At some point this past month, America crossed a Rubicon that dramatically threw our society into a disorder manifested by the denial of reality and truth. However, the unmasking of disorder in all its hideousness has produced more intense longings for a return of a moral order by those who grieve for the nation and [...]
The imagination is a gift from God, given in His own image, to conceive of a Glorious Reality that does exist, that we cannot yet fully see... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Aaron Ames, as he considers the Divine source of beauty and imagination.—W. Winston Elliott [...]
The abuse of opioids, like other addictions, stems from a profound spiritual problem deep inside the souls of countless Americans. But when people turn to the sublimity of heavenly things, they acquire the ability to overcome their frenetic appetites and look for spiritual solutions… An opioid crisis is devastating America. Every day, more than ninety [...]
Augustine recognized that the flaws of human nature precluded perfection on earth, and he concluded that government cannot save souls by coercing virtuous conduct… Since Augustine’s death in 430 A.D., the world has changed so much that this irreplaceable figure of Christianity would likely find difficult it to recognize. The advent of extraordinary technological advances [...]
It is hard, as a modern, to know the right questions to ask, to know when all questions fall silent in the presence of absolute Truth, of Revelation. In his final book, The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis writes about the Mediaeval world view: “All the apparent contradictions must be harmonised. A Model must be built which [...]
The imagination is a gift from God, given in His own image, to conceive of a Glorious Reality that does exist, that we cannot yet fully see. Why is a sentence from C.S. Lewis delightful while an equally true statement by another, ordinary writer, is not? “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun [...]
"If others play the fool, it is no reason why you should. The State will take care of itself. Mind your own business as you have heretofore done, and every thing will be better for yourself and for the State. There are men whose vocation it is, from taste, habit, and education, to be statesmen, [...]
Western conservatives should broaden their historical gaze, and look to Eastern as well as Western thinkers for direction and inspiration in our confusing world… Anyone who has ever been misled by a mistaken weather forecast knows that the world is full of chaos. Weather systems are influenced by the complex interactions of particles too numerous [...]
Everyone agrees that there is something different about today’s angry politics. The ordinary issues that have shaped the political debate for years have largely remained the same. The economy is still in bad shape, terrorism remains a top concern and the deficit is still growing as fast as ever. The mood of the nation, [...]
No creature in all of creation has it as difficult as do humans. Being flesh as well as spirit, humans share in the natures of both the animals and the angels. Unlike either, however, the human has true free will. We choose good and ill at every moment of our lives. Animals, merely creatures of [...]
This note is written in memory of David Lachterman, who was an alumnus—using the term in its fullest significance—of St. John's College, Class of 1965, when I was a young tutor. He was in my classes only in his junior year: in a preceptorial entitled "The Fragments of Parmenides and Heraclitus," and in the mathematics [...]
It is easy to be nice. But Tom Sawyer shows that it is demanding to be good—to speak the truth when it provokes enemies, to accept suffering for having integrity, and to risk danger to protect the innocent. As the saying goes, children can be “naughty or nice,” but naughty does not always mean bad [...]
What Matthew Arnold called “an epoch of concentration” seems to be impending over the English-speaking world. The revolutionary impulses and the social enthusiasms which have dominated this era since their great explosion in Russia are now confronted with a countervailing physical and intellectual force. Communism, Fascism, and their kindred expansive ideologies all in their fashion [...]
I am spending much of the summer teaching in Iceland. It is an interesting country for many reasons, not least the fact that it has the oldest still-active legislature in the world. A group of us took a tour that included a visit to the site of the original Althing and the probable site of [...]