St. Augustine, Modernity, & the Recovery of True Education

By |2023-08-27T13:11:19-05:00August 27th, 2023|Categories: Bradley G. Green, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Featured, Liberal Learning, Modernity, Senior Contributors, St. Augustine, Timeless Essays|

One of the most pressing tasks for contemporary Christians is the recovery and cultivation of the inextricable link between the Christian faith and the intellectual life. In order to engage in such reflection, we should explore the relationship of Christianity and the liberal arts, and in particular seek to draw from Augustine as we reflect [...]

Immediacy: The Ways of Humanity

By |2023-08-24T18:04:24-05:00August 24th, 2023|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Humanities, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Time, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

Opposition to greatness comes from the kind of irrational irritation that made the Athenians ostracize Aristides because they were tired of hearing him called "the Just," or from egalitarian resentment, or from fear of the demands things of quality make on us. I want to steal four minutes of my talking time to speak of [...]

A Tale of Two Houses

By |2023-08-13T16:59:18-05:00August 13th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Education, Labor/Work, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning|

What if the fundamental problem in the American academy is a loss of institutional identity that has nothing to do with conservative or liberal ideology? What if the modern university simply is no longer dedicated to being a house of learning and a community of scholars? Jake Meador’s article in The Atlantic* about the decline [...]

There Is Only One Great Book: The Bible

By |2023-10-08T19:26:52-05:00July 29th, 2023|Categories: Bible, Catholicism, Christianity, Classical Education, Classical Learning, History, Literature|

Medieval civilization proved the Bible’s power to incorporate all the tales of the pagans. It was never the goal of Augustine, Jerome, and their successors to save classical literature, although that resulted from their efforts. What they wanted to know was Christ in the Scriptures. Despite the current enthusiasm over classical education, there is little [...]

The Grace of Simple Praise

By |2023-07-28T12:39:49-05:00July 28th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Glenn Arbery, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

Learning the language of Christian culture begins with God-given reality, which explains our emphasis on the outdoors and on horsemanship; it explains our technology policy, which helps students avoid an algorithmically manipulative virtual reality; and it explains our four years of classes centered on the Great Books, an encounter with the greatest thought of the [...]

Greek to Us: The Death of Classical Education & Its Consequences

By |2023-07-26T15:39:37-05:00July 26th, 2023|Categories: Christian Kopff, Classical Education, Classical Learning, Classics, Humanities, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Classical Education as practiced in the United States over the past 30 years is the most up-to-date, cutting edge development in K-12 education. It is also the oldest, most tried-and-true alternative on today’s educational scene. America needs the Classical Tradition. In 1999 the A&E cable network broadcast a list of “The 100 Most Influential People [...]

What Is a Classical Education?

By |2023-07-24T13:44:06-05:00July 24th, 2023|Categories: Classical Education, Classics, Culture, Education, Great Books, Timeless Essays|

When most people imagine a classical school, they probably think of a K-12 institution with a compulsory Latin curriculum focusing on grammatical analysis and close translation, an integrated approach to humanities that takes inspiration from the Great Books programs developed over the last sixty years, and some compromise with the conventional STEM-orientation in science and [...]

What Is Jerusalem’s Claim on Us?

By |2024-02-11T16:30:31-06:00July 23rd, 2023|Categories: Christian Humanism, Great Books, Liberal Learning, Literature, Timeless Essays|

The Bible provides a different and seemingly antithetical model of poetry from that given in Greek literature. It demands one’s whole heart and one’s whole viscera. Nonetheless, without in the least giving up a faith in Scripture, Westerners still find within themselves qualities that only the classical vision can express. What has Athens to do [...]

Andrew Senior on John Senior, Proponent of Beauty & Tradition

By |2023-07-14T11:07:34-05:00July 13th, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Catholicism, Christianity, John Senior, Liberal Learning, Tradition|

My father was first and foremost a true philosopher, a lover of wisdom, a student, a seeker of truth, and in addition to this and as a necessary result, he became a great teacher, and more than that, a converter. Everyone who ever met him, even briefly, was affected by his intense love of truth, [...]

C.S. Lewis as Student, Apologist, & Story-Teller

By |2023-07-05T17:40:17-05:00July 5th, 2023|Categories: Bradley G. Green, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

C.S. Lewis has written that we are all—with each and every decision—becoming more heavenly or hellish creatures. There is no other option. Which of his decisions are worth emulating? “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.”[1] “We create men without chests and bid them breathe, we [...]

The Declaration of Independence: Translucent Poetry

By |2023-07-03T16:15:18-05:00July 3rd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, E.B., Essential, Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, James Madison, Samuel Adams, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I:  The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]

Image, Being, & Form in the Platonic Dialogues

By |2023-06-26T16:55:38-05:00June 26th, 2023|Categories: Books, E.B., Eva Brann, Featured, Jacob Klein, Plato, Senior Contributors, Socrates, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Modernity is best apprehended as being in a ruptured continuum with Greek antiquity—a continuum insofar as the terms persist, ruptured insofar as they take on new meanings and missions. That perspective makes those who hold it avid participants in the present. Jacob Klein was in the last year of his nine-year tenure as dean of [...]

Great Books and Horses

By |2023-06-23T19:34:35-05:00June 23rd, 2023|Categories: Featured, Glenn Arbery, Great Books, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

The greatest books of the Western world have relied upon the knowledge of horses whose natures have so influenced and symbolized our own. When my wife Virginia and I first came to Wyoming Catholic College in 2013, we had only notions about horses. Each of us had been astride some poor rope-led nag or other [...]

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