“Just so. Mr. Forster was not a Philistine, but he was a stunted man, spiritually, emotionally, and professionally. He was one of those said creatures of the twentieth century who define themselves in terms of their own insufficiencies, and it was his tragedy-and ours, some may think-that he let his unhappiness and his self-reproach lead …
Performative Contradictions
In the whole kerfluffle between modernism and postmodernism, we should take our lead from Paul at Athens. He did not go there in order to determine whether he was closer to the Epicureans or to the Stoics. They had many differences, but at bottom they were both pagan systems of thought with a deep foundational …
You Can Climb Out of a Hole, But You Can’t Dig Out
We live in a day when few people, including many Christians, understand what justice really is. In this series, we are not talking about a conversation between friends, or between a husband and wife. If a wife were to ask her husband if he would mind not interrupting when their youngest daughter is trying to …
Aesthetic Berserkers
[A certain literary critic] “was charging through the corridors of beauty with a literary sledgehammer, taking wild swings at anything that smacked of nobility or purpose” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 119.]
Preserving the Memory of Art
“Accordingly, while it is not expected of every age that it be capable of producing good art, it is demanded of the literary establishment of every age that it at least keep the memory and the standards of good art always before itself, well polished and clearly labeled. A literary establishment that cannot do this …
Isn’t the Prefix “Post” Modern?
There are problems, but reading Stanley Grenz is not at all like reading Brian McLaren. In his book A Primer on Postmodernism, Grenz begins by giving us a general survey of the intellectual landscape, which he does competently. It is when we get to the “and therefore we shoulds” that I start to object. Even …
And to Children
Photography by Mark LaMoreaux
Humor Is Resistance
Malcolm Muggeridge, who knew his totalitarians (and the liberals who loved them) once said, “To laugh is to criticize . . . Humour, that is to say, is a kind of resistance movement, which is sometimes indulgently tolerated, sometimes barely tolerated, and sometimes not tolerated at all.” George Orwell, who also knew something about the …
Willful Mediocrity
“The dishonor was not the in the confusion, but in the ritualistic character of that confusion; not in the appalling cultural, scientific, and historical ignorance, but in the refusal to mend that ignorance; not in the incompetence, but in the exaltation of that incompetence; not in the mediocrity of execution, but in the meanness of …
The Chattering Classes
[Speaking of Carlyle] “The danger, as he saw it, was in the distraction: ordinary men and women turned to ‘art,’ and the worship of art, only when they had nothing more important to do or to think about. And idle humans – bored humans – were not whole humans. They were shells, chattering away to …