For the March issue of First Things, I wrote an essay called “Against Heterosexuality.” In brief, my argument was that the concept of sexual orientation is not historically inevitable, not empirically accurate, and not morally useful. The heterosexual-homosexual dichotomy is counterproductive to encouraging the virtue of chastity, so we Christians should do our best to eliminate “gay” and “straight”—especially “straight,” actually—from the way we think and talk about sex, always with prudence directing us as to the particulars.Continue Reading »
The early Church’s appropriation of Greek philosophy is easily caricatured as an exchange that left Christianity intellectually enriched but spiritually impoverished. In reality, the Church Fathers converted Plato before they baptized him. That is, they found Greek metaphysics useful, but they used it for their own purposes. Still, the question remains: Christians changed Plato, but how much did Plato change Christianity? Continue Reading »
Several years ago, Giorgio Agamben began one of his lectures by asking why he had made law and theology the areas of his recent investigation. “A first answer,” he said, “which is obviously a joke, but every joke has a serious core, would be, because these are the only two fields in which . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the strangest claims often made by purveyors and consumers of today’s popular atheism is that disbelief in God involves no particular positive philosophy of reality, much less any kind of religion or creed, but consists merely in neutral incredulity toward a certain kind of factual . . . . Continue Reading »
Consider this description of one of “America’s Byways”: “Traversing the lush hills and farmlands of southern Indiana, and paralleling the mighty Ohio River, this route marks a timeworn and history-rich corridor linking historic villages and farms through a picturesque landscape. Rock . . . . Continue Reading »
A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by lawrence m. krauss free press, 204 pages, $24.99 Acritic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical . . . . Continue Reading »
Last week, Pat Robertson told his viewers that he believes Alzheimer’s disease to be a “kind of death,” a basis for the un-afflicted spouse to seek divorce and move on with their life—so long as they act mercifully and provide a means for care of that spouse. This view . . . . Continue Reading »
Behold, the fruit of class warfare rhetoric. This is what happens when you teach that “rich people” became rich at your expense and they owe you their property. The end of respect for private property and a person’s right to have what he’s earned is the end of . . . . Continue Reading »
In his preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel famously remarks that the owl of Minerva takes flight only as dusk is falling, which is to say that philosophy comes only at the end of an age, far too late in the day to tell us how the world ought to be; it can at most merely ponder what already . . . . Continue Reading »
The Book: Christianity and Western Thought, Volume One: From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment by Colin Brown:10 — The Gist: Outlines the changes in preconceptions, worldviews, and paradigms that have affected the ways in which people have thought about religion in general and . . . . Continue Reading »
