I like J. Louis Martyn. His commentary on Galatians is a masterpiece, and the other essays I’ve read are all very stimulating. I begin with a disclaimer because what has been called Martyn’s “seminal proposal” concerning the gospel of John is remarkable mainly for the . . . . Continue Reading »
In the introduction to his Elements of Semiology (1964), Roland Barthes argues that for all the icons and images that surround us, we remain a civilization of the word: “Semiology has so far concerned itself with codes of no more than slight interest, such as the Highway Code; the moment we . . . . Continue Reading »
A pure heart is one that is not contaminated by base motives. It is a undivided heart. 50,000 of the sons of Zebulun were in David’s army, and they “could draw up in battle formation with all kinds of weapons of war and helped David with an undivided heart” (1 Chronicles 12:22). . . . . Continue Reading »
Samuel Johnson says that “all appropriated terms of art should be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak a general language.” Barfield disagrees: “Johnson was hopelessly wrong.” What poets do above all is express things in terms that are not general: . . . . Continue Reading »
Barfield thinks it’s disastrous to oppose poetry and science “as two fundamentally opposite modes of experiencing Life.” Among other things, it spoils art: “For it leads straight to that Crocean conception of art as meaningless emotion - as personal emotion symbolized - . . . . Continue Reading »
Barfield responds to critics who charge that his attention to individual words “is a precious and dilettante kind of criticism.” He says “the reverse is the truth” and further argues that “Words whose meanings are relatively fixed and established, words which can be . . . . Continue Reading »
Guy de Maupassant says, “Les mots ont une ame . . . . Il faut trouver cette ame qui apparait au contact d’autres mots” (Words have a soul . . . . It is necessary to find this soul which appears at contact with other words). Owen Barfield, who quotes this passage, comments: . . . . Continue Reading »
Hamann opposed the abstractionism of the Enlightenment partly by emphasizing the centrality of sexuality in language, experience, and thought. He called himself a “spermatologist” in the sense that he was sowing seeds and in the sense that the thought of the relation of revelation and . . . . Continue Reading »
Feuerbach wrote that the Trinity “is the secret of the necessity of the ‘thou’ for an ‘I’; it is the truth that no being - be it man, God, mind or ego - is for itself alone a true, perfect, and absolute being, that truth and perfection are only the connection and unity . . . . Continue Reading »
Nicholas Carr asks in the July/August issue of the Atlantic whether Google is making us stupid. He points out that the web tends to scatter attention and diffuse concentration by bringing information from various sources at us all at once. As the web comes to dominate our access to news and . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
