Glory to God For All Things

Category: Aesthetics

  • Understanding Evil and Doing Good

    The Fathers commonly spoke of three things together: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. The three are related. And it is necessary to understand these three in order to understand the nature of evil – both why it is evil and how it behaves. The root of Truth, Beauty and Goodness in the Fathers is Being and…

  • Around the Corner

    Among the most appealing aspects of CS Lewis’ children’s fiction is at the point that I would describe as “turning the corner.” It is not that he creates a fantasy world, but that the fantasy world he creates somehow intersects with the world in which we live. It is the discovery that at this moment,…

  • A One-Storey Neighborhood

    In 2010 I published Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe. The articles examined the modern, secular tendency to see God (and religion) as belonging to a sphere somehow removed from daily life. God is there if you want Him, but absent if you don’t. It is a habit of thought that conveniently ignores one…

  • The Voice of the Natural Will

    Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2Co 3:17) Though many speak of the “free will” of human beings, this is largely a misnomer, or misapplication of the phrase. The choosing that we experience is not the same thing as the will. It is the…

  • The Secular Challenge

    Fr. Alexander Schmemann held that secularism was the single greatest challenge of the modern era. I took up this understanding and made it the heart of my book, Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe. It is at the heart of every serious challenge the Church faces in our time. The news is not so…

  • Truth, Lies and Icons

        As verbal beings, we live in a world of icons. We experience the world in an iconic fashion. A major difficulty for us is that we have lost the vocabulary of iconic reality. We have substituted the language of photography. The dissonance between reality and our photographic assumptions has led us to doubt…

  • A Tendency to Beauty

    Evolutionary theorists have a very difficult time suggesting a mechanism for life. How do plain chemicals – minerals and dissolved substances – combine in a manner that constitutes a living thing? In fact, why would they? I have no interest in discussing the pro’s and con’s of evolutionary theory. It is not interesting to me…

  • The Lord and Giver of Life

    The opening verses of Genesis offer the mysteries of creation for our consideration. Of particular note is the primary role of the Holy Spirit. “The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters… “ Light and dry land are made to appear and then, the miracle of life: “Let the earth bring forth…”…

  • The Difficult Task of True Theology

    Nothing is as difficult as true theology. Simply saying something correct is beside the point. Correctness does not rise to the level of theology. Theology, rightly done, is a path towards union with God. It is absolutely more than an academic exercise. Theology is not the recitation of correct facts, it is the apprehension and…

  • What the Devil Doesn’t Know

    I have been reading (more like imbibing) the transcript of a talk by Fr. Jonathan Tobias. It will bear re-reading several times. I was deeply struck by these two paragraphs: What is utterly shocking here about these events is, as a kid I always wondered: Why did the devil let Jesus down there in the…

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Latest Comments

  1. Owen, Have a good day. My week has, thus far, been highlighted with the practical efforts (at present) of down-sizing,…

  2. Owen, This idea that other religions is of the devil seems like something a fundamentalist would think. Frankly there is…

  3. Fr. Stephen, I find it to be a natural law that living things need resistance to grow. So, I welcome…

  4. As I read and write dear friends, I sit at the bedside of my dying mother-in-law. She is suffering a…

  5. My comment is belated, but I was just re-reading this article/comments and wanted to add this: Father, in tandem with…

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