost Road” begins with a son, Alboin, asking his father, Oswin, about the origin of his name. Though Tolkien had already written and published [...]
Enchantment has been hidden away from the world, but it can still be found with the right mentors, and the Inklings are a great place to start. J.R.R. Tolkien, in “On Fairy Stories,” argues that in a state of enchantment lies a “primal desire” all of us humans seek, a desire often satisfied in [...]
Only the works published during J.R.R. Tolkien’s lifetime should be considered canonical, whereas the unfinished works collected, collated, and edited by Christopher Tolkien should be considered extra-canonical. I would even venture to suggest that Christopher Tolkien’s work should be considered as footnotes to his father’s corpus and not an extension of it. In the [...]
With Aristotle, Gerhart Niemeyer saw art as being closer to philosophy than to history. Like philosophy, art begins and ends in wonder—it promotes a deeper sense of the mystery that bounds our experience. In the great works of art and literature, the relationship between art and religion is that of a seamless garment, and [...]
Despite almost continuous employment of the term “Christian Humanist” over the past few centuries, many still scratch their heads (individually and collectively) when encountering the noble ideal. To put it simply, three tenets define Christian humanism. […]
Despite the secularist’s attempts to lay claim to the word “humanism,” there’s nothing intrinsically secular about it. Using “humanism” as if it were in opposition to “theism” is to create a false dichotomy. Bradley Birzer’s “Beyond Tenebrae” serves to clearly illustrate that good theists can be good humanists—and are sometimes the best. Beyond Tenebrae: [...]