To say that a book is a great Christian novel obviously and necessarily implies two things: first, that it is great and, second, that it is Christian. Many of the books here are widely considered to be great, but there seems to be little consciousness that they are also explicitly Christian. Although Dostoevsky’s The Brothers […]
When do you really know what something is?” When your philosophy teacher asks this, your gut reaction is to roll your eyes and say, “Here we go again.” Or you get up and walk out. Or—and this is the best option—you say, “Hmm. I’ve never thought about that.” Thinking deeply about thinking is what philosophers […]
Some critics have said that the value of Roman literature is that it has been the vehicle which conveyed Greek ideas to the world. The Romans took their art and, as far as their civilization rests on these, their civilization from Greece. Why, then, do we study Latin? Some of the reasons are given by […]
There is an early Protestant whose vigorous embrace of both Christianity and humanism afforded him an intellectual and aesthetic grasp of the unity of Truth that rivals, and complements, that of the Catholic Dante. I speak of John Milton (1608-1674). Like Origen, Aquinas, and Erasmus before him, and Newman after him, Milton understood that all […]
I was attending an education conference a while back and decided that I wanted a sandwich for lunch, so I walked into a nearby mall and found a popular sandwich chain store. I ordered a Chipotle Steak and Cheese with Avocado. “What kind of meat would you like?” she asked. “Uh, well, I think this […]