“Women are beautiful, and men are necessary. It has been the great victory of the feminist movement to make women unlovely by persuading them that men are not needed” (Anthony Esolen, in Touchstone, December 2006, p. 5).
Postmodernism Much Larger Than Its Theorists
“Modernism, however, is being replaced by the new secular ideology of postmodernism. This new set of assumptions about reality—which goes far beyond mere relativism—is gaining dominance throughout the culture. The average person who believes that there are no absolutes may never have heard of the academic exercise of ‘deconstruction.’ The intellectual establishment may disdain the …
Ecclesiastical Wanna-Bees
“Every age has had its eager-to-please liberal theologians who have tried to reinterpret Christianity according to the latest intellectual and cultural fashion” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. xii).
He Who Loses His Life Will Save It
“But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself …
Too Many Kinds of Pleasure
“The real objection to a merely hedonistic theory of literature, or of the arts in general, is that ‘pleasure’ is a very high, and therefore very empty, abstraction. It denotes too many things and connotes too little. If you tell me that something is a pleasure, I do not know whether it is more like …
Good Will on the First Page
“There is no work in which holes can’t be picked; no work that can succeed without a preliminary act of good will on the part of the reader” (C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, p. 116).
Love for Aslan
One of the great things about the Narnia stories is their very personal nature. That is, all through the books, the person of Aslan ties everything together. Not only is he the object of the loyalty and love of all true Narnians, it is a personal dislike of him that characterizes those who are bad. …
Aesthetic Vulnerability
“We must risk being taken in, if we are to get anything. The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good; just as a real and affectionate acquaintance with honest people gives a better protection against rogues than a habitual distrust of everyone” (C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, p. 94).
Art Is Not A Tupperware Container for Truth
“It is this omnipresent flavour of feel that makes bad inventions so mawkish and suffocating, and good ones so tonic. The good ones allow us temporarily to share a sort of passionate sanity. And we may also—which is less important—expect to find in them many psychological truths and profound, at least profoundly felt, reflections. But …
Not the Best Idea, Really
“Modern evangelicals in our culture have gotten money, power, and influence, and it has been like giving whiskey to a two-year-old” (Mother Kirk, p. 21).