Christians invented the classical curriculum; it is as much part of the broader Western inheritance as it is specifically part of the Christian inheritance. Why study old books? How do dusty old books written by dead men and women thousands of years ago grow my faith? Such can be common thoughts when the Christian is [...]
The future is nothing but the dreams and plans we currently have; nothing is coming but what we actively or passively agree to. When our dean asked me to lecture this September it was because I’ve just completed a book on time, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk about it. There seemed [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Jason Baxter, as he considers why Christians should read the works of the pagans. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher At the end of each semester, I inevitably have one or two well-meaning students who are still unsure why they were asked [...]
We’ve reached a time when fewer and fewer on the outside know what the liberal arts are, or the value of them to the individual person, an organization, and the marketplace of ideas. In an age when people are so focused on science and technology via “STEM” subjects, we’ve lost our sense of wonder… On [...]
I imagine that on Parents’ Weekend there might be some parents attending this once weekly occasion when the college assembles to hear a lecture. By its very name, a lecture is read—but read out loud, delivered in the writer’s voice. Thus, the sequence goes: I thought, I wrote, I read, I speak. Although this is the principal way of [...]
It is the encounter with beauty, all-consuming beauty, the infinite, which directs the human soul back to God. The sky calls us up; the earth drags us down. On December 2, 1805, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte achieved his most spectacular victory at the Battle of Austerlitz against an allied army of Russians and Austrians. [...]
If people and dogs have common ground of a higher order than animal needs, it must be in the territory of the spirit. Spirit is, just as Aristotle says, where friendship is at home. Now among us humans, this capability of the spirit is both an accomplishment and a work in progress, and so it [...]
I’m uncertain of the joy of reading the Theban plays of Sophocles—the story is just too monstrous—but in accord with the awe. This translation conveys it. Sophocles: The Theban Plays, translated by David R. Slavitt (256 pages, Yale University Press, 2009) This is the most stripped-down version of the three Theban plays of Sophocles that [...]
What enabled men like Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas to discover their “why” in ages past can still transform young men and women today. Over the years, I have discovered that nearly every time I come across an especially pithy, insightful, beautifully-expressed quotation, it seems to be attributable either to Winston Churchill or Mark Twain. Recently, [...]
An odyssey is an adventurous and searching journey, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. It is the proper name for the life of learning. One can shape one’s own odyssey into a journey that lacks neither enchantment nor definition. My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each [...]
To the extent that I am a human person, Homer’s Iliad speaks to me, but my particular circumstances are my own. As a result, a great question will help all people, including me, and so might be applicable to my peculiar place in space and time without being exhausted by it. In one week I’m teaching [...]
The classical curriculum remained the educational gold standard in nineteenth-century America. In fact, its influence grew, as women’s academies with a classical curriculum were founded all over the expanding nation… The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States by Carl J. Richard (Harvard University Press, 2009) With The [...]
By nixing Latin instruction from our schools, have we knocked the feet out from under generations of students, leaving them to struggle through the fog of schooling and literacy on their own…? A little over a year ago, it was reported that Australian schoolchildren were suddenly making dramatic gains in a number of subjects. The [...]
Might Dante not have been better served had he peopled the Hell of his Divine Comedy with fictional characters of his own invention, instead of actually naming them and therefore damning them?… If one were asked to name the greatest work of literature of all time, there would be only a handful of serious contenders. Both [...]