Uniting modern persons is no religion or creed or political vision, but rather the world of film and literature. These get to us beneath our discursive reasoning. Whatever creed or critic you follow, you probably like Johnny Cash, The Wire, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
“Strategy” in the Culture Wars (Part 2 of 3)
One way of reading the story of civilization is to read it as a story of divine pedagogy. This can be overstated at the expense of other truths and metrics of reality, but (as such) it is both a biblical notion (Gal. 3-4) and a thickly treated theme in the history of the Christian church. Can modernity possibly be read in this light?
Best Reads of 2019
We asked a handful of our staff and Davenant Fellows what books they particularly enjoyed reading over this past year.
Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 5: A Way Forward
People have more than one reason (whether they know it or not) for changing their religious commitments. Conversion is usually a multilayered process. In this series, we have examined the (1) psychological, (2) theological, and (3) sociological dimensions of conversion.
Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 4: The Sociology of Conversion
Why do Protestants convert? The answer, as we’ve seen in our posts this fall, is complicated. It cannot be reduced to simple slogans or polemical talking points, and it calls for serious self-examination among Protestants
Why We Need the Common Good
Christian morality is not ultimately instruction in how to make oneself a member of the Christian club. It is not a self-help program whose rules are adopted by a small set of people who wish to better themselves. Christian morals, rather, are simply moral teachings that agree with the natural design of the universe.
A Century of Latin Bibles: c. 1550–1650
Some of us may have been disappointed to see only Lutherans among the hymn-writers which we recently sampled. But fear not, Reformed readers, because Latin culture flourished in early Reformed circles as well.
Latin Hymns Reformed
Everyone knows that the Reformation opened the floodgates of German songwriting, transforming the hymn into communal song. No less astonishing, but much less remembered, is the early Lutherans’ tireless work at writing an entirely new corpus of Latin hymns.
Carolinas Convivium Recap
Brent King reflects on an engaging weekend of fellowship and learning at Davenant House.
Purified by a Principle? Augustine’s Conversion of Neo-Platonism
In City of God 10.24, as part of his analysis of and argument with Platonism and Neoplatonism, Augustine takes up the question of mediation–who mediates, and how–questions of some moment in previous and contemporary Platonist demonology, which made use of several levels of divine or semi-divine intermediaries in order to bridge the gap between the world of flesh and the world of spirit.
