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: [...]
Maurice Denis reengaged with myth, symbol, and the human figure at a time when Impressionists had narrowed their focus to mundane subject matter. He showed that there could be an art that incorporated the best insights of abstraction, and the psychological focus of expressionism, but remained wedded to the canons of beauty, harmony, and [...]
Today’s enthusiasts for a socialist America will not be likely to know the name of Robert Blatchford or his story. If they did, they might think twice about their current enthusiasm. […]
After his father’s death, Christopher Tolkien became the literary heir of all things Middle-earth. He quit his prestigious academic professorship at Oxford and dedicated himself fully to his father’s legacy. We are a better people and a better civilization as a result. On Wednesday, January 15, 2020, the holy host of the Valar (all [...]
“Man is in no sense perfect, but a wretched creature who can yet apprehend perfection.”—T.E. Hulme The mediocrity and driftless purposelessness of liberalism had permeated and shattered true humanist culture at the turn of the nineteenth-to-the-twentieth century, the great historian and man of letters Christopher Dawson feared. Too many unthinking liberals had tried to [...]
If J.R.R. Tolkien was a Titan, Christopher was Atlas, with the weight of a cosmology on his back. On January 16, in France, and at the age of 95, Christopher John Reuel Tolkien quietly passed away. The headlines of many obituaries and tributes refer to him as the son of J.R.R. Tolkien, which indeed [...]
If trees were tall and grasses short, As in some crazy tale, If here and there a sea were blue Beyond the breaking pale, If a fixed fire hung in the air To warm me one day through, If deep green hair grew on great hills, I know what I should do. In dark I [...]
We live in a world completely mastered and permeated by economic ideals, yet expecting better government within societies brought up on humanitarian thinking strikes us as yet another fantasy. Much has changed since the solutions posited by humanist thinkers of the last century, so what can we do in this world? What can we [...]
If, as established in my two previous two essays*, the Logos has its roots in ancient pagan as well as ancient Hebraic thought, what does this mean for Christianity and its adoption of the term? Clearly, the most blatant manifestations of the Greco-Hebraic concept of the Logos—the eternal Word, the unending fire, thought, and [...]
Truth can seem harsh if unadorned, but with something pleasurable to recommend, it can penetrate more easily the minds of mortals. Pleasure is what catches a reader's attention and holds it when caught. Pleasure wins over all alike, unless someone is too stupid to be sensitive to the pleasures of the written word. What better [...]