Book Cover (downloaded from Amazon.com) My friend Ambrose Andreano has published a difficult book called Angels, Archons, & Aliens: An Assessment of the Theological Implications and Psychological Impact of the Close Encounters Phenomenon that is now available as both a paperback and a Kindle ebook. I’ve enjoyed and appreciated Andreano’s thoughts on a wide variety … Continue reading Skimming Through a Difficult Book: Angels, Archons, & Aliens by Ambrose Andreano
What’s the Point of Being Christian?
My online friend, Maurice Mo Hagar II, recently passed a question along to me and several others. He first pointed to this example: If universal salvation is true, what’s the point of being Christian, of believing in Christ, getting baptized, belonging to the church… preaching the gospel, teaching the Bible, sending missionaries, and planting the … Continue reading What’s the Point of Being Christian?
A Wise Care of Piety
We're oddly ambivalent now about not whether a man is permitted to kill himself but the manner and place of it. Tobacco, no; euthanasia, yes. He must do it through rationalized institutions at the hands of an expert and not his own passions; out of sight unless he be a wild man we can use … Continue reading A Wise Care of Piety
Joy and Transfiguring Sorrow on this Feast of the Holy Innocents
The poet Christian Wiman notes, in Joy: 100 Poems, that “literature distinguishing between [happiness and joy] is extensive” and that “writers from Aristotle to C. S. Lewis have tended to draw a stark line.” With joy, Wiman says, “there is always an element of having been seized” by an outside force. Putting it into slightly … Continue reading Joy and Transfiguring Sorrow on this Feast of the Holy Innocents
Christmas as Homecoming: Recommending Seasonal Readings of The Wind in the Willows
Those of us in the contemporary world have very few things left for which we spend several days in celebrations. In all pre-modern cultures, many high feast days and other events such as weddings required days of preparation and then almost as many days of festivity and feasting. I can’t think of anything in the … Continue reading Christmas as Homecoming: Recommending Seasonal Readings of The Wind in the Willows
On Monism and Becoming Uncreated in Hart’s You Are Gods
On December 14, 2022 the Notre Dame Department of Theology co-hosted a conversation between Catholic theology professor Jennifer Newsome Martin and David Bentley Hart focused on Hart's book You Are Gods. It contained some helpful material for better understanding this book which Hart claims is a fairly simple and even obvious articulation of Eastern patristic … Continue reading On Monism and Becoming Uncreated in Hart’s You Are Gods
David Bentley Hart on Hell, American Orthodoxy, and Going Out of His Way to Provoke
On November 3, 2022, I had an opportunity to interview David Bentley Hart in person for content that I have largely shared as a mini-course (about 1.5 hours altogether) called "David Bentley Hart: Commentary on the Liberal Arts, Civilization, and the Future of Christianity" in connection to my work as the director of ClassicalU.com. There … Continue reading David Bentley Hart on Hell, American Orthodoxy, and Going Out of His Way to Provoke
Mary Offers to Us Our Humanity: a Cosmos Renewed in This Mother and Her Son
Matthew’s genealogy highlights the fact that the humanity of Jesus comes entirely from his mother. Depending on your translation, we have the words “begot” or “was the father of” repeated thirty-nine times before we come to a striking break in the chain when, instead of “Joseph the father of” as we would expect, we get: … Continue reading Mary Offers to Us Our Humanity: a Cosmos Renewed in This Mother and Her Son
Time, the Christ Child, and a Good Chat with Nate Hile at Grail Country
This post is really just a place to store away a few things for myself quickly that came to mind after a delightful conversation yesterday morning with Nate Hile at Grail Country. I don’t have time to develop these thoughts, but I want to drop them in one place where I can find them again … Continue reading Time, the Christ Child, and a Good Chat with Nate Hile at Grail Country
Alasdair MacIntyre and Open Theism: the Lament of a Christian Platonist
While it would be the height of hubris to suggest that I am capable of following the many profound contributions of Alasdair MacIntyre to the world of Christian thought, I can claim him as a long-standing hero of mine. It also seems clear enough in a lecture delivered on November 11, 2022 that MacIntyre has … Continue reading Alasdair MacIntyre and Open Theism: the Lament of a Christian Platonist
Jesus and the Ancient Paths 