After reading Douglas Farrow’s “The Secret of the Saeculum” (May), I found myself unsure of how to understand it. Take, for instance, the following striking passage: Our age is a very definite age, a very well-defined age, precisely because it is bracketed by the first and second comings of . . . . Continue Reading »
In the tenth book of The City of God, Augustine reminds his readers that he is not arguing either with those who imagine there is no God or with those who suppose that whatever God there may be is improvident and does not care about this world or the people in it. It is the nature of . . . . Continue Reading »
Recently, I met a Wall Street trader. He was in his late thirties, perhaps his early forties. I was impressed by his active intelligence. We spoke of the current political situation and its odd combination of hysteria and complacency. Everybody seems to feel oppressed in some way. Many worry that . . . . Continue Reading »
Pondering the endless glut of books on the virtues of nationalism and the failures of political liberalism, I sat up late the other night, reading around (yet again) in Augustine’s City of God before dozing off in my chair. Waking suddenly—or, at least, half-awake—my mind was . . . . Continue Reading »
Sohrab Ahmari correctly identifies many of the pathologies haunting liberal order in the West (“The New American Right,” October), which some on the right have been reluctant to acknowledge. Indeed, more conservatives should be challenging the fragile premises of the . . . . Continue Reading »
I chose a bench where I could read AugustineAs one may do beside construction sites.Late February, sunny, bitter, windy.I settled down to read,and sometimes I would look acrossto watch the crew at work—the heavy blockshoisted into their places by the cranes,while men took care to guide each to . . . . Continue Reading »
The title of R. R. Reno’s Return of the Strong Gods requires qualification. To begin with, most of what Reno tells us concerns not the gods’ return, but their expulsion. As for the gods themselves, they “are not golden idols or characters in ancient mythologies,” Reno writes. . . . . Continue Reading »
Human beings are by nature social animals. But the particularity of the “we” is always a gift. Continue Reading »
Jesus promises his followers that they will be hated in this world. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates . . . . Continue Reading »
For Augustine, love is the most basic appetite of the soul. Continue Reading »
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