Rejoice. Smart people have helped us, there are very few new questions. Long ago very clever people asked the same questions that trouble us today. A civilization was roiled by war and a pandemic and thoughtful folk found a way forward. They created beauty, longed for the good, and wanted truth more than comfortable lies. This is very good news if you are a Christian. At the start of our language, at the beginning of our words, there were people... Read more
If a nation will not pay reparations, they might at least avoid committing the same crime again. For one thousand years, almost without interruption, a culture flourished, grew, sustained classical education, and then was brutally snuffed out by conquerers. The most holy places of this people group were appropriated by the winners and children were enslaved to serve the masters. For centuries the “losers” were kept as second-class subjects, or worse. They could act as servants when they were not... Read more
Moral men have a duty to help their neighbors, but nobody has an obligation to force other people to help. Jesus told a story of a Good Samaritan who crossed difficult social and cultural barriers to provide relief to an injured man. This is a good model for our own behavior. We should help the hurting neighbor even if he is a pariah in our community. The mortgage broker who has lost his job is also my neighbor and when... Read more
The nuns get to live and do charity as they believe right. They are not, perhaps, up to date, but their charitable work is not dated. Having lived through the unfortunate sartorial period known as the 1980’s, I can report that more stylish an outfit then, the more laughter it generates from my children now. Generally, the up to date is quickly dated. Dated clothing is merely embarrassing, but dated ethics can be harmful. No ethical position is less likely... Read more
I have met the Chosen People and some of them are Americans, but not all of them. To be Chosen is special, but a mixed blessing as the history of the Jewish people demonstrates. Just as the blessings of my neighbor do not make me poor, so the Chosen status of the Jews does not make me less. As an individual standing before God, I am equal to any man or woman, but that does not mean I share all... Read more
There is no taxation without discrimination. The power to govern is the power to discriminate between the just and the unjust, the good and the evil. Ideologues forget this since they confuse their beliefs with obvious truths. Every organization ever created discriminates when it decides on its mission and what it will not do. Not every one can join or not everyone is paid who joins. Some things are valuable and other things are vices in the organizational culture. We... Read more
“The story will save us. . .”so Plato ends Republic written when his society was dying. He was right, but Athens did not believe the story and so was not saved. That time would come later with Saint Paul. Out of the interaction of Platonic and Christian thought came a good bit of good philosophy, literature, and theology. When the proper distinctions between the two were lost, when Plato became “merely Christian” or Christianity became Platonism for simple people, then some... Read more
C.S. Lewis was certainly a Christian, but an uncertain Platonist. A comparison to his contemporary A.E. Taylor, author of a magisterial commentary on Timaeus, is helpful in showing the debt Lewis owed the Platonic dialogue. Taylor was a Christian, an apologist, and was (somewhat unreasonably) proud of his prosody. Lewis was the better writer, though no poet, the greater apologist (though Taylor’s Does God Exist? is underrated), but sometimes lacks Taylor’s rigor and consistency. C.S. Lewis baptized my imagination, Taylor my... Read more
Any story about Jesus takes place in two times: God’s time and human history. I am not saying this philosophical idea was fully worked out in the mind of Saint John, but is suggested to readers by the details of the Gospel and the teachings of the Old Testament. The events of the Incarnation are the intersection of time and eternity. The liturgical understanding of John 11 suggests the view of Divine timelessness like that found in Boethius’ Consolation of... Read more
When the God-man wept before the tomb of Lazarus, He gave us hope. The God-man does not just know our pain, but heals our pain. The raising of Lazarus is temporary, of course. Lazarus will die again, but it is a down payment (an image) of the resurrection that will never be reversed. The God-man waits and God gets glory, but healing also comes to many, including Martha and Mary. Martha is allowed to make a confession of Jesus’ divinity... Read more
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