Authentic human creativity offers an image of divine creativity. Its purpose-to bring about a civilization of love to give glory to God-can only be achieved when freedom is properly understood as the received gift by the Son from the Father. For David Schindler this trinitarian economy offers the only model by which any human economy, [...]
Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks [...]
The conservative believes that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are interrelated, and that all things are measured against these three transcendentals. Conservatism seeks the Truth that has emerged over time, drawing from the deep wellsprings of human experience, and builds anew on foundations that have withstood the tests of time. It fosters order [...]
The Mother of my Lord has never appeared to me and offered me a helmet of faith or a sword of unity, or divine or mundane origins. But, I have seen Mary many times, and, most likely, you have as well. Faith has always been a struggle for me. Indeed, throughout my forty-six years of [...]
To the philosopher, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. — Emerson What is wisdom? I feel like a droplet of spray which proudly poised for a moment on the crest of a wave, undertakes to analyze the sea. Ideally, wisdom is total [...]
The beauty of fairy tales is their ability to attractively depict character and virtue. Goodness glimmers while wickedness and deception are unmasked. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Vigen Guroian as he explores the benefits fairy tales afford children. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher The notion that fairy tales [...]
Forgetting that there exists such a state as salutary dread, modern man has become spiritually foolhardy. The God-fearing man is rare. A Michigan farmer, some years ago, climbed to the roof of his silo, and there he painted, in great red letters that the Deity could see, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning [...]
We may find in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s writings essential guides for the seas we have to navigate in the “post-modern” era. Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Malcolm Guite (Hodder & Stoughton, 2017) The following passage is a brief extract from my book Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This book was written [...]
Through your creation, O Lord, goes a voice that reminds us of something that is above everything created. The things and their ordering, earth, sun and stones, seem to be pure reality, but our heart knows that they proceed from your holy freedom, and are gifts that should always be accepted afresh. And so they [...]
The ordinary daily life of men in Christian culture, who work not only in the sweat of their brows, but for the love of their families, there is also love of work. When men cut wood or go to war or make love to their wives, and when women spin or wash and reciprocate that [...]
There I, a convinced atheist, stood alone in a sandy and windy world, devoid of water, trees, or anything that seemed to be alive. And I couldn’t help but wonder what madness had overcome me. The most fateful university holiday I ever experienced was way back in February 1988. Yes, during that magical and mystical [...]
The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I: The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]
Intellectual life provides an escape in that it is beyond “straitened circumstances,” but the escape is again a flight into realities beyond oneself: animal behavior, astronomy, and the mechanics of the inner life. The intellect has no limit to its subject matter: It reaches greedily for the whole of everything. In 2001 I was a [...]
Order is the first need of all. One finds happiness in restoring and improving the order of the soul and the order of the republic—not in acts of devastation that make a desert of spirit and of society. Imagine a man travelling through the night, without a guide, thinking continually of the direction he wishes [...]