Os Guinness: The Christian Public Intellectual After Jacques Maritain
“Nothing is possible without men, But nothing lasts without institutions.” — Jean Monnet[1] Christians interested in public intellectual engagement often ask: “who is the next C.S. Lewis? Who is the next Reinhold Niebuhr?” While the words and ideas of both...
Modern, Yet Faithful: Lessons from Herman Bavinck
Herman Bavinck was the son of a conservative Reformed preacher, born in 1854 in a relatively small town (Hoogeveen) in a small, low-lands country (the Netherlands).
The Ministry of Salt
There Israel encamped before the mountain, 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to...
The Joys of Agonistic Life
I was pleasantly surprised when he came up the stairs with a number of Calvin and Hobbes collections. The used bookstore owner had forgotten to price them; so, to make things easy he said they would be $10 each. The...
Reverence
Though lesser known than some of the luminaries of 20th century Catholic thought, like Balthasar, de Lubac, and Ratzinger, Dietrich von Hildebrand’s life and work are no less worthy of our attention. He was not only a remarkable thinker, but...
The World that Money Makes Go Round
“Stick man lives in the family tree With his Stick Lady Love and their stick children three.” So begins Stick Man—my son’s favourite bedtime story. Parents of a certain age will know it well. Julia Donaldson (of The Gruffalo fame) spins a lovely...
Mandalorian Dogma
Zealots do not ordinarily fare well in popular American entertainment. The High Sparrow of Game of Thrones was routinely shown to be cruel, power hungry, and devious. His true believer identity turned out merely to be a front, the pathway...
All Alone, After God
Lament is difficult to do corporately. The publicity of it tends to belie sincerity, or at least, to undercut it. If not precipitated organically from some horrible regional or global event, lament usually feels most true when expressed by one...
The Death and Immortality of Mortal Men in “The Lord of the Rings”
In a letter addressed to Dr. Rhona Beare, on October 14th, 1958, J.R.R. Tolkien states that The Lord of the Rings, “is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality.”[1] He also notes in a letter to Robert Burchfield on December 2nd,...
Deconstructing with Silas Marner
In the early pages of Silas Marner, a devout young weaver falls asleep at a sick man’s bedside and is accused of having robbed the dying man. His religious community resolved on praying and drawing lots… Silas knelt with his...