Are you religious?

In an interesting essay reviewing a book about the role of "religion" in government, a few paragraphs explaining the original understanding of the word:

The English term “religion,” or the Latin religio, originally derives from the Latin verb religare, or “to bind again” (as in “ligation”). The noun religio, in the classical sense, was not conceived as a specific set of beliefs or propositional truth-claims among others. Rather, it was a sort of virtue or characteristic: one who is “religious” has the property of holding fast, or fidelity. That is why the term “religious life,” in the Middle Ages, was not a descriptor of one’s personal theological conviction. Rather, it referred to those who had bound themselves to a particular monastic or lay rule of life. In other words, almost everyone was Christian, but the phrase “the religious” referred to those who’d adopted a particular set of intense devotional practices.

On this older paradigm, individuals exemplifying the virtue of religio were those capable of seeing God as “what He is, namely the summit of all goodness, the truth of things, the light by which the mind operates” and so choosing to “sedulously revere Him in act, in goodness, in truthfulness of speech, in clarity of mind, in love,” as Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes. On this view, crucially, religion was not something other than natural; rather, it was a particular disposition toward the apex or limit condition of reality itself. “Since philosophia is the love and pursuit of truth and wisdom, and since truth and wisdom are, precisely, God, it follows that true philosophia and true religio are identical.” ....

“Religion” is not some zone of private belief or set of axiomatic commitments; rather, theology is the love and knowledge of God that orients the Christian way of life. It cannot be privatized, interiorized, or ever depoliticized. ....

John Ehrett, "The Problem with 'Religion'," Mere Orthodoxy, May 19, 2026.

"That'll be the day..."

Re-posted:

Philip Jenkins on why we are certain March 1 was the day the patron saint of Wales died and why "death days" were so important:

St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales

March 1 is the feast of David, the early medieval bishop and missionary who became patron saint of Wales. We actually know strikingly little of David apart from that date, of March 1, but I’m going to suggest that represents a good deal in its own right. .... 

A death about 590 is a reasonable guess, but we could easily slip fifty years either way. Oddly though, we can be sure that he died on March 1, whether in (say) 532 or 632 AD. Through the Middle Ages, hagiography was a vast area of cultural effort, when almost any outrageous achievements could be credited to a saint. (No, David did not really make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was ordained by the Patriarch). The one thing that we know these writers did keep faithfully was the death day — the date not the year — because that marked the hero’s ascension to glory, the promotion to heaven. In a particular church or community, those days were critical, as marking the annual celebration of the beloved local saint.

Argue as much as you like, then, about precise years, achievements, martyrdoms and areas of activity, about the number of lepers cured and tyrants opposed — but don’t quarrel with death days.

Death days.

It’s an interesting term. I know my birthday. I also know that at some future point I will die, and that that will befall on a particular date. Let me be optimistic and assume that it will be a distant event, say on July 23, 2049. Each year, then, I pass through July 23 happily unaware that I am marking my Death Day, surely as significant a milestone as my birthday, but not one I can ever know with certainty until it occurs. Nor is it something we really ever contemplate, as we all know, in our hearts, that we are immortal.

I suppose though that it is something we can learn from those medieval monks, that the Death Day is not just a key event in anyone’s life, but literally the only one we can take with absolute confidence.

THAT’LL BE THE DAY THAT I DIE

O blessed they

From Augustine, "Exposition on Psalm 148":

The subject of our meditation in this present life should be the praises of God; for the everlasting exaltation of our life hereafter will be the praise of God, and none can become fit for the life hereafter, who has not practiced himself for it now. So then now we praise God, but we pray to Him too. Our praise is marked by joy, our prayer by groans....On account of these two seasons, one, that which now is in the temptations and tribulations of this life, the other, that which is to be hereafter in everlasting rest and exultation; we have established also the celebration of two seasons, that before Easter and that after Easter. That which is before Easter signifies tribulation, in which we now are; that which we are now keeping after Easter, signifies the bliss in which we shall hereafter be. ....

Praise ye the Lord from heaven: praise Him in the high places. First he says, from heaven, then from earth; for it is God that is praised, who made heaven and earth. All in heaven is calm and peaceful; there is ever joy, no death, no sickness, no vexation; there the blessed ever praise God; but we are still below: yet, when we think how God is praised there, let us have our heart there, and let us not hear to no purpose, Lift up your hearts. Let us lift up our heart above, that it become not corrupted on earth: for we take pleasure in what the Angels do there. We do it now in hope: hereafter we shall in reality, when we have come there. Praise Him then in the high places. ....

What sort of command, think ye, have things in heaven and the holy angels received? What sort of command has God given them? What, but that they praise Him? Blessed are they whose business is to praise God! They plough not, they sow not, they grind not, they cook not; for these are works of necessity, and there is no necessity there. They steal not, they plunder not, they commit no adultery; for these are works of iniquity, and there is no iniquity there. They break not bread for the hungry, they clothe not the naked, they take not in the stranger, they visit not the sick, they set not at one the contentious, they bury not the dead; for these are works of mercy, and there is no misery, for mercy to be shown to. O blessed they! Think we that we too shall be like this? ....

Helping or hindering worship?

I grew up attending worship in a sanctuary built during the Great Depression. It replaced a building that burned down one Sabbath morning in mid-winter. It was a beautiful building constructed in difficult economic times. Obviously, the congregation thought beauty important. The excerpts below are from "12 Theses on Church Buildings":

• The church is not a building but a people, but the church is a people who must gather. Thus, for a church to exist, it must have a location to gather in. And since meeting outdoors limits the gathering (weather, sound, distractions, etc.), this usually means some kind of building. ....

• The health of a church is not necessarily connected with the quality of its building. A healthy, growing church can meet in a basement, and a dead, apostate church can gather (as many do) in ornate cathedrals. ....

• In the New Testament, churches would sometimes meet in someone’s home (Rom 16:5), and sometimes in larger facilities, like the Hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:9-10). The church in Jerusalem (prior to the martyrdom of Stephen) was in the thousands and so gathered regularly in the Temple court (Acts 2:41-47).

• As Christianity began to grow, churches began constructing buildings devoted exclusively to their church gatherings. ....

• Evangelicals tend to not think much about a church’s architecture and aesthetic beyond purely functional questions. It may be tempting for evangelicals to roll their eyes at Christians of yesteryear who invested enormous sums of money in making stone cathedrals: Why was this not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? But it is an extreme hermeneutic of suspicion to assume that every beautiful church was constructed through avarice and worldliness. (Disregard the fact that these same evangelicals may not think twice about their church spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on A/V equipment)....

• You will find it easier to contemplate the glory of God standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon than you will in the fluorescently-lit DMV. It isn’t because God is more present at the Grand Canyon, but it is because we are creatures who are easily affected by our surroundings. The ornate and costly designs of the Tabernacle and Temple were not to draw God to the location, like iron-filings to a magnet. They were there to help draw the attention of the worshipper up as he approached the fearful, awesome, beautiful God. The gold, the designs, the sheer size of the structure—all were used as aids in helping the worshipper discern the holiness and beauty of the God he had come to worship. Thus, our surroundings can either aid, or hinder, our worship.

• A church should create a space for corporate worship that emphasizes—rather than detracts from—the central point of worship: God. .... The goal should be that when a guest or congregant walks into the sanctuary they realize that they have entered a place unlike any other space in the hustle and bustle of normal life. They have come somewhere that leads them to reverent silence and contemplation as they prepare to commune with the living God (Eccl 5:1-7). .... (more)

Marc Sims, "12 Theses on Church Buildings," Mere Orthodoxy, Jan 28, 2026.

Josephus and Jesus

I've been reading history for a very long time. I love this sort of thing. On an ancient Jewish historian and what he may have written about Jesus:

.... Josephus is our most important historical source for the Roman East—Syria, Galilee, and Judea—offering priceless insights into politics, warfare, religion, and daily life we’d otherwise never know.

I’ve taught about Josephus’s life and works for more than 20 years—first in secular settings like Macquarie University and the University of Sydney, and now at Wheaton College. But Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ by T.C. Schmidt, associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, has forced me to rewrite my lectures—and it might just have changed my mind. It seems that a controversial passage about Jesus’s resurrection might be original after all.

Of everything Josephus wrote, a single paragraph has been analyzed and debated more than all the rest. Those 90 words are even given their own name in scholarship: the Testimonium Flavianum—the testimony of Flavius Josephus about Jesus.

It appears in Book 18 of Jewish Antiquities. Here’s the standard translation from the Loeb Classical Library, with brackets around the words I’ve described for decades as “dodgy.” (Not exactly a technical term, but I always thought it apt.)

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, [if indeed one ought to call him a man]. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. [He was the Messiah.] When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. [For he appeared to them alive again on the third day, the divine prophets having foretold these and countless other marvellous things about him.] And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

Since a famous 1987 article by Géza Vermes (professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University), the scholarly consensus about this paragraph has been that Josephus himself wrote a brief, neutral—or perhaps negative—remark about Jesus, which was later “improved” by a Christian scribe copying out Josephus’s works in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century. ....

Schmidt does a terrific job in the early chapters of his book chasing down all the manuscripts that contain the Testimonium Flavianum. Josephus wrote in Greek, but his work—at least parts of it—was quickly translated into Latin, as well as Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic. Unlike most classical and New Testament scholars, Schmidt seems comfortable swimming in all these linguistic oceans.

The upshot of his analysis is that we may have to rethink a key line. ....

I’ve spent my career trying to ensure my teaching about the historical Jesus stays within the bounds of mainstream (secular) scholarship, and Schmidt’s book is a major, serious challenge to the consensus on the Testimonium Flavianum. It won’t completely convince everyone, but if I’m any indication, it could partly convince many. I might owe my former students an apology. (more, summarizing the argument made in the book)

This appears at the end of the review: "Editors’ note: A generous donor has made Josephus and Jesus freely available in PDF format."

John Dickson, "I Might Owe My Students an Apology About Josephus," TGC, Jan. 19, 2026.

Chivalry

Kevin DeYoung on a worthy aspiration:

We need heroes from the past, as well as inspiration for the present. And the knight has proved to be an enduring symbol of valor for almost a thousand years. But if Christian men are going to aspire to be these heroic defenders of Christendom, we ought to know what these knights were supposed to be like. ....

As medieval historian Maurice Keen explains in his book, Chivalry, the knight had three basic duties. The first duty was to defend the faith of Christ against unbelievers (note: not to wield the sword against other Christians). His next duty was to defend his earthly lord. His third responsibility was to protect the weak. In pursuit of these duties, the knight might be sent on a crusade far away, or he might be asked to exercise his responsibilities closer to home.

As important as these obligations were, the manner in which the knight carried them out was as important as the duties themselves. .... The chivalric ideal identified and codified which acts and which attitudes were considered honorable. Chivalry prized bravery, fortitude, and physical prowess—but also humility, gentlemanly behavior, and courtliness toward women. The two sets of virtues were never to be separated. At all times, the knight was to be noble and courteous. ....

What is missing from the present version of manly bravery is the insistence that charging into battle requires the “heavy burden” of virtue—and not just one virtue (fortitude), but all of them (prudence, justice, and temperance). If today’s would-be knights are serious about exercising Christ’s dominion on the earth, they must first be serious about exercising dominion over themselves—over their speech, over their anger, over their petty vindictiveness. It is not enough that we are ready to fight. We must also be courteous and not base, fair and not ruled by our passions, gracious and not a scoundrel. ....

There is nothing noble in fighting for its own sake. The devil knows how to prowl and devour and fight as well as anyone. Every culture celebrates warriors of one kind or another. Often, they are bloodthirsty and cruel. What the best of Christendom called knights to be was a different kind of warrior—humble, honest, fair, dignified in speech and gracious in character. That’s the chivalrous hero we ought to emulate, not the brawler who thinks self-restraint is for sissies and courtesy is for cowards. .... (more)

Kevin DeYoung, "In Search of Chivalry," Clearly Reformed, Oct. 30, 2025.

No fear!

As Halloween approaches, it is useful for the more excitable among us to be reminded that the Evil One has already been defeated. From "Concerning Halloween" by James B. Jordan:

.... "Halloween" is simply a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint," in that "hallow" is just an alternative form of the word "holy" ("hallowed be Thy name"). All Saints’ Day is November 1. It is the celebration of the victory of the saints in union with Christ. The observance of various celebrations of All Saints arose in the late 300s, and these were united and fixed on November 1 in the late 700s. The origin of All Saints Day and of All Saints Eve in Mediterranean Christianity had nothing to do with Celtic Druidism or the Church’s fight against Druidism (assuming there ever even was any such thing as Druidism, which is actually a myth concocted in the 19th century by neo-pagans.) ....

The Biblical day begins in the preceding evening, and thus in the Church calendar, the eve of a day is the actual beginning of the festive day. [emphasis added] Christmas Eve is most familiar to us, but there is also the Vigil of Holy Saturday that precedes Easter Morn. Similarly, All Saints’ Eve precedes All Saints’ Day.

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us. ....

Similarly, on All Hallows’ Eve (Hallow-Even – Hallow-E’en – Halloween), the custom arose of mocking the demonic realm by dressing children in costumes. Because the power of Satan has been broken once and for all, our children can mock him by dressing up like ghosts, goblins, and witches. The fact that we can dress our children this way shows our supreme confidence in the utter defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ – we have NO FEAR! .... (more)

Biblical Horizons » Concerning Halloween

"Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”

From "Athanasius against the world." Well worth reading (but it may be behind a paywall):

Seventeen hundred years ago, in a.d. 325, the Roman Emperor Constantine invited all the bishops of the world to assemble at Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey. The Council of Nicaea rejected the heresy of Arius, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. It composed a creed that (with some additions) is recited around the world today. It also set in motion a wrestling match of church and state engaging each other in the halls of history down through the generations.

A popular notion of that history laments “the Constantinian Church.” By this account, the church lost its integrity in consorting with the emperor. It joined the establishment and ever since has tended to align with hierarchies of secular power.

Of course, there’s a measure of truth in this paradigm. Constantine played a large role at Nicaea, and the church has often suffered through entanglement with regimes. But the larger story of Nicaea presents a much different balance of facts. For 50 years after the council, the Roman State supported the Arian heretics and oppressed the orthodox faith. A few courageous bishops resisted, and the laity stood firm. That is the story of Saint Athanasius and the fight for the Nicene Creed. ....

Arius first announced his heresy around the year 318. He reasoned that the biblical concept “Son,” “begotten of the Father,” implies a beginning. Therefore, the Son is not eternal as God the Father is eternal. He was created out of nothing, different in nature from God, as we are. ....

Constantine utterly misunderstood the significance of the issue. Arius’s opponents perceived it clearly. If Christ is not God, the Good News loses force. Our redemption depends on God’s entry into the world and His self-sacrifice. If Christ were merely a creature adopted by the Father, or a demiurge projected into the world, Christianity would fade away among all the Gnostic and Neoplatonic sects of the Hellenistic era. .... (more)

John D. Hagen Jr., "Athanasius against the world," National Review, Sept. 18, 2025.

"Nondenominational"

I find it annoying when local churches indulge in cute "branding." The first time I recall feeling that way was when a church that had been known by its location and denomination became the "High Point" church. It is particularly annoying when a church actually conforms to a particular doctrinal tradition but conceals the affiliation. I liked this defense of clear denomination:

Nondenominational churches are the single fastest-growing Christian affiliation in the U.S. I regularly talk to believers who tell me their church isn’t a part of any denomination. Often, that comes with a hint of smugness, as if they are the ones truly being faithful to Scripture while the rest of us are in bondage to the traditions of man. ....

No individual or church simply “believes what the Bible says.” Every one of us engages in an act of interpretation when we read Scripture. We are shaped by our fallibility and sin, and limitedness. We are also shaped by the community of people around us. We learn to read Scripture from influential pastors, seminary professors, or that guy we had in a college Bible study. They learned from others as well, and those people together form a tradition that inevitably affects how we understand the Bible.

The broad traditions within Christianity exist because there are questions that are key to our life together as Christians which we disagree about. ....

Nondenominational churches inevitably have conclusions on these topics that place them in certain theological traditions. Indeed, it is a running joke in some circles that when a church says they are nondenominational, they’re really saying they’re either Baptist or charismatic and just trying to hide it. Such churches aren’t more theologically inclusive; they’re just less clear about their convictions. They are the neighbor who always votes Republican (or Democrat) and gives to Republican causes and has Republican yard signs but insists that they’re an open-minded independent. What’s worse, by pretending they don’t have convictions and “just teach the Bible,” they encourage a kind of arrogance that assumes they and they only have opinions of equal authority with God’s Word.

I think a much healthier approach is clarity with charity. We should be clear about our convictions and the broad theological categories they land us in. I’m happy to use terms like “Reformed” or “Presbyterian” to describe my theological opinions, not because I’m celebrating some man-made tradition but because I think the Bible teaches stuff that puts me in that camp. You might disagree, and that’s fine. Being up front about our differences allows us to recognize where we are united and have friendly and clarifying debates about the jumping-off points. Transparency makes room for grace; obfuscation inhibits it. .... (more)

Eric Tonjes, "Why Denominations Are Good, Actually," Mere Orthodoxy, July 9, 2025.

"If they do exist, they shouldn't"

I haven't posted much here recently because I simply haven't come across things that interested me enough to go to the trouble. But today I found an essay by Philip Jenkins that I liked a lot. He is an historian with widely ranging interests who has recently been writing about American history in the 1890s. Most of this essay is about social movements during that decade, including the American Protective Association. From "1893: Crash, Crisis, and Anti-Catholicism":

...[T]he American Protective Association (APA) began as a marginal grouping dedicated to defending Protestant interests against the machinations of Catholics, who supposedly followed secret directions dispatched by the Vatican. Allegedly, the Vatican planned the takeover of the US through armed insurgency, mainly directed by the Knights of Columbus. According to some accounts, the Catholic conspirators intended to massacre all heretics, a scheme proven by the many bogus documents then in circulation. These were over and above the very lively world of bogus confessions and exposés purporting to reveal the sexual depravity of priests and nuns. Self-described “ex-nuns” could count on a flourishing lecture circuit at this time, and for many years afterwards. On the Protestant side, the anti-Catholic “resistance” was largely a Masonic affair. The APA’s founder was Henry F. Bowers, a Freemason, who structured the movement on Masonic lines, with regalia, oaths and initiations. ....

In numerical terms alone, it is difficult to think of a more successful mass political movement in American history, and the obvious parallel is suggestive: this was the rabidly anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan of the mid 1920s, which might have hit five million members, albeit very briefly. The Klan likewise drew heavily on Masons and the other fraternal orders. ....

...[G]enerally, we study what we like. We approve of heroic radical or civil rights group, while we hate the haters. The problem is that this approach means that we don’t pay nearly enough attention to some very important movements.

I offer a personal example. Back in the 1990s, I was very interested in social movements, which were and are the focus of a great deal of scholarly attention: How do they organize, how do they propagandize, to whom do they appeal, why do they rise and fall, how do they combine national and local activism? From all these points of view, I turned my attention to the Pro-Life movement which was then so active, and which integrated street activism with political agitation. To be clear, that interest did not reflect any ideological commitment on my part...

Around that time, I was chatting with a colleague who was then offering a course on Social Movements in American History, and described the various such groups I had studied. We got along fine. And then I mentioned the Pro-Life example, and suggested it might be a great topic for his course. Mere horror does not begin to describe his response. Obviously he would do no such thing. He would be studying feminist movements, civil rights movements, and gay rights activism, with all of which he was in total sympathy, and I am sure he would do an excellent job on all of them. But what about those other groups which were undoubtedly social movements driven by real passion? It seems they don’t exist. And if they do exist, they shouldn’t.

A subsequent conversation with another colleague about such movements introduced me to a common academic taxonomy of social movements. It seems that there are authentic ones derived from the grass roots, and then there are bogus ones generated by sinister interest groups to pretend they command mass support. These are not grass roots but rather “astroturf” movements, a term that dates from 1985. Further conversation revealed that my colleague viewed basically all left or liberal movements as “grass roots,” and thus authentic, while any and all conservative or reactionary counterparts were “astroturf.” To say the least, that is a convenient perspective, and one that carries a lot of weight in an academic world that leans heavily to the left and liberal. .... (more)

Philip Jenkins, "1893: Crash, Crisis, and Anti-Catholicism," Anxious Bench, June 26, 2025.

At the still point of the turning world.

I've never read Boethius (but I have read T.S. Eliot). Thomas Ward has read Boethius, and Rick Kennedy reviews his book in "The Wisdom of Hope in Boethian Times." From that review:

Our happiness lies in God, Boethius’s Philosophia ultimately argues: “In the sublimest and most difficult image of the whole Consolation, Lady Philosophy imagines God as the still center, or axis, of turning concentric circles.”

This image is the foil to the wheel of Lady Fortune—this “still center” is where the Consolation shows the Christian hope that can only come after Stoicism. Philosophia teaches that “We are creatures of the peripheries, invited to come closer to the center… We have the capacity, not only in thought but through the pursuit of virtue, to ‘seek the center of things.’” Ward then quotes from Lewis’ Perelandra: “We have come, last and best, / From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled, / To that still centre where the spinning world / Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.”

Boethius in Consolation, like Dante in Paradiso .... and Lewis in his books, teaches a further-up-and-further-in type of centering on the sovereign, loving, beautiful, and happy God of Christianity. Having transcended Stoicism, Augustine and Boethius stand at the foundations of an Age of Faith. ....

Ward wants his readers to think of the implications of the Consolation’s insistence that “God is happiness.” Seek God. Seek the center. Ultimately, Ward wants his readers to have a reason to pray. “When I pray,” he writes, “I sometimes realize that I am doing the best thing I know how to do, which is just what Jesus taught his disciples to do.” Indeed, the Consolation is an account of a thoughtful person at prayer. .... (more)

Rick Kennedy, "The Wisdom of Hope in Boethian Times," Mere Orthodoxy, May 30, 2025.

Thomas More

From a review of Thomas More: A Life

Over the last century, Thomas More has undergone three posthumous transmutations. In 1935 – exactly 400 years after he was executed for refusing to swear that Henry VIII was Supreme Head of the English Church – he was canonised by Pope Pius XI as a holy martyr. This declaration of his sanctity met a frosty reception in Anglican England, where the part More had played in putting Protestants to death for heresy before the break with Rome hadn’t yet disappeared from historical memory.

Then in 1967 came Paul Scofield’s moving performance as More in the film of Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons. Rooted in hagiographical accounts written by members of More’s family, it made him a hero, wise, erudite and humane, a man who chose to die rather than compromise his conscience in the face of tyranny. Yet a twist in the tale remained: the publication in 2009 of Hilary Mantel’s world-conquering Wolf Hall. In Mantel’s exquisite prose it’s Thomas Cromwell, not Thomas More, whose brilliant mind wrestles with the relationship between faith, integrity and power, while More, Cromwell’s opponent, becomes a callous, self-regarding zealot.

In Thomas More: A Life, her absorbing and deeply researched new biography, Joanne Paul sets out to rescue More from these violent swings of the historical pendulum. .... (the review)

The book review does well what a good review does: describing More's life with all its contradictions in the context of his time, as good history should.

I liked this description of More's most famous book, which I first read in a political theory course:

His best-known work, Utopia, was written in 1515-16, just as he was beginning to be employed as a diplomat by the young king Henry VIII. It's two parts consider the fundamental questions with which he was grappling: how far should a philosopher involve himself in the world, and what form should an ideal state take?

But the conclusions of its enigmatically supple satire have never been easy to pin down. Where does the truth lie in a dialogue about an imaginary republic called “Utopia” – “no place” – described by Raphael Hythlodaeus, a character whose name means “peddler of nonsense”, to a fictionalised “Thomas More”, whose surname in Latin is a pun on the Greek for “fool”?

Helen Castor, "The truth about Thomas More, Henry VIII’s brutal enforcer," The Telegraph, May 18, 2025.

"Who is the ultimate sovereign..."

Meir Soloveichik on "America and the Exodus":

.... Ben Franklin made this proposal for a seal for the United States: “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Franklin’s suggestion reminds us that the Haggadah’s central exhortation—that we must see ourselves as if we had been slaves in Egypt and had been guided out by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm—is not only a religious idea but also one with political and moral implications. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has noted that modernity was formed by four revolutions: the British (in 1688) and American on the one hand, and the French and Russian on the other. In Britain and America, one source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible. Secular philosophy guided the French and Russian revolutions. The former led to free societies, while French and Russian utopian revolutions ended in tyranny.

Why, asks Sacks, did Britain and America succeed where France and Russia failed?

The explanation is surely complex but much—perhaps all—turns on how a society answers the question: who is the ultimate sovereign, God or man?.... For the British and American architects of liberty, God was the supreme power.... For the French and Russian ideologists, ultimate value lay in the state...when human beings arrogate supreme power to themselves, politics loses its sole secure defense of freedom.... Societies that exile God lead to the eclipse of man. .... (more)

Cecil B. DeMille made two movies titled The Ten Commandments, a silent version in 1923 (poster above) and the more familiar one starring Charlton Heston as Moses.

 Meir Soloveichik, "America and the Exodus," The Free Press, April 10, 2025.

A literary invention?

In about 1970, a friend, then in the Army, an English major and later an English professor, sent me a letter that contained this on the gospel writers:

I do not believe in some unknown Jewish writer or writers that much greater than Shakespeare: I do not even believe in a mortal man able to write some of the lines of Christ. And most of all, I do not believe in anyone either convinced of Christ or trying to create a new religion, who could write those lines I still don't wholly understand, that render His isolation complete, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

That line in dramatic effect is greater than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. Its mystery is stupefying. And no spreader of any gospel would have invented it; only a man who was there and who heard it, and who felt compelled to tell all other truths would have put it in his account of the one he believed was his savior.

More recently, from an interview with Tom Holland, author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind:

For historians, Holland notes the crucifixion is the most unusual aspect of the four gospel accounts. Although several ancient religions include stories of the death and resurrection of gods, none of these religions would tell of their gods dying in a painful, humiliating way. Moreover, they would not have depicted their gods as subject to crucifixion which Holland describes as “paradigmatically the punishment visited on slaves.”

Even to its initial audience, Christianity was radically counter-cultural.

Furthermore, the character of Jesus is a “bizarre” and “unfathomable” mystery. Harder asked Holland to explain his own quote from Dominion: “Nothing was remotely as uncanny as the character of Jesus himself. No one quite like him had ever been portrayed in literature.”

Holland notes that if Jesus is purely a literary character, he is the most remarkable literary creation of all time. To replicate Jesus, an author would have to write a character that is simultaneously human and divine. Then, the author would have to portray him in such a way that people two thousand years later in continents the author has never heard of will still believe this figure is God and man.

It would take an unbelievably gifted author to accomplish the task if it were possible at all. And yet, four different authors managed to do so. Although Holland does not undertake to prove the historicity of the gospel story, he argues that categorizing Jesus’s parables and gospel stories as mere fiction does not solve the riddle. Either the gospel authors channel a historical Jesus or there is profound mystery in how such an uncanny story could have been written, gained prominence, and remained influential two thousand years later.

Furthermore, Holland credits the idea of human dignity itself to the imago dei found in the Hebrew Scriptures. The very idea and gut instinct that all humans have inherent dignity is theological, he claims. Thus, he names humanism as a Christian heresy that removes God while still privileging humanity with a dignity that all others should respect. .... (more)

Davison Drumm, "Historian Tom Holland on Christianity and a World Transformed," Juicy Ecumenism, March 12, 2025.

"As in a dream"

Jake Meador, in an email to subscribers of Mere Orthodoxy:

.... It is not a question of knowing what is right. It is a question, rather, of one’s commitment to the right.

This is something Peter Jackson never understood about Tolkien, incidentally, and is perhaps the single biggest problem with the Lord of the Rings movies, much as I do love those films. Jackson seems to only understand one sort of moral dilemma: Will I choose the good or the bad? Tolkien understood that one, of course; it’s central to how he treats Boromir and Denethor.

But the question that really seems to have most preoccupied Tolkien was something more like “can a person persist in the good, past the point of all hope and even unto death?” That is the problem Aragorn, Faramir, and Theoden all confront in different ways and, of course, is also near the heart of Frodo and Sam’s journey. ....

[Meador is reminded] of the opening sentence in Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a text that Lewis knew well and praised in his scholarly work. Hooker, writing at a time when the fate of the Church of England was unclear and when it was far from certain that his particular flavor of Anglicanism would endure, opened his great masterwork with this line:

Though for no other cause, yet for this; that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream, there shall be for men's information extant thus much concerning the present state of the Church of God established amongst us, and their careful endeavor which would have upheld the same.

In other words, Hooker wrote, if for no other reason than simply for this: That those who came after him would know that he and his colleagues had not allowed what they believed to be true and right to pass away “as in a dream.” ....

What Lewis and Tolkien both force their readers to do, in different ways, is ask themselves “if you are called to a cause that is both just and hopeless, what will you do?” Neither of them want us to desire hopelessness, obviously. That can be an easy thing to do for people of a certain turn of mind. It is a vice I am sometimes prone to myself.

The point is, rather, that one should have an answer to that question because once you’ve answered it something has been decided. Obviously the good can and often do triumph. Tolkien and Lewis both wrote many morally admirable characters who win great victories. But I suspect both would also say that the ability of a character to remain good amidst their glory is a consequence of their resolve to hold to the good even in defeat. If you persist in what is right in the face of defeat, then you love the good more than you love temporal success, which is precisely the thing that allows you to handle success with maturity and wisdom when it comes.

Jake Meador in a Mere Orthodoxy email.

The Truth sent from Above

Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Herefordshire Carol":

This is the truth sent from above, The truth of God, the God of love; Therefore don’t turn me from your door,    But hearken all both rich and poor.	And at that season of the year Our blest Redeemer did appear; He here did live, and here did preach, And may thousands he did teach.
The first thing which I do relate Is that God did man create; The next thing which to you I’ll tell Woman was made with man to dwell.	Thus He in love to us behaved, To show us how we must be saved; And if you want to know the way, Be pleased to hear what He did say.
And we were heirs to endless woes, Till God the Lord did interpose; And so a promise soon did run That He would redeem us by his Son.

There are more verses, including:

"Go preach the Gospel," now He said,
"To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free."

O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if He's pleased to grant thee this,
Thou'rt sure to have eternal bliss.

God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to His people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.

Pagan, or not?

I put out my Christmas wreath this weekend. I've known Christians who choose not to celebrate Christmas. Kevin DeYoung explains why at least some of the oft-cited reasons don't stand up. From "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?":

We’ve heard it so many times that it’s practically part of the Christmas story itself.

The Romans celebrated their seven-day winter festival, Saturnalia, starting on December 17. It was a thoroughly pagan affair full of debauchery and the worship of the god Saturn. To mark the end of the winter solstice, the Roman emperor established December 25 as a feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). Wanting to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans and more popular with the people, the church co-opted these pagan festivals and put the celebration of the birth of their Savior on December 25. For whatever the Christmas holiday has become today, it started as a copycat of well-established pagan holidays. If you like Christmas, you have Saturnalia and Sol Invictus to thank.

That’s the story, and everyone from liberal Christians to conservative Christians to non-Christians seem to agree that it’s true.

Except that it isn’t. ....

...[T]here is good evidence that December 25 was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. This is the argument Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, makes in his article “How December 25 Became Christmas” (first published in Bible Review in 2002). Let me try to distill McGowan’s fine historical work by addressing three questions.

The three questions:

• When did Christians first start celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25?
• When was it first suggested that Christmas grew out of pagan origins?
• Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?

The answers.

Kevin DeYoung, "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?," Gospel Coalition, December 15, 2020.

Marcionism

An ancient heresy returns again in support of political bigotry. From The Free Press:

.... Like a boil on the backside of the body politic, there has been an ugly irruption of Jew-hating foolishness over casting in the upcoming Netflix film Mary, about the life of Jesus’s mother. People are outraged—outraged!—that director D.J. Caruso cast an Israeli Jew, Noa Cohen, to play the title character. ....

...[E]very Christian knows from the Bible that Mary was a Jewish maiden visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who told her that, though a virgin, she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear Israel’s long-awaited messiah.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord,” she replied. “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38)

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a recitation of the long lineage of Jesus, to demonstrate that the Nazarene son of Mary descended from both Abraham and King David. This is not coincidence: It is necessary to establish Jesus’s messianic credentials according to the Hebrew Bible.

Of course Jews don’t accept this, but believe that the messiah is still to come. The point is simply that it is impossible to extricate Jesus and his mother from Judaism. ....

To deny the Jewishness of Jesus is not only to negate the clear and unambiguous testimony of Scripture but to render as nonsense the entire salvation narrative.

Indeed, as Jesus himself told the Samaritan woman, God sent salvation to all of humanity through the Jewish people. No Jews, no Jesus. Though from the Christian perspective, Jews today reject the divinity of Jesus, as did their ancestors—while from the Jewish perspective they have merely remained true to their covenant with God—followers of Jesus cannot reject the Jews without being guilty of a serious, even fatal, heresy.

That heresy is a very old one, and it is called Marcionism. Marcion was a wealthy second-century Christian who, under the influence of Gnosticism, taught that the God of the New Testament was not the God of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew god was, according to Marcion, a god of wrath; the Christian god was a god of love. These are two distinct deities, he said, and the Christian god is sovereign. ....

Marcionism was strongly condemned by the Church fathers, who defended the legitimacy and necessity of the Hebrew scriptures. In Marcionism, Christianity replaces Judaism; in Christian orthodoxy, Christianity fulfills Judaism. “Don’t misunderstand why I have come—it isn’t to cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets,” said Jesus (Matthew 5:17). “No, I came to fulfill them and to make them all come true.” ....

...[W]hat all authoritative Christian traditions share is an irrevocable, undeniable testimony that God chose the Jewish people to make Himself known to all of humanity, and that without Hebrew Scripture and tradition, the Christian faith would make no sense at all. .... (more)

Rod Dreher, "On Mary and the Mob," The Free Press, Dec. 1, 2024.

Nicaea

Philip Jenkins, always worth reading, on "The Nicene Myth," in which he argues that the Council of Nicaea wasn't the inflection point that many historical accounts suggest. Here he describes the council, but the essay is much longer (do read it all, if you have the time):

The story of Nicaea is quickly told. In 312, Constantine consolidated power in the Roman Empire and granted toleration to Christianity the following year. He accepted some leading Christians as his advisors on religious matters and felt the need to demonstrate his leadership of the larger church when it fell into crisis or division.

Such a situation developed in Alexandria, where the presbyter Arius argued that Christ the Son was not fully equal to God the Father. Because the Father was unique in being unbegotten, he must be different from the Son, who was begotten in time, and through whom the Father created the world: “There was a time when He [the Son] was not.” Just how directly these ideas stemmed from any one individual such as Arius is much disputed, but it is rhetorically useful to label any given teaching as the quirky sentiments of one lone individual, rather than a broad intellectual current. It should be noted, though, that Arius was actually not departing too far from views held by eminently respectable earlier thinkers.

Even so, as the Alexandrian church debated the issue, it was Arius personally who attracted the stigma for venturing on dangerous ground, and he was condemned. To resolve the spreading controversy, Constantine summoned a great council from the whole world, the oikou mene, which thus became the church’s first “ecumenical” council.

Between 250 and 300 bishops gathered at Nicaea, representing a minority of the 1,800 or so who then held that office; only five came from the Western church. Tensions ran high during the month or so of debate, and legend holds that Arius was publicly slapped by Bishop Nicholas of Myra—the historical original of Santa Claus. Ultimately, Arius was condemned, with only two bishops prepared to speak up for him. Christ’s full equality with the Father was proclaimed in a new creed, which declared him to be of the same substance, homoousion.

With their mission duly accomplished, the Fathers dispersed to their homes, and every one, we assume, lived orthodox-ly ever after.

That history seems straightforward, and far too much so for many tastes. Through the centuries, Nicaea has become a potent symbol of whatever later believers wished to find: it offers a splendid hook on which to hang whatever trends or facts need to be stigmatized. .... (more)

Jenkins on Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code should convince readers to never rely on thrillers for historical knowledge. Jenkins also addresses, and corrects, errors from other, more serious sources.

Philip Jenkins, "The Nicene Myth," Modern Age, Nov. 18, 2024.

All Saints

From a few years ago, a few thoughts about the significance of All Saints' Day:

For over a thousand years, many Christians have celebrated November 1 as All Saints’ Day. In America, the day is best known for the preceding day: All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween. On Halloween we try to scare each other and dress up as what we are not. On All Saints’ Day, we encourage each other by remembering who we are. ....

Like any holiday, All Saints’ Day means various things to various people. Holidays are like that. They carry many meanings. As I see it, All Saints’ Day has three themes: (1) the union of all Christians, living and dead, in one organism, the body of Christ, (2) the inspiring example of other Christians, especially those who have died, and (3) remembering those who are no longer physically with us. ....

For me, there are two essentials for worship on All Saints’: the collect (or opening prayer) for All Saints’ Day and singing six or more stanzas (to Ralph Vaughn Williams’s tune) of William How’s hymn “For All the Saints.” ....

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

.... All Saints’ Day is a day when we remember that we are by God’s grace one body in Christ Jesus, united with Christians around the world and in heaven in praising and serving God. .... (more)

David Bains, "All Saints’ Day: Three Themes," Samford University, Oct. 28, 2020.