TS Eliot presciently warned in his “Idea of a Christian Society” (in Christianity and Culture) that liberalism has the capacity to turn into its opposite: “Liberalism still permeates ourminds and affects our attitude towards much of life. That Liberalism may be a tendency towards . . . . Continue Reading »
Chesterton (The Thing), pre-channeling Alasdair MacIntyre: “the modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital. It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom; including, of course, many truths known to pagan antiquity . . . . Continue Reading »
Timothy Snyder reports on depressing developments in Ukraine: “President Viktor Yanukovych, in having the deputies of his Party of Regions endorse an extraordinary packet of legislation, has arrogated decisive political power to himself. After hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians spent weeks in . . . . Continue Reading »
A debate on natural law is brewing in my little world, and here’s a little contribution.Natural law advocates insist that there are things that We Can’t Not Know, as J.Budziszewski puts it. Paul agrees: “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes, His eternal . . . . Continue Reading »
Gary Greenberg raises doubts about “brain death” as a definition of death. The standard was introduced largely to facilitate organ donation and transplant, and it has become a fixture of bioethics. Greenberg points out that “brain death is not quite as certain as these bioethicists . . . . Continue Reading »
What does God commit Himself to when He makes a covenant with Abraham? Genesis 17 gives a number of specifics: Abraham will be a multitude of nations, his name will become Abraham, Yahweh will be God to Abraham and to his seed and will give them the land. Twice in Genesis 17, the covenant includes . . . . Continue Reading »
Everyone is talking about “apocalyptic” today. I join the chorus and reflect on CS Lewis’s The Great Divorceas an exercise in apocalyptic . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy points out in one of the letters collected in Judaism Despite Christianitythat Kant worked out his entire philosophy in conscious dialogue with Rousseau: “While he himself wants to stand metaphysics on its head, just as Kepler and Newton stood physics, yet he compares for his . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock (Judaism Despite Christianity: The 1916 Wartime Correspondence Between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, 127-8) objects to Rosenzweig’s characterization of church history as a move from the church of the spirit to the church of dogma and tradition. Rosenstock thinks the . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenzweig locates a fundamental similarity between Judaism and Christianity in their mutual affirmation of protology and eschatology, which give form and meaning to the “middle things” that occur between A and B - that is, the middle things of world history. Rosenstock objects that the . . . . Continue Reading »
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