The 500th anniversary of the Reformation sent me back to Luther and his debate with Erasmus. The two were among the most widely read authors in sixteenth-century Europe. In the early 1520s, they exchanged dueling treatises on free will. They raised recondite theological questions of biblical . . . . Continue Reading »
Dispatches from the debate: Any left that is unable to see the way we are enslaved by lust will end up the unwitting handmaiden of those who exploit. Continue Reading »
On the outskirts of Moscow, there is an Orthodox Christian memorial. The site, known as Butovo, once belonged to a private estate. The Soviets expropriated the land after the revolution and turned it into a firing range. It was there during Stalin’s purges that more than 20,000 “enemies of the . . . . Continue Reading »
It is part of the absurdity of American life that we decide questions of truth under the guise of settling contests of rights. Which means that we decide questions of truth without thinking deeply or even very honestly about them. Thus, while it is obvious to many that we are living through a . . . . Continue Reading »
Ted Cruz failed to endorse Donald Trump for president. Snore. It’s a sign of how out-of-touch our political class has become that they speak of Cruz as a possible presidential candidate. In him, see the rotting flesh of Reaganism, a noble political project that no longer speaks to our time. Continue Reading »
Next autumn will mark forty years since I arrived on a college campus as a freshman. I’ve never left the academy since then. I have been student or teacher at many types of institutions: the small liberal-arts college, the “Research I” state university that completely dominates a small town, . . . . Continue Reading »