Eulogy for Skip

August 12, 2017 by Clarion Editors · Leave a Comment

Jason Morgan
Mortal man may yet be saved, some say, but there is a doom upon the brutes: when it's over for Rover, it's over forever, and anything else is sentimentalism. That account may score points in certain quarters, but is it really so sound? If the goodness, peace, and joy that we experience in time are epiphanic of Eternity, then surely we ought to take such phenomena seriously, even when we find them in animals. Looking back on the life of a beloved family dog, Jason Morgan asks us to reconsider whether there isn't something beyond the sentiments, after all, and if so, whether man's best friend might not finally be spared the grave.

Filed under Articles / Essays, Featured Essays · Tagged with apocatastasis, beatific vision, critiques of neo-Thomism, dogs, eternity, finitude, Francis Jammes, friendship, immortality, Jean-Paul Sartre, mortality, neo-Thomism, redemption, resurrection, soul, suffering, theology, Thomas Aquinas

Unity and Diversity in the University Curriculum

July 17, 2017 by Clarion Editors · Leave a Comment

Jonathan Rowland

What can I get at college that I can't find on Wikipedia? How does it all fit together? What is the purpose of education? Students today enjoy unprecedented freedom of choice when it comes to their academic formations. But their universities are often ill-equipped to help them answer the questions that inevitably shape this freedom, in part due to a general uncertainty about what sort of unity, if any, exists across the various forms of knowledge. Jonathan Rowland considers how today's academic institutions might address this doubt and its consequences by drawing on the more lasting of John Henry Newman's insights into the nature of the university.

Filed under Featured Essays, Uncategorized · Tagged with descartes, education, foucault, John Henry Newman, kant, liberal arts, medicine, philosophy, postmodernism, religion, science, student life, technology, theology, university

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

May 21, 2014 by Clarion Editors · Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under Articles / Essays, Featured Essays, Theology · Tagged with aesthetics, Aquinas, Aristotle, colonial America, dispositions, great awakening, idealism, intellectual history, Jonathan Edwards, malebranche, metaphysics, occasionalism, ontology, reformed theology, Sang Lee, theology

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

February 17, 2014 by Clarion Editors · Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under Articles / Essays, Featured Essays, Theology, Uncategorized · Tagged with Aquinas, Aristotle, colonial America, great awakening, intellectual history, Jonathan Edwards, metaphysics, ontology, Reformation, Sang Hyun Lee, Scholasticism, theology, transcendence

Russell Kirk: Christian Humanism and Conservatism

January 10, 2014 by Clarion Editors · Leave a Comment

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...

Filed under Articles / Essays, Featured Essays, Uncategorized · Tagged with Christian Humanism, Christopher Dawson, Edmund Burke, G.K. Chesterton, humanism, Irving Babbitt, John Dewey, John Henry Newman, literature, Orestes Brownson, Pico della Miranola, Richard Hooker, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, theology, Vigen Guroian, William F. Buckley Jr.

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

December 23, 2013 by Clarion Editors · Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under Articles / Essays, Featured Essays, Theology · Tagged with American Christianity, great awakening, Jonathan Edwards, metaphysics, panentheism, pantheism, philosophical theology, Reformation, reformed theology, theology

Stripped-Down Gnosticism

October 26, 2013 by Clarion Editors · 1 Comment

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.

Filed under Articles / Essays, Featured, Featured Essays, Theology · Tagged with Condorcet, Dan Brown, Darwin, early Church, Elaine Pagels, Gnosticism, history of Christianity, incarnation, J.S. Mill, Richard Weaver, Richmond, theology, worldviews