Schlepping the Shelf: June 2025

 So what's on the shelf these days? I've got a long backlog to make up since January, since my life was consumed in succession by my master's thesis, NSA graduation and a family visit, and Logos Online finals. All that being finally over, let's revel in the summer solitude by doing a little schlepping, shall we?

Finished

The End of Protestantism by Peter Leithart. As a survey of some of the ways denominationalism goes wrong, and a record of some interesting church developments in the global south, it was fine. But I reject his overall theses—first that Jesus has not been granted his prayer for unity in John 17; second, that now is the time to shed denominationalism. As usual for Leithart, this is highly academic and studies-based. The world has changed rapidly since 2016, when this was written, and in my humble opinion it is woefully out of date due to the meteoric rise of nationalism and factionalism we've seen in the past decade. Perhaps this is the century of Protestantism after all?

The Great Betrayal by Ernle Bradford. A detailed and moving account of the scurrilous Fourth Crusade—which did not crusade at all but was diverted by the crafty Enrico Dandalo, the doge of Venice, to destroy and sack rival Constantinople, the last Christian barrier to the Mohommedan hordes in the east. The fact that a Crusading army got hoodwinked into doing a merchant's dirty work should make all the terminally-online Crusader anons think really deeply about their project. Simple zeal is not enough to do the Lord's work; sometimes it just means you do the Devil's work faster. Her treasury depleted and a vast amount of territory, scholarship, and craftsmanship lost during the sack and the Christian infighting that followed, Constantinople would fall to the Turks only a few hundred years later.

The Life of Antony by Athanasius. Translated H. Ellershaw (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). Deeply moving and convicting. We Protestants lost much when, in our zeal to get rid of the rotting encrustation of wonder-working saints, we utterly discounted the life of sacrifice and miracles that so many of our ancient sources hold out clearly. The world is a wondrous place, and God works in it when we ask Him. May we ask more, and be worthy when we ask. I can see why Augustine (indeed, all Europe) was impressed.

Oliver Cromwell by Theodore Roosevelt. An interesting little book—more because of what it says about Roosevelt than Cromwell (I think Buchan’s version is both more detailed and more personal). This is a great read for students of American history. Teddy loves to pull parallels with the War for Independence and Washington; some of which, I think, are even true. Modern historians would denigrate this as too “Great Man Theory of History” and not complex enough. I think it is useful for precisely this moment, as we see how great men can actually shape history. Free Gutenberg Press ebook.

The Maker vs. the Takers by Jerry Bowyer. An economic explanation of Jesus’ life, parables, and crucifixion. While it’s important to approach this with the grain of salt that lurks in all explanations of scripture that just happen to line up with our own current viewpoints, I think he’s on to something. This makes several obscure/problematic passages in the Gospels work nicely. A recommended read, particularly as the Gospel references to "the Jews" continue to heat up on X.

The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman. Excellent and well-written, though it is a great pity his faith in Rome occasionally moves him to miss the point of his own work. A worthy candidate for required reading for a college faculty. What is a college? Why should we have one? What should we teach when we do have one? How do you avoid producing merely learned fools? Newman cogently answers all of these, while attacking the rise of the "scientific" research university in its very earliest (1852) days. An applicable sententia: “Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study.”

A boatload of ancient Roman rhetorical texts--from the usual suspects (Cicero and Seneca) to some more obscure corners (Calpurnius Flaccus or Libanius, anyone?) I think I learned a lot; I also doubt anyone else really cares. We shall nerd out about rhetoric another time.

Ploductivity by Douglas Wilson. A reread, but still great. If you struggle at all with time management and stewardship of your various responsibilities (and who doesn't?) get this and read it now.

In Progress

I'm working up a new Humanities III (that's medieval) course for Logos Online in the fall, so most of my reading right now are texts from that book list, though there are a few exceptions: 

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford. This one will probably warrant a full post when I'm done with it. Suffice it for now that I'm really enjoying it--enough to savor it and read it very slowly.

Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory. I've long been familiar with Howard Pyle's version, now I get a look at the original (1485). It's been fun spotting a few of my old vocabulary friends from Middle English, such as "thilke," though my favorite word thus far is "feutered"--as in "the knights feutered their spears, and dashed together, and bore each other down horse and man" (which happens quite a lot). By turns fun, allegorical, bawdy, chivalric, and barbaric; it's a fun summary of the late medieval period. Currently I'm in the tragedy of Tristram and Isolde.

Gesta Regum Anglorum (Chronicle of the Kings of England) by William of Malmesbury. In an age of Christian Nationalism debates, it's quite fun to see a historian evaluate a civil ruler by two simple criteria: did he protect his land from invaders, and did he support the church (usually monetarily). It's amazing how many times he's noted something along the lines of "This ruler killed a man and carried off his woman and lived with her in sin and was excommunicated for it (by the very bishop he'd appointed himself) and was drunk all the time, but he repented on his deathbed and left quite a bit of land to the local monastery, so all in all he was a blessed ruler. We know this because of the number of miracles that have occurred at his tomb." It's simply an utterly opposite way of looking at the world. "The past is a foreign country--they do things differently there."

Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It's fascinating to read this side-by-side with L'Morte and see how Tennyson adjusted/rewrote/cleaned up Malory for his Victorian audience. Don't hear that as bad; sometimes (the seduction of Merlin by Vivian, for instance) he vastly improved it. This is good enough that I'm annoyed I'm only encountering now; someone should have made me read it earlier.

In Defense of Christian Nations by Michael Belch. Just started this one. I had the privilege of meeting the author (a fellow LOS teacher) last week. So far, it looks like he's taking a similar tack to Abraham Kuyper in Common Grace, though from a slightly different angle: the nations are governed by the Noahic Covenant down to our own day, and are thus ordained by God for our ordering and instruction. More to come.

Schlepping the Shelf: January 2025

 

The five of you who read my stuff semi-regularly will know that I’ve had a regular entry (really, my only regular long-form post) called the “book of the month.” I stole the idea from Doug Wilson, and I like to think it has gone fairly well. But you also probably noticed that the series died right around the time school started, and before that, scheduling had gotten very irregular. This was partially due to the usual writing discipline problems, but it was also partially due to my desire to make up a respectably lengthy post for my readers. With certain books, I had difficulty doing that—some books really only do warrant a blurb or a sentence.

Retiring the Book of the Month

So I am retiring the “book of the month” feature, at least for the moment.

Book of the Month July 2024: The Total State

 

I am a teacher, and a bookworm, and a nerd (possibly in that order) and so when I want someone to understand something, I will usually hand them a book. You want to understand the Crusades? Book. You can't figure out how to reconcile the one and the many? Book. How should you raise kids? Here's a book. The Bible is one of them, of course, but God has been kind enough to let us copy his method of communication about innumerable things. 

But this leads to a problem: how do you decide which books to read? There are probably now more books about, say, WWII than any one person could, quite literally, read in a lifetime! With all this information wandering about, how do you select and shape your reading?

Book of the Month June 2023: Empires of Light

Great are the powers of electricity....It makes millionaires. It paints devil's tails in the air and floats placidly in the waters of the earth. It hides in the air. It creeps into every living thing....Last night it nestled in the sherry. It lurked in the pale Rhine wine. It hid in the claret and sparkled in the champagne. It trembled in the sorbet electrique....Small wonder that the taste was thrilled and the man who sipped was electrified...energy begets energy. (from the Buffalo Morning Express, January 13th, 1897, after the city had been electrified)

I rather desperately wanted to write this on Joe Rigney's new Emotional Sabotage. But if you're one of the four people who reads my stuff, you've already heard of that one. So I decided to do something a bit more unknown. So our candidate for this month, flouncing into the (electric) spotlight in all her shy glory, is Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes (2004). In this highly readable historical work, we are treated to visions of how a substance that we moderns take for granted--electricity--sparkled and crackled its way into American life at the end of the 19th century.

Book of the Month May 2024: Ascent to Love

"Here failed the strength of my high fantasy;/Already though my will and my desire/Were, as a balanced wheel is moved, turned by/The love that moves the sun and other stars."

Ascent to Love is a study guide (or perhaps, more accurately, an interpretive overview) of Dante's Divine Comedy. I heard someone say once that Peter Leithart is a better literary critic than a theologian, and based on what I've read of his stuff so far, it seems to check out. This was excellent. He charts a course through the three parts of the Comedy and ties it all together as a pursuit of Love--not the smarmy emotion of so many Hollywood movies, but the burning, bright holiness that makes everything work. Dante begins wandering in a dark wood. He is lost, hunted, and unable to reach his life's goal. But his cries are heard, and he is sent a guide--the great poet Virgil--to show him the way out of his errors. His journey is the wonderful song of the Commedia. 

Book of the Month April 2024: Common Grace

“We fortify ourselves in opposition to God when we view this world as our sphere and this earth as our domain. God has his heaven, and we have this earth, and a bartering ensues in which, after death, God allocates to us a piece of his heaven--while we, in exchange, give God during our earthly life a piece of this earthly life, as it were. And then, of course, a somewhat businesslike mind-set governs in this sacred realm as well, by which we attempt to purchase as large a piece of heaven as possible by sacrificing as small a piece of this earthly life as possible.”—Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace Vol. II

It is quite common in modern Reformed circles to talk blithely of "Kuyperianism." The term is rarely defined, but seems to mean the opposite of a stark spiritual/material dualism, where heaven is God's pure spiritual domain and the earth belongs to the Devil and his angels (meaning a Christian need not bother himself with it overmuch). We might summarize it as the mindset of "this world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through" of many old gospel songs. In this view, a Christian is a stranger with his mind on purely spiritual concerns, and what is going on in this realm of sin and trouble need not concern him. But Kuyperians instead claim the Christian does have earthly concerns--usually concentrated in the political and economic realms. While this is a fine definition, there is a lot more to true Kuyperianism than an integrated orthopraxy.

The name is coined from Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), a Dutch pastor who managed to do more in his eighty-seven years than any one man had a right to do (start a political party, found and edit a major newspaper, manage a nationwide church split, found a university, be elected prime minister, write theological bestsellers...the list could go on). In America, he is best known for his Lectures on Calvinism, originally six talks given as part of Princeton's Stone Lectures in 1898; as well as for his famous quote,

 "Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

Kuyper was one of the leading voices of what is often called Neo-Calvinism, a movement that opposed Modernism--the rationalism and secularism that flowed over Europe in the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquests. He saw Calvinism as not simply a particular Reformed response to the papacy or a special emphasis on soteriology, but as a total system or "worldview." This system would allow Christians to oppose the totalizing claims of modern life with an equally totalizing (but far more justly balanced) response.

He is particularly well-known today for his response to the exaltation of the principle of popular sovereignty. Europe had rallied to the idea that the voice of the people, not the monarch, holds ultimate sway in any government system. Whatever the people decide goes. Hegel divinized that process as the dialectical "voice of history" and it is, of course, a key component of political battles in our day. Therefore, if what ever the people says goes, and the voice of the people is the government, then there is no appeal beyond government fiat. Kuyper refused to accept this view of the state's all-encompassing authority. Instead, he divided various governments into "spheres"--primarily civil, ecclesiastical, and family. Each sphere has unique authorities and penalties, and were separated and founded by God; but they overlap in practical ways in day-to-day life. Dividing them is where it gets tricky, because every individual belongs to different spheres.

So how do we know what to do? One of the common answers has been the classical concept of "natural law." However, with the rise of Darwinian evolution and materialism, this term often got freighted with the idea that the rules for life somehow existed outside of God, or at least of any Christian revelation. Kuyper, leaning on the traditional Reformed view of covenant, instead formulated the concept of "common grace." Grace here might be best defined as "God's unmerited favor." While particular grace saved the individual, and covenantal grace saved the elect, common grace saved all of mankind after the sin of Adam, when it rightly should have died in his transgression. Without this general or "common" grace, the last two would have no opportunity to work.

Here, then, are three touchstones of grace. One is entirely personal, a white stone, engraved with a name known only to God and to you. This is wholly particular grace. The second one is the touchstone of the covenant grace, a blessed gift you enjoy in common with all God's children. The third is the touchstone of a general human grace, coming to you because you are among the children of humanity, yours together with not only all God's children but in common with all the children of humanity. (Common Grace, Vol. I, pg. 5, italics original)

It is important to note that Kuyper saw common grace as in no way salvific, as he was occasionally accused of doing (and went to particular pains to refute). He saw it instead as a way to distinguish God's forbearance against sin:

The notion of "general" grace is so easily misused, as if by it were meant saving grace, and that is absolutely not the case. The only grace that is saving in the absolute sense is particular, personal grace, and even covenant grace receives this title of honor only with certain qualifications. Nevertheless, even though covenant grace in certain instances is saving in terms of its nature when significance, this may never be ascribed to general grace.... In itself general grace carries no saving seed within itself and is therefore of an entirely different nature from particular grace or covenant grace. Since this is often lost from view when speaking about general grace, to prevent misunderstanding and confusion it seemed more judicious to revive in our title the otherwise somewhat antiquated expression, and to render the phrase communis gratia, used formerly by Latin-speaking theologians, as "common grace." (Vol. I, pg. 6) 

He treated the subject at length in articles in the newspaper he founded and ran, De Heraut. The finished articles were then organized and collected into three volumes: Volume I covered the biblical theology of the doctrine, what Kuyper called its "origin and operation;" (Vol. I preface, xxxviii) Volume II offered a doctrinal, systematic presentation; Volume III gave practical out workings of the doctrine in everyday Dutch life (from cowpox vaccines to education to Sabbath laws). The entire set was published in book form in 1902. It has been freshly translated into English in a fine set available from Lexham Press.

In our day of debates over general equity theonomy, Christian nationalism, or the effectiveness of the Constitution, the most valuable and easily accessible volume will be the third on practical concerns. In spite of the intervening time and ocean, most of his topics remain highly relevant to American Christians today. I mused while reading it that the history of America might have looked quite different if this work had been translated when it came out, instead of a hundred and ten years later--we might have been far more skeptical of government education, for one. But it is never too late to do the reading! Kuyper is brilliant, and even when you disagree with him, he forces you to think through an issue.

Thanks to the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society, there is much more of Kuyper available in our day than the Lectures on Calvinism. If you've got the time and the inclination, I highly recommend you dive deeper into the work and life of this irrepressible Dutchman.

Book of the Month February 2024: Full-Time

 

Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life by David Bahnsen is written by a Christian to Christians, and we desperately need to pay attention to every bit of what he has to say. This book has a pretty simple thesis: everything pop culture has told you about work has probably been wrong.

Overview

"I think we are all familiar with the cliched Hollywood setup of a man 'married to his career' who over the course of the movie slowly realizes that he is missing out on the 'important' things in life and eventually picks an alternative (a romance, his kids, more frequent walks through a garden, mentoring a troubled high school youth) over the 'evils' of careerism and personal ambition." (17)

Now, Bahnsen stresses (over and over again) that there is nothing wrong with these 'important' things. Rather, the problem is in making work and these things enemies. Can you have both work and a healthy life, without downgrading work or the life? Why are we always told we have to choose between them? Shouldn't it be possible to do both?

Book of the Month January 2024: Did America Have a Christian Founding?

 

The short answer? Yes.

But if you want to start getting into more depth than that, Mark David Hall's Did America Have a Christian Founding: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth (2019) is a great place to start.

"Scholars and popular authors routinely assert that America's founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state...Even prominent Christian college professors such as Richard T. Hughes argue that "most of the American founders embraced some form of Deism, not historically orthodox Christianity." Examples of authors who make such statements may be multiplied almost indefinitely. These claims are patently and unequivocally false. This book demonstrates why." (xv) 

Why Should You Read This Book?

If you live in America today, you probably have been raised to believe one of two views of the United States' early relationship to religion:

A 2023 Reader's Digest

 Well, I didn't quite manage to publish twelve "Book of the Month" posts. I shall have to attempt to be more consistent in 2024. 

In order to console all five readers of this blog for missing so many of my sparkling recommendations, here is a brief list of twenty of my favorite reads of 2023. When strangers ask me what I do with my free time, the answer will probably involve some of these. They are in no particular order. Some of them appeared as a Book of the Month, some didn't--but I think they are all worth your time. I've added a few flyaway thoughts to each. If you want further musings on any of them, feel free to ask. There are few things I like talking about more than what I'm reading.

Happy New Year to you all, and let's see what this next one brings. (Hopefully, a lot more books!)

• Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson. Always great, particularly if you have anything to do with crafting thoughts into words--which is most of us.

The Book with the Curl in the Middle of Its Forehead

 

Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization is one of those really frustrating books whose overall value fluctuates depending on what chapter you're currently in. It's rather like that old Longfellow rhyme:

There was a little girl,
    Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good, 
    She was very good indeed.
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Book of the Month August 2023: The Prince

 

“Friendships that are acquired at a price and not with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are not owned; and when the time comes they cannot be spent.”

This month's work might be called a classic, though we would be better served by inventing an adjective in English that means "famous by means of being continually controversial." Such a word is sorely needed in our online age of furor--but perpetual indignation is by no means a new idea, for this book has been furrowing brows since it was published in 1532.

Book of the Month June/July 2023: Stealing the General

 This book of the month is dedicated to eight-year-old me, sitting enthralled on the living room floor, glued to the screen while Fess Parker battled to change the course of the War Between the States by wrecking a Confederate railroad in The Great Locomotive Chase. That movie intersected two of my great loves: trains and warfare. I recommend it to all of you who haven't seen it. And if you watch it and want to know more about what really happened, you should pick up this book. 

Russell S. Bonds' Stealing the General is a relatively recent (2006) monograph on the Civil War event usually called the Andrews Raid. During the early days of the war, a group of Western Union soldiers volunteered to go south in disguise, under a civilian blockade runner named James Andrews. They commandeered a train near Atlanta and headed north. The plan was to wreck track, bridges, and telegraph lines all the way to Chattanooga until the Confederate Army was unable to reinforce the town. 

It nearly worked, but the train's conductor, William Fuller, refused to admit defeat and chased the train; first on foot and then with a series of locomotives. He raised the alarm and prevented the raiders from doing much damage until the army caught up with them. The Yankees were imprisoned, but even there the story didn't end--there were two spectacular prison breaks, a hanging, and enough newspaper headlines and panic to drive up the price of ink. When the surviving raiders finally made it back to the north, they were awarded the very first Medals of Honor--still the nation's highest military decoration.

Bonds writes well and easily, and he evaluates the various first- and second-hand sources with a clear eye. Rather than simply accepting some of the famous accounts of the time, he compares them--both to the terrain and to other primary sources. The result is an insightful work that picks apart both the Disney version and some of the laudatory news myths of the time to show what happened, why it happened, and how the participants told it in their own words. 

This is, quite simply, good history. And if you have an interest in trains, the Civil War, spying, guerilla warfare, trains, the Medal of Honor, perspective, or trains, you should find a copy and enjoy the chase.

Book of the Month May 2023: Why Liberalism Failed

 “The cultivation of virtue requires the thick presence of virtue-forming and virtue-supporting institutions, but these are precisely the institutions and practices that liberalism aims to hollow and eviscerate in the name of individual liberty. In a deep irony, liberalism claims legitimacy based upon democratic consent, yet it ultimately hollows out the prospects for functioning democracy.”

If you pay any attention at all to my commonplaces for each month (and why would you?) you might have noted that most of the ones from last month were from one book: Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen. This is not a perfect book, but it is a good one. If I were pressed to name three books to help someone understand America's current political moment, they would be Carl Truman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Christopher Caldwell's The Age of Entitlement, and this one.

Book of the Month April 2023: Life Together

 

“I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires—all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love is, only Christ tells us in his Word.”

A young German pastor wrote Gemeinsames Leben in 1939, just after the Nazis had ordered him to close down his unofficial seminary for training "Confessing Church" pastors--that is, men who did not agree with the official German Lutheran embrace of Hitler and his party. That group of pastors and pastors-in-training at Finkenwalde had been a special place for him and the others; a place where the study of the Word was paramount and the resulting fellowship sweet. His reflections on that time have become the "modern classic" Life Together, first published in English in 1954. His name, of course, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, now famous as the pastor who plotted to assassinate Hitler and died on a gallows in the last days of WWII.

Book of the Month March 2023: Beau Geste

 

If the above Peanuts strip makes no sense to you, then you need to read this Book of the Month.

Percival Christopher "P.C." Wren was an English author who penned the tale Beau Geste (French for a "gallant, hopelessly romantic gesture") in A.D. 1914. It is a double-layered mystery, crossed with an epic foreign adventure, crossed with a tale of harrowing survival; the sort of story that begged to be made into an early Hollywood star-studded film. It was, too--several times!

Book of the Month February 2023: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

 

I know, I know, this is a whole lunar month late. Life got exciting (which is French for "I forgot").

February's book of the month is Anthony Everitt's Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. It's a newer book (2011) so it's quite accessible, but it has other virtues: it is also thorough, detailed, and sympathetic. 

We probably know more personal details about Marcus Tullius Cicero than any other man (or woman) of the ancient world. That is because over nine hundred of his letters, official and personal, have survived to the present in one of those preservational flukes historians love to argue about. "In Cicero's correspondence," writes Everitt, "noble Romans are flesh and blood, not marble. Here is someone who dined with Julius Caesar, 

What Do I Think of Harry Potter?

 This was composed as an in-class essay for my 8th-grade Humanities students of 21-22. They were allowed to collectively come up with any four questions they wanted me to answer, from which I would select my favorite and write a one-hour reply. The question selected was "What do you think of the Harry Potter books?"

Most people have heard of the “elephant in the room.” That is, something that is well-known to everyone involved, but too embarrassing or prohibited from talking about. Some elephants, however, are too big to ignore. One of these elephants is the publishing phenomenon of J.K. Rowling—the Harry Potter series. Since 1998, Harry Potter has sold over 500 million copies (that’s one book for about every thirteen people on the planet, by the way). It’s been made into a play, eleven blockbuster movies, and enough themed parks, stores, and tourist attractions to fund a small country. No matter what you think of Harry Potter, it’s too big to ignore now.

Book of the Month January 2023: The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor

“Learn everything; you will see afterwards that nothing is superfluous.”—VI.iii

This month was a tough pick. Honorable mentions go to both Cicero’s De Senectute and Littlejohn and Evans’ Wisdom and Eloquence. But the winner for the top book is Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon.

I’m a teacher, which makes me a sucker for books on teaching. Hugh, along with Quintilian and John Milton Gregory, is one of the best. He was the head instructor of a small but famous community—St. Victor’s—just outside of medieval Paris in the early 1100’s. His Didascalicon de Studio Legendi (translated as something close to “The Compendium of Teaching of the Study of Reading") focuses on the foundations of learning. What is the purpose of education? What are its essentials? How should these essentials be imparted to others? 

Love is Blind: A Review of Veritas Press' A Rhetoric of Love

Introduction 

Rhetoric is an ancient art, with a long and impressive history. Some of the most brilliant minds of any age—Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine—have practiced it and taught it. As classical schools have recovered the lost tools of learning, one of the rustiest has been rhetoric. Various approaches have been proposed to clean off that rust and return it to trusty service. These range from simply shoving the Ad Herrenium under a student’s nose to that put forward by authors Douglas Jones and Michael Collender, in Veritas Press’s A Rhetoric of Love, published in two volumes as the mainstay of a two-year high school course.

Rather than follow the traditional method of using the Greek and Roman pagans, A Rhetoric of Love (hereafter ROL) claims that it follows a distinctively Christian approach to rhetoric: one based on the Bible (and specifically Jesus as presented in the gospels). This allows them to move beyond the taint of power or manipulation, and instead focus on bringing the foundation of all believing activity—love—to bear on communication. It is an intriguing idea, reminiscent of Augustine’s claim that one could learn eloquence by merely studying the Scriptures. A thoroughly effective Christian reworking of classical rhetoric would be something to applaud. But I believe this ROL project, by poorly defining its terms, means, and genre, winds up with several significant issues that quickly bog it down. These issues group nicely under three major headings: first, definitional troubles and an unworkable antithesis between love and power—what we might call paradigm problems—mar the project’s scope and purpose. Second, practical issues would render the text difficult to use in actual high school classrooms. Third, ROL is not a “classical” textbook in most senses of the word, making it a poor choice for the intended audience: classical Christian schools. Though the text is graciously reasoned and wittily written, and has many praiseworthy points, I would not recommend it to any classical school trying to craft a high schooler into a rhetor; its flaws outweigh its foundations.

Book of the Month October 2022: De Doctrina Christiana

 

You know, someone really needs to paint a good portrait of Augustine of Hippo that doesn't involve A) a miter or B) a flaming heart. One can only take so much Roman iconography, after all, but there doesn't really appear to be a viable alternative amongst the vast resources of the Googles.

But aside from the fact that he's been the subject of a rather terrible set of portraits, the man has a distinguished track record. Writing October's Book of the Month would be an example. While hardly known at all today compared to his even greater works Confessions and City of God, this was a key text for many men in the medieval period, such as Cassiodorus Senator.

De Doctrina Christiana (translated as either "On Christian Teaching" or "On Christian Doctrine") was composed in two major chunks: the first was finished about 397 A.D., and the last book was finally added about thirty years later. In it, Augustine set out to provide the reader with the knowledge necessary to understand and teach the Scriptures. Beginning with his famous distinction between things to be enjoyed (only God) and things to be used (everything else) he lays out a path that leads to wisdom. One major step on that journey is knowledge, and most human knowledge is gained though signs (such as, say, letters). Thus Augustine lays the groundwork for both medieval literary accumulation (particularly in the monasteries) and modern semiotics. [For a fascinating fusion of the two, see Eco's The Name of the Rose] He then proceeds to attempt to adjust the rhetorical training of his pagan career with Christianity's needs, leading to his famous "plundering the Egyptians" metaphor that is itself often plundered by the modern classical movement.

This was most fascinating to take in parallel with Benedict's Rule for Monasteries, although that will probably wind up being a separate post someday. Suffice to say I think there's some interesting connections in there, particularly about holiness, literature, and learning.

If you're interested in classical rhetoric or education, definitely take a look at this one. Just make sure to find a good guide--there's a lot flying under the surface of this text.