I can see you're getting in the swing of your upcoming studies already! Your diagnosis—and perhaps prognosis—concerning the "bright agnostics" I encounter in my honors seminars is for the most part right on target, and you're right in thinking that "The Noble Lie" was...

Yes indeed, reading and listening to lectures can take a person only so far. Do you know the Tibetan parable? A lame man and a blind man are both attempting to make their way to the holy city of Lhasa, which stands in this case for the Western Paradise of...

Having taken note of your posts from our "Faith, Doubt, and God" course, I thought I might jot you two a joint reply, for your comments are related as two sides of one coin. B. has teasingly, but at the same seriously, accused me of mounting an argumentum ad hominem....

Do I have an opinion, you ask, as to whether the professoriate is truly skewed to the left, as David Horowitz and other conservative activists have charged? I'm minded to quote William Kirkpatrick, "the Great Knock", who—as you may recall—was the young C. S. Lewis's...

As you seem to have discovered for yourself, the key to maintaining balance in the midst of our physical struggles is objectivity with respect to our emotional states. You speak of "managing my anger and sadness by willfully ignoring them until they pass", and this...

You ask whether the following, admittedly mysterious, passage "implies a doctrine of reincarnation": "And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John…. This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,...

You're right of course that there's no Byzantine Empire. But as to whether it should, or shouldn't, serve as a model for "a truly Christian society"—a pointer to the pattern "laid up in the heavens" (Republic, 592b)—that's a larger issue. Surely Byzantium...

Thanks for your interest in my upcoming USC Maymester course: "Mysteries of the Christian East". Yes, the majority of the seats are already filled, but there's still room for a few additional registrants. As you will have noted on the Master Schedule, "special...

Here are some answers (or attempted answers) to the four questions you pose. God knows best. 1. You ask how to "fit" your daily prayers into an already tightly packed schedule. One of the Catholic saints—Francis de Sales, perhaps—said that everybody should...

So you're going to be leading a discussion of the great Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church for an adult Sunday school group at your church, and you write to ask whether I have any suggestions? NO! What else could the answer be to a question about...