Is Life Worth Living?

Russell Kirk
Too often, childhood hopes give way to adult complacency; but, just as often, "men and women are haunted by such nagging questions as 'What is this all about?' or 'Is life worth living?'" In this Epilogue to his remarkable third-person autobiography, Russell Kirk looks back on a long life of literary conflict and reflects on just what it might all be about.

God and Dispositions: Edwardsean Metaphysics (Part IV of IV)

Rev. John J. Bombaro
In the first three parts of this series, Rev. Bombaro discussed the theocentric metaphysics, the aesthetics, and the Scholastic philosophical heritage of Jonathan Edwards, colonial intellectual and revivalist preacher. Here, in the final installment, Bombaro shows how Edwards's notions of 'excellency', idealism, and law-like relational dispositions work together to make manifest the glory of God.

Bad Math and Poor Eyesight: Reconfiguring Dante’s Hellscape

Arnaud Zimmern
Dante's imagery in the Inferno is haunting. But, for all the care he took in crafting his canti, recent scholarship has revealed errors of scale and proportion in his descriptions of the infernal environs. Was he just a lousy arithmetician? Was he deliberately undermining his narrative with a bit of ironic miscalculation? Or are Dante's apparent mistakes in fact occasions for him to explore a fundamental question about man's redemption?

In Distrust of Movements

Wendell Berry
The legions of health-food shoppers and the interminable discussions of sustainability bear witness to what is by now a well-established feature of our cultural landscape: the organic movement. But Wendell Berry, one of the most influential champions of the cause, turns his pen (and his plow) against the seductive idea that what is properly a way of being can be re-branded and shrink-wrapped into a movement.

The Becomingness of God: Jonathan Edwards’s Metaphysics (Part III of IV)

Rev. John J. Bombaro
In the first two installments of this series, Rev. Bombaro discussed the theocentric metaphysics and aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards, one of colonial America's greatest preachers and scholars. Here, Bombaro juxtaposes the language of dispositions that Edwards uses to describe God with its Scholastic philosophical heritage, reminding us of Edwards's peculiar vantage point at the cusp of modernity.

Russell Kirk: Christian Humanism and Conservatism

Vigen Guroian
During a dinner conversation with Russell and Annette Kirk in Washington, D.C., just five months before Dr. Kirk’s death, Russell turned to me and quipped, with his familiar chuckle and impish smile, “Vigen, they are now calling me a theologian!” I did not ask him who was saying such a thing...

Divine Comprehensiveness and Edwardsean Panentheism: The Formulation of Jonathan Edwards’s Theocentric Metaphysics (Part II of IV)

John J. Bombaro
Scholar and minister in colonial New England, driving force of the First Great Awakening, and finally president of Princeton University, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was one of early America's most important intellectuals. In this second of four articles, Rev. John J. Bombaro takes us beyond the sermons and into a deep metaphysical panentheism and shows us how, in Edwards's theology, it is in God that we live and move and have our being.

The Moral Imagination

Russell Kirk
For decades now, mainstream educators have been encouraging their pupils to use their imaginations - even as the literary fare they've been offering has increasingly had the opposite effect. Russell Kirk brings his characteristic perspicacity to bear on the question of literature and the "moral imagination" in a classic essay that has only grown more relevant since it first appeared in 1981.

Stripped-Down Gnosticism

Brian Lapsa
Billboards confirm the truism that the human body sells - everything from stripteases to "Body Worlds". The body also seems to be behind a faddish fascination with first-millennium sects. But what does ancient Gnosticism have in common with gentlemen's clubs? More, it turns out, than one might at first suspect.

Cultural confidence and the liberal death wish

Frits Bolkestein
In a selection from his forthcoming book The Intellectual Temptation, former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein suggests that an academic obsession with abstract theory over hard-won experience lies behind our political and cultural crises. Bolkestein takes us from centralization through multiculturalism to cultural self-flagellation: ideals - or ideologies - that define the landscape of contemporary Western Europe.

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