Depicting the Whole Christ: Von Balthasar & Sacred Architecture

By |2024-03-10T14:44:45-05:00March 10th, 2024|Categories: Architecture, Beauty, Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Culture, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Timeless Essays|

Architecture, just like sacred music or art, must fulfill its highest calling, aiding the participant in seeing the glory of God. An architecture that is ordered to fulfill only its human, or even liturgical use, fails its higher purpose. The theological work of twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has only recently begun to take [...]

The Articles of Confederation and State Sovereignty

By |2024-03-01T05:39:55-06:00February 29th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Featured, Founding Document, History, Nationalism, Timeless Essays|

Article II of the Articles of Confederation codified that one of the purposes of the American Revolution was the protection of state sovereignty, by making state sovereignty a fundamental aspect of the American constitutional order. The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800 by N. Coleman (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016) The [...]

Is Classical Education Revitalizing Christian Culture?

By |2024-02-29T05:33:04-06:00February 28th, 2024|Categories: Christianity, Classical Education, Featured, Timeless Essays|

The students of a classical education are part of nothing less than a civilizational renaissance, the revitalized intellectual tradition of a distinctive and vibrant Christian culture. Patrick Henry College recently brought more honor to the exciting renewal of classical education nationwide. Not only has the small liberal-arts school in Purcellville, Virginia, won nine of the [...]

Belief and the Public Square

By |2024-02-25T14:13:37-06:00February 25th, 2024|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, David L. Schindler, Essential, Faith, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Religion, Timeless Essays|Tags: , , , , |

Authentic human creativity offers an image of divine creativity. Its purpose-to bring about a civilization of love to give glory to God-can only be achieved when freedom is properly understood as the received gift by the Son from the Father. For David Schindler this trinitarian economy offers the only model by which any human economy, [...]

Romano Guardini’s Diagnosis of the Modern World

By |2024-02-23T20:52:07-06:00February 20th, 2024|Categories: Christianity, Civil Society, Culture, Featured, Modernity, Romano Guardini|

“To speak precisely, God lost His dwelling place; thereby man lost his proper place in existence.” Man believed he had dominion over nature, and so proceeded to act as a ruler thereof, but it is a poor ruler indeed who destroys that over which he is supposed to govern. “Where is the place of man? [...]

The “Genuine Information”: A Warning About the Constitution

By |2024-02-19T18:36:59-06:00February 19th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Featured, Timeless Essays|

The time may come when it shall be the duty of a State, in order to preserve itself from the oppression of the general government, to have recourse to the sword—In which case the proposed form of government declares that the State and every of its citizens who act under its authority are guilty of [...]

The Measure of Abraham Lincoln

By |2024-02-11T23:10:29-06:00February 11th, 2024|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Conservatism, Essential, Featured, Presidency, RAK, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays|

Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks [...]

Mere Mortals Eavesdropping: The Greatness of Mozart

By |2024-01-27T13:47:50-06:00January 26th, 2024|Categories: Featured, Music, Timeless Essays, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

Mozart was not like us. The question as to why Mozart died so young is always superseded by: How could he have existed at all? How could you ask more of a miracle? In 1991, the bicentennial of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death was the occasion for massive festivals and grand recording projects, as well as [...]

T.S. Eliot: The Light Invisible

By |2024-01-26T05:55:11-06:00January 25th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Books, Featured, Literature, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

The modern secularist, T.S. Eliot argued, finds meaning either in the brute forces of the physical world or the arbitrary freeplay of the mind or the passing consensus of the human tribe. Looking for meaning in these places has not only led individuals to a sense of nihilism but has led whole nations to slaughter [...]

Liberal Education and Politics: The Case of “The Tempest”

By |2024-01-19T18:06:11-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Politics, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

A liberal education is free in the sense that it is free of practical goals. We study our language and our literature or biology and chemistry and psychology just because it is a human instinct to do so, and because it is enjoyable to do so. Everything is Political Just as I began my college [...]

Chasing Lions: Don Quixote in Pursuit of the Beautiful

By |2024-01-15T18:05:45-06:00January 15th, 2024|Categories: Beauty, Culture, Featured, Great Books, History, Literature, Love, Timeless Essays, Truth|

When man pursues beauty, he takes it into himself and becomes beautiful through it; a perpetual beauty-seeker, such as Don Quixote, is, therefore, a beautiful man. He conceived the strangest notion that ever took shape in a madman’s head, considering it desirable and necessary, both for the increase of his honor and the common good, [...]

The End of Literature

By |2024-01-10T18:21:33-06:00January 10th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Edmund Burke, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays|

There have been theories about literature nearly as long as there has been literature, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. But the ancient theorists all assumed that they were thinking about something that had its own functions and ends, which they might help to explain. When the new professors think of theory it is exclusively more [...]

History on Proper Principles: The Legacy of Forrest McDonald

By |2024-01-07T09:40:44-06:00January 6th, 2024|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Featured, Federalist Papers, Forrest McDonald, History, Literature, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]

C.S. Lewis and the Cultivation of the Imagination

By |2023-11-21T22:22:49-06:00November 21st, 2023|Categories: Books, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Featured, Imagination, Timeless Essays|

C.S. Lewis’ lesson to his friends and fans—and to us—is that the cultivation of the imagination might require more than reading and writing, but it requires no less. Readers likely know C.S. Lewis by the works of his imagination, first encountering him in the snowdrifts of the Narnian woods or on an omnibus bound for [...]

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