Month: January 2020

The Iron-bound Prison of the Self

I’m a Protestant. I don’t believe in Purgatory. Yet I want to read Dante, so what can I do? Well, first, one can read Dante’s second volume of The Divine Comedy as a treatise that applies to this life also—God purges sin from our lives and we must respond properly. The second thing that helps me in this quest is that Dorothy Sayers, a writer I love, undertook to make a fresh translation of Dante back in the 1940s-1950s. It… Read more »

The Faithfulness of Puddleglum

This past Wednesday, while teaching my latest Narnia session at my church, something struck me in a way it hadn’t before. I’m currently presenting and discussing C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. We’re near the end (one week to go), and as I was reading aloud one of Puddleglum’s statements, the significance of what he said was more meaningful to me than ever. It was in chapter eleven, while the spellbound Prince Rilian is tied to the Silver Chair to… Read more »

Impeachable Offenses: A History (Part 3)

In my previous two posts, I offered insights on impeachable offenses from the preeminent expositor of the Constitution in early America, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, and from one of the most learned legal scholars of the twentieth century, Raoul Berger. In this, my final post dealing with the subject, I turn to what the House of Representatives concluded during its investigation of Richard Nixon’s potential impeachment. Yes, that House conclusion was written when Democrats controlled the House, but it… Read more »

Impeachable Offenses: A History (Part 2)

In my last post, I drew from my book, Mission: Impeachable, on whether an impeachment and removal from office required the violation of a specific law. I quoted Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (served 1812-1845) who, in his Familiar Exposition of the Constitution, noted that the history of impeachment, both in theory and in practice, had never laid down such a requirement. Story was the most eminent constitutional commentator of his day, and his view needs to be taken seriously…. Read more »

Impeachable Offenses: A History (Part 1)

We are in the midst of another impeachment drama, the third in my lifetime. The first, that of Richard Nixon, didn’t reach a full House vote or a Senate trial due to Nixon’s wise decision to resign. The second, that of Bill Clinton, went to the Senate but suffered from the tribalism that so affects us still today, with not even one Democrat voting to remove him from office. After that failed attempt to turn the presidency over to VP… Read more »

Chesterton: Right Has a Right to Be Right

Each morning, in my devotions, I’ve set aside some time to work my way through G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, which outlines the history of man’s beliefs as seen through mythology, philosophy, and then, finally, through Christianity—God’s direct revelation to man. Chesterton is quite quotable, yet all of those quotes that people love to use are embedded in larger contexts that require some real thought and meditation. That’s why I have chosen not to rush through this work. I… Read more »

Christians in Politics: A Lewisian Caution

One of the highlights of the coming year for me will be the Oxbridge Conference sponsored by the C. S. Lewis Foundation. I’ve never attended this particular conference before. “Looking forward to it” seems too mild a description for what I am anticipating. This will be my third Lewis Foundation conference and, as before, I will presenting a paper in the Academic Roundtable portion of the conference. The theme overall is “Surprised by Love: Cultivating Intellectual Hospitality in an Age… Read more »