We welcome letters to the editor. Letters appear two issues after the article to which they are responding. Letters under three hundred words are preferred, and they may be edited for length and clarity.
Letters responding to articles published in this issue should be received by June 4 for publication in the August/September issue. Please send them to ft@firstthings.com.
Terrible “Perhaps”
Two delightful essays in the March issue, by Nikolas Prassas (“Large Language Poetry,” March 2025) and Gary Saul Morson (“Dostoevsky’s Credo,” March 2025), rhyme in a surprising way. The counter-predictive poetics that Prassas sketches could, without much translation, describe Dostoevskian psychology as Morson presents it.
I write simply to cast another figure onto the scene, a man with the insight of a Father Zossima: Rabbi Levi Yitschak, from a story told by Martin Buber that Pope Benedict XVI reproduces in his Introduction to Christianity, paraphrased below:
An adherent of the Enlightenment visited the Rabbi, who at first paid no attention to him. Suddenly the Rabbi stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, “But perhaps it is true after all.” The scholar tried in vain to collect himself. . . . He opposed the Rabbi with all his strength, but this terrible “perhaps” echoed back at him.
Timothy M. Terhaar
long island city, new york
Heat of the Moment
Thank you to Gary Saul Morson for his essay, “Dostoevsky’s Credo.” The title got my attention immediately. I have read The Brothers Karamazov and struggled with the complexity of the story and Dostoevsky’s point of view.
He offers the example from “The Writer’s Diary” in which Kairova is charged with attempted murder. Did she intend to murder her rival? Morson’s analysis hits home. A lesser comparison in my own life (at least one that is very clear to me now) is the occasion when my oldest daughter was about seven years old. She had been playing in a neighbor’s backyard. When I got home from work, my wife met me at the door and was distraught. The neighbor’s son had pulled down my daughter’s pants and underwear. After a second, I bolted out of the house and marched to the neighbor’s house. What did I intend to do? Throttle a ten-year-old boy? Throttle his father? Vent my anger? I truthfully did not know. I got to the house, rang the bell and banged repeatedly on the door. A teenager answered the door and told me to go away. What did I intend then? It changed every second. The boy closed the door in my face. I banged so hard the doorframe shook, and then I started yelling.
His mother came to the door. She looked astonished. I explained why I was there. She thought for a minute and let me in. Immediately I was struck by the strong smell of gin at five in the afternoon. The dad was sitting in a recliner and asked me if I wanted a drink. What did I intend to do? I sized up what I was dealing with. Mom and Dad were drunk enough not to comprehend the importance of the issue to me. I dropped my (intended?) violence. I spoke directly to the boy and tried to correct his behavior. I got him to say he would never do it again. If his father had attempted to brush me off with words or a shove, what would I have done? My intent changed throughout the twenty-minute experience.
Morson clearly highlights the unexpected nature of our experiences, in which our actions could be dismissed by “the heat of the moment.” This one in particular stays with me. The essay brought it back to mind and helped explain it.
Frank Miller
bloomfield, new jersey
P.S. for Bishops
I wish to thank Scott Hahn for his thoughtful epistle, “Letter to a Young Bishop” (March 2025), and to add the following coda.
The prophet Joseph Smith taught:
No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by longsuffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned, by kindness and pure knowledge. . . . Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost, and then showing afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy, that he many know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.
You will be tempted to use your calling to force your way on others; all leaders experience this. Resist it! You will have the most success influencing your flock, your brethren in the ministry, and people outside the faith when you seek to understand, serve, and work together. Daniel, Nehemiah, Mordecai, and Paul all ministered in environments hostile to Israel or the Church. Yet they found ways to serve and befriend kings and rulers of other faiths while remaining true to God and his commandments, and their friends learned to respect and defend their faith in turn.
Secondly, remember your family. God has given you a support network to strengthen you in this responsibility; it includes your friends and family. Talk to them regularly; it will keep you humble. If you are estranged from your family, pray for them. God will help you. All this will bring you closer to Jesus Christ, and he will make you a better bishop.
Arthur Blanchard
riverton, utah
The Complete Eliade
I commend Matthew Rose for his exposition and critique of the thought and social influence of Mircea Eliade (“Killing Time,” March 2025). Before attending graduate school in 1984, my five years of Christian campus ministry were filled with the study of religions, myths, and spiritual practices outside of Christianity (for apologetics purposes, mostly). I read heavily in Eliade, as well as in Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, R. C. Zaehner, and others. My last interaction with Eliade concerned some remarks he made about original monotheism. Rose’s erudite and discerning account gave me a sense of completeness regarding Eliade’s work, its influence, and its failings.
Douglas Groothuis
cornerstone university
grand rapids, michigan
Religious Genius
I read Kit Wilson’s review (“Mind the Gap,” March 2025) just a few days after preaching on the Apostle Paul’s speech before the Areopagus. This caused me to reflect upon the way Ross Douthat’s approach compares with Paul’s attitude toward generic religious belief.
While Paul describes the Athenians as “very religious,” he does not say this as a compliment. The extent of the city’s idolatry anges and disgusts him. This leads him to speak to the Athenians about a particular God, one whom they had already vaguely acknowledged by erecting an altar dedicated “to the unknown god.”
In his speech, Paul makes two basic points: First, there is one true and transcendent God; and second, we are all accountable to this God. This explains why Wilson is rightly skeptical of Douthat’s call to generic religious belief. Until we see our desperate situation before the God who will one day “judge the world in righteousness,” we will not be able to discern the preciousness of the gospel and the urgency of the call to believe not merely in a god but in Jesus Christ. It is my hope and prayer that Wilson will not be content to go into a church occasionally to say a prayer but instead will sit under faithful Christian preaching for an extended period of time, so that he has the opportunity to “taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps. 34:8).
Andy Wilson
laconia, new hampshire
In an otherwise excellent review, Kit Wilson incorrectly claims that Ross Douthat’s Believe “presupposes”—but does not actually make the case—“that finding a specific faith is always rationally better than sticking with agnosticism.” This is not really so, as Wilson’s own review shows. Douthat’s clincher for commitment is, in Wilson’s paraphrase, “I am unlikely to be a religious genius.” The problem is that the entire modern project of expressive individualism constantly whispers to each of us, ever so coaxingly, “Oh, but you are a religious genius.”
To put Douthat’s claim another way, centuries upon centuries upon millennia of thoroughly debated and, in a manner of speaking, “peer-reviewed” thought and experience are likely to prove reliable sources of insight into the meaning of reality—more reliable, surely, than deliberately curtailing inquiry by refusing to go beyond a posture of “unassuming wonder.”
I’m all for “humble wonder.” Wonder is a great starting point. But if, as Douthat argues, every major religious tradition urges us to move beyond wonder to commitment, then saying, “I’ll just stick with wonder, thanks” is not “humble” at all. It presupposes, without argument, that one’s own sense of the stakes (“The final truth about reality, I genuinely believe, can wait.”) is a better guide than the accumulated wisdom of the world, reaching back at least as far as the advent of recorded history; that each of us is, after all, a religious genius.
Mark Perkins
roseland, virginia
Return of the False Gods
In “The Age of De-Globalization” (March 2025), R. R. Reno takes a well-deserved victory lap for his Return of the Strong Gods thesis. The complete lack of audience for Jeff Bezos’s proclamation that the Washington Post would shift its opinions toward “personal liberties and free markets” reiterates the impotence of the postwar consensus.
However, I fear Reno is unduly optimistic that the turn toward reconsolidation will renew America’s foundations. As he’s written, strong gods are not necessarily good gods, and that’s only half of the problem. Looters and false prophets will take advantage of the interregnum to pillage American temples and install idols. The most obvious threats are Johnny-come-lately transhumanists seeking not renewal and safeguarding but the “Uberification” of the polis.
They redirect liberalism’s utopian hubris into algorithms and AI. Their loud voices and resources are shaping our current trajectory such that failing to govern the world, we’ll aim at Mars, and failing to build a just society, we’ll revel in a virtual one. Most recently, the public movement for solidarity is being half-directed by a techno-sultan unapologetically cultivating a harem and a gaggle of genetically selected children. Successful navigation of reconsolidation will take prudent and visionary leadership, but thus far a Lincolnesque statesman and theologian has yet to take charge.
Brevin Anderson
alexandria, virginia
R. R. Reno replies:
I share Brevin Anderson’s concerns about the rightwing progressivism that has emerged from Silicon Valley. It’s not limited to the “Uberfication” of the polis. President Trump has promised free IVF for anyone who wants to transcend the limitations of the human body. Sadly, that techno-utopian policy enjoys widespread support across the political spectrum, a sign of modernity’s powerful grip on our collective imagination.
Yet there’s a countervailing wind blowing in the body politic, one that brings the inspiriting bondages of love and welcome constraints of loyalty. The desire for strong gods is evident in religion and politics, as well as in online chatter about manliness and other calls for ambitious striving and adventure. Idols we will chase after, to be sure. And our leaders have feet of clay, maybe entire legs. So be it. We do not get to choose our time and place in the racing current of history. But we can nurture noble consolidating loves, even now, even in this half-mad, crazy quilt country of ours. Let’s do what we can.
