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Dec 10, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | John Ehrett
A truth-claim regarding (for instance) the simplicity of God is “necessary” in that it is integral to the definition of Him: God would not be God were He not metaphysically simple. On a classical theist account, to be actus purus, without unrealized potentialities, is simply what it means to be God. What this means is that the claims of Protestant scholasticism in the context of “theology proper” are, in principle, likely to be uniformly applicable across time and space.
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Jun 17, 2024 | 
mereorthodoxy.com | John Ehrett
Read another book! The slogan is biting, caustic. And in a vacuum, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a potshot at fundamentalists.
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May 20, 2024 | 
adfontesjournal.com | John Ehrett |Rhys Laverty
Most people have never heard of the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985). His name doesn’t appear on the syllabi of mainstream humanities departments—or in the curricula of classical colleges, Christian or otherwise. From one angle, the omission may seem perplexing. Schmitt was a powerful critic of liberal democracy in the modern age—far more forceful and articulate than, say, Joseph de Maistre—and many of his ideas remain influential today. But, then again, Schmitt was a Nazi.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
firstthings.com | John Ehrett
Few scenes better capture filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic sensibility than the climax of 2010’s Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman. Silhouetted by brilliant light, a ballerina falls from the stage. She is dressed all in white, save for the crimson stain slowly spreading outward from a gaping wound in her torso. Voices and figures swarm, hazily perceived. As her world fades to white, she murmurs a single victorious line: “Perfect. . . . I was perfect.” Beauty and horror unite in extremis.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
americanreformer.org | John Ehrett
Earlier this week, Oren Cass—executive director of the American Compass think tank, and a widely-followed public intellectual among conservatives on the “new right”—delivered the annual First Things lecture at the Heritage Foundation.
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Feb 7, 2024 | 
americanreformer.org | John Ehrett
As I write this, there is a watch on my wrist. It isn’t especially fancy—this isn’t a Rolex or Omega, but a stainless-steel Seiko. Its case and band no longer glint in the sunshine, but bear the dull matte burr of long wear. And over the years I’ve had to do various forms of upkeep, from adjusting the size of the band to replacing the crystal face to fixing the internal mechanism that makes it run. This watch was my grandfather’s, and after he passed away in 2014, it descended to me.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thenewatlantis.com | James Pethokoukis |Robert Bellafiore |Nadia Asparouhova |John Ehrett
Sign in or Subscribe Now for audio version The future ain’t what it used to be. From John Maynard Keynes’s prediction of a fifteen-hour workweek to Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s interplanetary waltzing, many futurists and crystal-ball seers of the twentieth century assured us that, thanks to the wonders of technology, things were looking up for the human race.
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Jan 15, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | John Ehrett
Treating religious claims as strictly experiential-expressive can help carve out a space for religious free exercise, over against its cultured despisers. But this is a profoundly unstable space. For one thing, it generally abandons the possibility of giving a normative account of the good of religion as such. One can point to the meaningfulness of religion in the lives of its adherents, but it is denied any possibility of relevance to reality itself.
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Sep 26, 2023 | 
ifstudies.org | John Ehrett
Across the nation, online age verification is a hotter topic than ever. With federal action seemingly stalled, states from Virginia to Utah have passed a wide variety of laws mandating age checks for certain internet activities. Even California has gotten in on the action, with its recent California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act— a digital privacy law providing guidance for online “age assurance” measures.
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Aug 15, 2023 | 
americanreformer.org | John Ehrett
Amidst his twilight years, suffering from gout and consumed by the fear that his Reformation had failed, Martin Luther penned the following words:What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? . . . First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.
