Thomas Howard

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Articles

Unholy War - Rachel Lu

1 week ago | lawliberty.org | Thomas Howard |Rachel Lu |Theodore Dalrymple |Bruno Meyerhof Salama

In 1908, a 13-year-old boy named Khorloogiin Dugar entered a Buddhist monastery in Achit Beysiyn, Mongolia, a region under the control of the Qing Dynasty. He took the religious name “Choibalsan” and began studying to be a lama, but spirituality, it would seem, was not his forte. In 1913, the boy fled from the monastery and found his way into the Russian education system.
Two Publications

Jan 13, 2025 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

I hope I might be forgiven for using this post to make known two publications (one out already and another forthcoming) that I think (hope!) will be of interest to Anxious Bench readers. The first is an essay, “Armenia Sighs,” based on a trip I made in March to the country of Armenia, which remains locked in conflict with its neighbor, Azerbaijan, due to the latter’s invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani province predominantly peopled with Armenians—that is until recently.
“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Review of Tomáš Halík's The Afternoon of Christianity - Christian Scholar’s Review

Nov 5, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Thomas Howard |Tomáš Halík

The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change Published by University of Notre Dame Press in 290pp / $25.00 / 9780268207465 When an influential priest (the Czech, Templeton-award winning author, teacher, and theologian Tomáš Halík) criticizes “ecclesiastical authorities” while seeking to advance the agenda of another ecclesiastical authority (in-deed, the highest of them all: Pope Francis, to whom the book is dedicated), one can’t help but be hopeful for or at least curious about the...
America’s Other Universities

Oct 14, 2024 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

As anti-Israel protests convulsed American campuses in the spring semester—reappearing this fall—one might be forgiven, judging from the headlines, for thinking that the Ivy League and a handful of major state universities constitute the entirety of American higher education. Not infrequently, even commentators on these events hailed from the same set of schools. But accepting this view distorts reality.
The Christian Origins Of Religious Freedom?

Jul 8, 2024 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

Almost anything by Robert Wilken is worth reading. I have benefitted immensely from his The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (Yale University Press, 2003) and The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (Yale University Press, 2012). Wilken does not disappoint in Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom (Yale University Press, 2019), which I have been rereading and pondering as we mark national independence day this July.
The Fate Of Humanities At A Lutheran University

May 13, 2024 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

Save the Humanities at Valparaiso UniversityValparaiso University, where I teach, has been doing some belt-tightening recently. Sadly, some departments–theology, philosophy, German- that have defined this Lutheran University for decades have been put in a “discontinuous process.” This does not necessarily mean that they will be discontinued, but all affected departments must make the case for their ongoing existence and/or seek mergers with other departments.
Gregory Who?

Mar 11, 2024 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

When Pope Francis named the Armenian monk Gregory of Narek (c. 951-1003) the thirty-sixth universal doctor of the Catholic Church in 2015, many were caught off guard. Gregory who, from where, joining the company of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas? This was my response too.
On Reading Gregory of Nyssa

Jan 8, 2024 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

One consolation of spotty education is the opportunity to read texts later in life that you wish you had read much earlier, but which fell through the cracks until you were mature enough to appreciate them more fully. Such was the case for me reading Gregory of Nyssa’s charming, instructive The Life of Moses, an account of the Christian life read into the Exodus story through the actions of its chief protagonist, Moses.
Your House as a Holy Place by Thomas Howard

Jan 7, 2024 | touchstonemag.com | Thomas Howard

Recognizing Signs of Heaven in Your HomeI have made a minuscule alteration in the title which the sponsors of this conference assigned to me for my speech. I think that in your brochures you will see this speech listed as “Your Home as a Holy Place.” I have no difficulty at all with that title; it is a good one. But for a particular (and very minor) reason, I am changing that word “home” to “house.” “Your House as a Holy Place.” This will seem to be a quibble.
“The Most Important Theological Work of the Twentieth Century”

Nov 13, 2023 | patheos.com | Thomas Howard

One of the challenges of writing intellectual history is the task of summing up large works in a relatively small amount of space. Doing this for Karl Barth’s multivolume Church Dogmatics, proclaimed by many as “the most important theological work of the twentieth,” has proven especially daunting for me as I continue to work on a current book project. I include here my attempt to do so. Did I do justice to the work? Did I capture its general shape? What makes for a good summary?