Christians, Jews, and The Great Rift
I prefer to think of that world-historical-fault-line as a long, reparable misunderstanding. Whether or not that’s the right view, personally I want to patch it up. Yet…
Science and Religion Revisited: A Provocative Lesson for Today’s Christians
For decades, now, debates on “Science versus Religion” have remained by and large inconclusive.[1] Could this be due to the debates’ having been systematically framed conceptually by…
Christian Faith and Friendship in the Academy
I thank the organizers for inviting me to discuss our theme, how Christian faith can inform friendships in the academy. As I begin, I would invite all…
Raimon Panikkar’s Christophany: Living in the Pilgrimage of Incarnation
Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010) was a Catholic Priest with family roots in Spain and India. He was an accomplished scholar in a variety of fields who was comfortable…
Etienne Gilson’s The Metamorphoses of the City of God
The Metamorphoses of the City of God. Etienne Gilson, translated by James G. Colbert. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020. In Etienne Gilson’s The…
Christianity and Globalism
Human culture owes its existence to the shedding of innocent blood. However, Christianity reveals the scapegoat mechanism. The supporters of Jesus defied the majority and vocally protested…
Literature and the Apotheosis of the Soul
Books have been under assault for a long time. Mass media and television, as Ray Bradbury imagined with dystopian prophecy, was just getting the fire started. Then…
Resisting a Secularized American Founding
Did America Have a Christian Founding? Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth. Mark David Hall. Nashville: Nelson Books, 2019. The argument over what it means to…
Unfallen Joy and the Tragedy of Love: “Waterloo Bridge”
The 1940 MGM adaptation of Waterloo Bridge is one of my favorite films. It stars Vivien Leigh, in the wake of her Gone With the Wind fame,…
Turning From the Shadows: John Masefield’s Everlasting Mercy
The Everlasting Mercy. John Masnfield. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. While completing Master’s work in the mid 1990’s, I befriended an older Rastafarian from Jamaica. When…
Immanentizing Innocence: Identity Politics as Deformed Christianity
American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time. Joshua Mitchell. New York: Encounter Books, 2020. On first glance, it may appear that this book…
Saving Superman: A Daunting Lesson from Old Christianity
“The private life is dead”—thus spoke Strelnikov, Pasternak’s infamous prophet of a new “manhood,” in Doctor Zhivago. The private life is supposed to entail a selfishness to…
Monism vs the Trinity
There seems to be some universal tendency to want to find the single underlying thing or principle that unites and explains everything. The person regarded as the…
Revisiting Christopher Dawson on Culture
Remi Brague’s observation about the historical essence of Rome shows that “Romanity” is not an ideology. It is, rather, a powerful hypothesis, to be tested by the…
The Essence of Missionary Christianity
Christopher Dawson has identified Six Ages in the history of the Church. In Dawson’s First Age, we witness a unique encounter of the “Barbarian” East with the…