Near the end of his essay "The Inner Ring," C.S. Lewis says, “To a young person, just entering on adult life, the world seems full of ‘insides,’ full of delightful intimacies and confidentialities, and the desire to enter them. But if he follows that desire, he will reach no ‘inside’ that is worth reaching.” In [...]
"The Lord of the Rings" is not an allegorical story, nor should it be treated as such, but that does not mean that the story cannot be used to contemplate and plumb the depths of humanity and its relation to the divine. That J.R.R. Tolkien had a great dislike for his works being called “allegories” [...]
Please never forget, we Catholics have a great legacy. We’ve been promoting liberal education since the days of St. Paul. Some of our greatest saints were liberally educated, and promoting all that is good and true and beautiful has been one of our greatest causes. The author recently delivered the address below to the Roman [...]
"The link between father and son is not only of the perishable flesh: it must have something of 'aeternitas' about it," J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son. "There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together [...]
If the stars fell; night’s nameless dreams Of bliss and blasphemy came true, If skies were green and snow were gold, And you loved me as I love you; […]
Author's Note: This essay is dedicated to the memory of Barbara J. Elliott, my friend and colleague at Houston Christian University. Her academic and spiritual mentorship of my daughter Anastasia led, in part, to her decision to, like Barbara and Peter Kreeft before her, cross the Tiber to Rome. The Mirror, the Mask & the [...]
Only a people who accepts a moral foundation of its culture, a protection of its property, the decentralization of power, and a “national humility” will in the long run survive. Once a people forgets its purpose, it will fall into decadence. The nineteenth century witnessed the flourishing of progressivist thought: in social relations, political relations, [...]
C.S. Lewis believes in the laws of nature, but he argues that miracles do not violate them because miracles are done by the Creator of the natural world Himself. Miracles are, therefore, exceptions to the laws of nature. The Great Commission commands all Christians to share the Gospel with non-Christians. Different groups of non-Christians want [...]
Might certainly does not make right, but it does not make wrong either. There are times to reject the allure of power, especially when it involves dominating others, and there are times when the right course is to take up arms and fight unreservedly against the forces of darkness. Indeed, Tolkien suggests, there are times [...]
Not surprisingly, J.R.R. Tolkien never finished "The Notion Club Papers," but they present a critical insight into his own view of the Inklings—not only mythologizing, but celebrating, them. Dear Reader, the following—a discussion of Tolkien’s unfinished novel, The Notion Club Papers, comes from chapter six of my forthcoming book, Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of [...]
In “The Lord of the Rings,” the One Ring and the One Sin are symbolic similitudes. As the One Ring is “unmade” on Mount Doom, so the One Sin is “unmade” on the hill of Golgotha, the place of the skull. Therefore, if the Ring is synonymous with sin in general and Original Sin in [...]
The one thing that unites man with his most ancient of ancestors and which divides him from all other creatures is his status as a sub-creator, as the imago Dei, who uses his imagination to create in the image of the Creator Himself. Art is the signature of man. —G.K. Chesterton G.K. Chesterton begins his [...]
"That Hideous Strength" is, without doubt, one of the finest and wisest novels of the twentieth century, deserving its place in the canon of Great Books and contributing to the Great Conversation and the goodness, truth, and beauty of Christian Civilization. Over the past few weeks, in my two most recent essays for this illustrious [...]
On the most profound level, "Perelandra" deals with the mystery of freedom itself. How can a person with free will choose the good in the presence of seductive evil? My recent essay, “C.S. Lewis Goes to Mars”, discussed the deep philosophical underpinnings of Lewis’ novel, Out of the Silent Planet, which was the first of [...]