Ecclesiastes is quite possibly the most controversial book in the Bible for all the wrong reasons. Many Christians avoid Ecclesiastes because of its overwhelming bleakness. Others prefer Job to Ecclesiastes’ nihilistic overtones and recurring cynicism. In fact, as some pastors observe, Ecclesiastes “is so denigrated by some Christians, that they have wondered why it is [...]
A remnant from the late ‘20s, “Metropolis” has come into the light once again and in a more complete way. While the industrial environment and modern work have changed, the concern for social justice and questions about technology are just as intense as they were when the film premiered. In a search for movies considered [...]
Anne Hutchinson bewitches most college students. When analyzing her trial transcripts, with her clever and sarcastic repartee with Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop and the Puritan ministers, they come to admire her greatly. Whiggishness creeps into their interpretation of her words and actions, seeing her as a harbinger of contemporary liberty. They believe that the [...]
As a graduate of a “Great Books” college that uses a seminar method of instruction, I have always looked for ways to incorporate discussion into my high school courses. One year, when I was teaching “Classical Literature,” I was able to run the classes primarily in this way. The burden of the discussion was on [...]
The Christian belief in the Eucharist stands as a universal expression of faith in a transcendent value that exists beyond human effort, to which we can nevertheless strive through faith. It would be hard to find anything in the history of civilization quite like this mystical belief that bound Christians together in communion for centuries, [...]
From Tertullian, a North African Christian writer of the early third century, to the Reformation, there is a significant Christian tradition that affirms religious freedom. The origin story of religious liberty commonly cited in college courses and museums, informed by proponents of the so-called Whig view of history, goes something like this. In the West, [...]
As we enter into a period of radical uncertainty regarding religious freedom—especially for Catholics, as witnessed most recently by the anti-confession laws in California—it is worth re-considering America’s track record on the issue. Frankly, it’s not good. Or, perhaps, it’s better to state, when it’s good, it’s good, but when it’s bad, it’s really bad. [...]
The history of Sri Lanka through the Fifties to the present time is a sobering reminder to those who fail to see that unrestrained democracy can lead to the tyranny of the majority and that robust diversity is as often a cause of friction and strife as it is a strength to be celebrated. If [...]
For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier—real tin, just like the rest—had come fully and splendidly alive. The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. We do not know—anyway, I do not know—how things would have worked if the human race had never rebelled against God [...]
William Warburton was a man who, as a theologian living through the debates of the Enlightenment, readapted his role while staying true to its intentions. His was a distinctive voice in these debates because he attacked all sides equally, seeing a paradox between human thought and history. Part of the purpose of intellectual history is [...]
C.S. Lewis’ famous conversation with Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien, allowed him, for the first time in his life, to see that Christianity expresses not just myth, but true myth, something profoundly real, “a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.” As [...]
Lust, sex, and war reign supreme in the pagan mythologies; rebellion and war run riot through the rise and fall of the gods. The pagan must ask himself in light of these stories: If imitation of the gods is what leads to virtuous character, is virtue attainable at all? The decline of Christianity has been [...]
A primary theme that runs throughout The Reasonableness of Christianity is John Locke’s belief that men who attempt to understand natural law and morality through their faculty of reason alone often fail at their task. But why is it that reason alone, also according to Locke, can explain Revelation? The question this essay poses might seem somewhat straightforward: [...]
Traditional liturgy, through its ceremony and ability to effect a sense of the transcendent, opens the human heart and mind not only to truth, but to other realms of being. If liturgy accomplishes this, so does literature, for what does a good story or a good drama accomplish, but to take us for a time [...]