Everyone who knows Lord Acton knows his most famous claim, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The context is less well-known. That sentence appears in a letter, written on April 5, 1887, to Mandell Creighton. Acton had written a critical . . . . Continue Reading »
The beginning of Lewis’ Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold includes this scenario about the absolute authority that a man might have over life and death.At that moment the door was flung open and out came my father. His face shocked me full awake, for he was in his pale rage. I knew that in his . . . . Continue Reading »
Ralph presents his case against Rawls below. Although I agree with much of it, I think he goes too far. Here are a few rather disordered suggestions intended less to vindicate Rawls than to complicate the picture: 1. We need to distinguish between Rawls an sich (as it were) and what Ralph describes . . . . Continue Reading »
During the 1840s, Russian literary culture was overtaken by enthusiasm for French Romantic Socialism, mediated through novelists like George Sand. The extent to which this liberal socialism was a humanistic reduction of Christianity is evident from the creed of V. Belinsky, the arbiter of . . . . Continue Reading »
Since a new survey of political theorists has confirmed the towering, unrivaled reputation of John Rawls, allow me to state briefly why this thralldom is a disaster for political philosophy. Prof. Lawler is of course right that Rawls is boring, but he’s getting bigger rather than going . . . . Continue Reading »
Jonathan Rowe has provided a couple of interesting discussions (one, two) regarding the founding of the United States and the problem of slavery. Even so, a couple statements seem problematic and pursuing them might be valuable as a defense:And Christianity, properly understood, is entirely . . . . Continue Reading »
These principles are some of my personal first principles for what a church is and how a church ought behave. These come out of my mixed theological background – some Mennonite, Conservative Baptist, and E Free, and uncompromisingly an historic dispensationalist. I welcome your feedback.You . . . . Continue Reading »
I didn’t find Eric Nelson’s The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought as revolutionary as some of the blurbs indicate, but it is a very intriguing study. Contrary to the standard story of early modern political thought, Nelson argues . . . . Continue Reading »
Today marks the fifteen year anniversary of the Murrah Federal Building bombing and I emailed an old friend, Jayna Davis, whose book, The Third Terrorist is by far the most accurate record of that horrific event. I reviewed her book for an old website some years ago . The review is here . . . . . Continue Reading »
The recent and dramatic rise of modern Gnosticism, implemented in part, by the capture of the vocabulary of reality, is merely the continuation of the effort, identified by Eric Voegelin, to form a Western civil theology by immanentizing the Christian eschaton. The totalitarians of the previous . . . . Continue Reading »
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