The infamous chapter of “the Grand Inquisitor” in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” is rightfully praised as one of the great literary deconstructions of coercive institutional power. Ivan Karamazov’s parable presents a terrifying possibility: that human beings, unable to bear the freedom Christ gives them, will eventually prefer an institution that relieves them of the […]
In the world of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, grace rarely arrives in comfortable form; most often it arrive through humiliation, suffering, and grotesque moments in which a person’s carefully constructed understanding of himself is suddenly deconstructed and exposed as a lie. Few of her stories demonstrate this more powerfully than “Revelation,” first published in 1964, the […]
What is the last true rebellion? The creators of the Orthodox Christian magazine “Death to the World” offered an interesting answer. The last true rebellion, they argued, is “to be dead to this world and alive to the other world.” For many disaffected young people, this message possessed an unusual power. Surrounded by consumerism, political […]
Why are modern people so desensitized to violence? Some insist that atrocities such as the Holocaust could never occur again in the age of the internet and social media, because instant communication would expose evil before it could fully manifest itself. Yet the international reaction to the suffering and destruction in Gaza has revealed the […]
What’s going on in the world of magnetics? Physicist Dr Weiping Yu and Robert Schaudt join David Gornoski to talk about how TWST Events is promoting scientific innovations through conventions throughout America, Dr Yu’s appearance in the recent Motor, Drive Systems, & Magnetics conference, what the Magnetics Conference will look like in the future, and […]
Among the great American novelists of the twentieth century, few have proven more prophetic than Philip K Dick. His novels are often shelved under science fiction, yet that label obscures the deeper nature of his work. Dick was not merely interested in futuristic gadgets or speculative worlds. He was concerned with metaphysics, memory, identity, death, […]
Adnane Mokrani’s “Towards an Islamic Theology of Nonviolence” is perhaps the only engagement with René Girard’s anthropology written from within an Islamic framework. In the aftermath of 9/11, Girard often suggested that militant Islam represented a possible return of sacrificial religion into history. Mokrani’s work can be read, at least in part, as a response […]
Why is there an increasing trend among the youth toward Christianity? I cannot claim a definitive answer, not least because I am no longer young. At best, I can draw from my own experience and cautiously speculate. My own journey began with a simple but overwhelming realization: that God loves human beings far more deeply […]
I recently had the pleasure of watching “Project Hail Mary” on the big screen with a close friend; it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a movie theatre in a long time. The film is refreshingly optimistic, as my friend put it, and offers something much needed in our current climate of […]
Those who seek to hasten the return of Christ (or the first advent of a messiah) through war would do well to reflect on “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” the haunting work of Walter M. Miller Jr.. Far from presenting catastrophe as a prelude to divine renewal, Miller’s novel offers a sobering vision of history caught […]