The Classics and Christianity
Why study old books? How do dusty old books written by dead men and women thousands of years ago grow my faith? Such can be common thoughts…
The Thomistic Roots of Vatican II Humanism
Apart from the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council is arguably one of the most consequential ecumenical councils in the history…
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Erotic Theology (Part VI)
In part five of this essay we looked closely at the forgotten early modern Platonic thinkers Giordano Bruno, Ralph Cudworth and Anne Conway and their theories of…
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Love and Violence (Part V)
In this fifth part of the essay I would like to consider what a Platonic speculative realism might tell us about Eros – desire in all its…
Process and the Derailing of Reality: The Strange Curse of the Ages of the World (Part IV)
In part one of this essay we looked closely at Voegelin’s debts to the process philosophers A. N. Whitehead, William James and Henri Bergson. Nonetheless, there is…
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Catherine Pickstock and the Return of Platonic Cosmology (Part III)
In part one of this essay we looked at Eric Voegelin’s debts to the process thinkers A.N. Whitehead, William James and Henri Bergson. In part 2 we…
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Haunted Ontologies and Different Modes of Existence (Part II)
As we saw at the end of part one of this essay Voegelin’s anti-foundationalism is obviously something of a fragile and quixotic venture. Steven McGuire is not…
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Voegelin, Process and the New Realism (Part I)
Recently I overheard a little aphorism. It went: the philosophy of the 20th century was largely epistemological and agnostic. The philosophy of the 21st century is shaping…
Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom
Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. Robert Louis Wilken. New Haven: Yale University Press 2019. Religious liberty, toleration, and the…
What Can the Puritans Teach Us About Philanthropy?
Here’s our most characteristically philanthropic antidote to the excesses of individualism in the American political tradition: the thought and deeds of our first founders—the Puritans. Philanthropy, of…
Tocqueville on Keeping Our Countercultural Churches
To begin with a simple point, one basic insight of Tocqueville is that things are always getting better and worse. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Tocqueville…
John Locke and the Dark Side of Toleration
It seems likely that most Americans would find John Locke’s definition of a church non-controversial, perhaps even obvious. This shows both how relevant the seventeenth century philosopher…
John Locke on “The Reasonableness of Christianity”
The question this essay posits might seem somewhat straightforward: What is meant by the term “reasonable” when Locke described Christianity by this term in his 1695 work,…
Statesmanship and the Dangers of Civil Religion
I recently attended a conference on statesmanship. Truth be told, there are reasons to be ambivalent about statesmanship. While public service is a great virtue, the statesman…
Can Subsidiarity Restore American Self-Government?
Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so…
