We all know that it is not fitting for any length of time to go by in these parts without somebody bringing out old charges against me. Try to think of these charges as an order of refried beans in a cheap dive of a Mexican restaurant, meaning that the refrying actually took place about …
Uptight Grammarians, Out With Whom We Do Not Wish to Hang
“I am thinking of what I call Style-mongers. On taking up a book, these people concentrate on what they call its ‘style’ or its ‘English’. They judge this neither by its sound nor by its power to communicate but by its conformity to certain arbitrary rules. Their reading is a perpetual witch hunt for Americanisms, …
Scandalizing Philosophy
“On the rare occasions when the New Testament deigns even to mention philosophy, it treats it as a garrulous Greek exercise that must not be allowed to distract the serious-minded from discovering the truth-telling power of the gospel . . . And now that ‘writing off’ philosophy has become philosophy’s most intellectually stimulating undertaking, perhaps …
Love of Story
Of course, the Narnia stories are themselves stories, and we should be enjoying them on that level. As we have been talking about various “lessons” that we can take away from them, I have wanted to be careful that I didn’t wreck the stories by making sure that everybody gets Edified. But at the same …
It All Comes Down to the Point
“Every art is itself and not some other art. Every general principle we reach must, therefore, have a peculiar mode of application to each of the arts” (C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, p. 28).
Mythos or Logos
“As I have said, the author of the Fourth gospel speaks of the source of human evil and delusion as the ‘father of lies’ and the ‘murderer from the beginning.’ If this ‘father’ is a father from the beginning, and if what he fathers is lies, then the first lie must also have taken place …
Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around
Those who know me know that I do enjoy following politics, speaking and writing on the virtues that made America great. Between 2 am and 5 am, it appears that I am the Chairman of Townhall.com. And of course, there is the warm, approachable designer side of things as well. When it comes to interiors, …
Apply What They Are Saying to What They Are Saying
After a hiatus of sorts, I picked up Merold Wesphal’s Overcoming Onto-theology again. I had been halfway through his essay on capitulating to the “Copernican Revolution, although he didn’t call it that. Upon finishing the essay, the thing that I find most striking about pomos and pomo-friendlies is a pervasive faux-intello-humility coupled with sheer inability …
A Prayer of Imprecation
One of the easiest things in the world to misunderstand (and therefore to misrepresent) is the biblical pattern of imprecatory prayer. It is very easy to interpret the practice as some kind of primitive voodoo doll custom, practiced only by the petty and vindictive. But for those who are open to a very fine treatment …
The Casual Imperative
“Casualness is proper at times, but the trouble is we have made it a fetish. Whether shopping or going to school or even to church, we take too literally the invitation of the second-class hotel, ‘Come as you are.’ And the sloppier we come, the sloppier we tend to act. A slouch in the body …