At Aeon magazine, Rebecca Giggs reflects on sakura, Japan’s cherry blossom season, and draws some conclusions about the lack of environmental imagination in environmental politics.“Gazing into the throats of flowers is surely one of the most trite, and universal, acts of . . . . Continue Reading »
John ascends through a door in heaven, powered by the Spirit and the trumpet-voice of Jesus (Revelation 4:1-2). A complicated scene greets him in the heavenly temple/throne room.There are several pieces to the tableau: a throne, a rainbow, 24 additional thrones, seven lamps, a sea like glass, and . . . . Continue Reading »
“For you first,” Peter tells the people at the portico of Solomon, “God raised His paida and sent Him to bless you by turning every one from your wicked ways” (Acts 3:26).This “raising up” (anistemi) might be a reference to the incarnation: the Father raised Jesus . . . . Continue Reading »
The songs of praise in the heavenly temple are tradically structured (Revelation 4). The first (Revelation 4:8) is the most obvious; it is a triad of traids. A triple sanctus, followed by a triple name of God (kurios, theos, pantokrator), followed by the name of God in three tenses (was, is, . . . . Continue Reading »
The living creatures in heaven give glory, honor and thanks to the Enthroned One (Revelation 4:9). But when the elders sing, they don’t offer “thanks,” but praise the worthiness of God to receive “glory, honor, and power” (4:11).This isn’t glory, honor, and power . . . . Continue Reading »
Click here for a lecture I gave on Dostoevsky a few weeks ago in Colorado Springs. The event was co-sponsored by the Anselm Society and the John Jay . . . . Continue Reading »
Conservatives often point to the 60s as the hinge point in the history of sexual morality. They mean the 1960s. As Faramerz Dabhoiwala shows in his Origins of Sex, the sexual revolution has much deeper roots, in the 1660s and 1760s as much as in the 1960s. Dabhoiwala places . . . . Continue Reading »
Christians and traditionalists often condemn homosexual activity as “unnatural” behavior. The apostle Paul uses precisely this term. What does it mean?If it is taken to mean that there is no homosexual behavior in the natural world, then the claim is manifestly untrue. As James Neill . . . . Continue Reading »
“Music,” writes Roger Scruton (Soul of the World, 175) “addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world” and thus “requires us to respond to a subjectivity that lies beyond the world of objects, in a space of its own.” It’s one of the intimations . . . . Continue Reading »
At the heart of Scruton’s Soul of the World is a plea for a “cognitive dualism” that he sets in opposition to all “nothing but” reductionisms - music is nothing but sounds, painting nothing but pigments on canvas, the world nothing but matter in motion, humans . . . . Continue Reading »
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