Earnest Contention

This past weekend, I had two occasions on which I might have been said to go into “apologetics mode.” In the first (which was not really apologetical, strictly speaking), it was a study circle led by Roman Catholic theology and philosophy professors with their students, discussing Roman Catholic theology. I ended up speaking entirely more than I had intended, especially considering that those folks…

Orthodox Spiritual Life and the Environment Conference

All of the talks from the April 16-17, 2010, conference of the Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration held at St. Tikhon’s Seminary are now online, courtesy of Ancient Faith Radio: Dr. Seraphim Bruce Foltz: Nature and Other Modern Idolatries: Kosmos, Ktisis, and Chaos in Environmental Metaphysics. (Dr. Foltz is philosophy professor at Eckerd College, a founder of SOPHIA, the Orthodox philosophical association; author of…

Cultural Recusancy in Quotations from Men Whose Names Start with Initials

…the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydras’ heads. – J. R. R. Tolkien, from a 1969 letter to Amy Ronald The world is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will…

The Theological Significance of Political Liberty

While attending this conference this weekend, I happened in some of my offhand remarks during one of the discussion sessions to tip my political hand as “localist / libertarian-leaning.” Of course, questions of ecology and how to work with God’s creation eventually do lead to economic and political issues, though I felt the conference successfully mostly steered clear of such things. (My impression of…