Archive
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Articles
Friendship in Truth
I have had many friends in the course of my life, but only since growing older have I given much thought to the nature of friendship. I have amassed a...
Origen’s Ladder
Homilies on the Psalms:Codex Monacensis Graecus 314by origentranslated by joseph w. trigg catholic university of america, 480 pages, $45 No Christian writer of the early centuries elicited greater hostility...
Praying the Psalms
Athanasius, the heroic bishop of Alexandria in the mid-fourth century—who was sent into exile five times—is best known for his defense of the creed of the Council of Nicaea...
An Affair of Things
Philip Larkin’s poem “Church Going” depicts his experience when, out for a ride on his bicycle, he comes upon a country church. Once I am sure there’s nothing going...
Rethinking the History of Religious Freedom
In the Supreme Court case Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 1940, which upheld compulsory pledging of allegiance to the U.S. flag in schools, Justice Felix Frankfurter, writing for the...
Hand on What You Have Received
The following was given as a commencement address at the Dominican House of Studies, May 16, 2014. I taught at the University of Virginia for twenty-five years. Thomas Jefferson,...
Saracens and Dominicans
A Christian Pilgrim in Medieval Iraq: Riccoldo da Montecroce’s Encounter with Islamby rita george-tvrtkovicbrepols, 248 pages, $116 Toward the end of the thirteenth century, a friar named Riccoldo da...
Giving Caesar His Due
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom by peter leithart ivp academic, 373 pages, $27 Anti-Constantinianism is a form of ecclesial primitivism. Like other...
Culture and the Light of Faith
Since the Enlightenment it has been fashionable to denounce Christians for prostituting the legacy of classical culture. Edward Gibbon wrote that Christians had “debased and vitiated the faculties of...
A New Song
The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years by christopher page yale, 692 pages, $45 The pipe organ receives the highest praise in John Dryden’s poem “A...
Review of Hugh of St. Victor
Hugh of St. Victorby paul roremoxford, 256 pages,$27.95 In the Paradiso Dante locates Hugh of St. Victor (d.1142) in the second circle of Christian teachers circling the sun, among...
The Christian Difference
Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity By Luke Timothy Johnson Yale, 461 pages, $32.50 n It is generally recognized that early Christian thinkers drew on the philosophical traditions...
Review of A New History of Early Christianity
Within a few paragraphs the perspicacious reader of this “new” history of early Christianity will sense that here is another recycling of old and tired clichés that are predictable...
The Gift of the West
The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the Westby Tom HollandDoubleday, 476 pages, $30 In 1872, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck stood before the German...
An Anniversary
The following is a sermon delivered in 1971, at the tenth anniversary of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’ installation as pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Brooklyn, New...
