classics digests, reflections and reviews
What profit is the image, that its maker should carve it, The molded image, a teacher of lies, That the maker of its mold should trust in it, To make mute idols? Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ To silent stone, ‘Arise! It shall teach!’ Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, Yet in it there is no breath at all. But the Lord is in his […]
Read morePreface Institutes of the Christian Religion is a foundational work of Protestant systematic theology, and included in the Great Books of the Western World series, which I’ve been reading and blogging in the past few years. Ironically, I was called a Calvinist once, at a time when I had no idea who Calvin was. Now, twenty years later, I’m reading John Calvin’s magnum opus for the first time. One interesting […]
Read moreA young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere – ‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous. –C. S. Lewis “Surprised by Joy” All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to […]
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Pilgrim’s Progress is an original work that does not borrow grandeur from classics but becomes a classic by its own simplicity and profundity. Bunyan writes with clarity and structure, and insights into human nature. In his essay Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell lists disbelief in a literal Hell as one of the reasons. I didn’t get far into this book on my first attempt more than twenty […]
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In Book 8 of Paradise Lost, there is an interesting discourse between God and Man on the state of solitude and happiness. Adam expresses his desire for rational companionship, without which he cannot be happy or content. God then asks Adam whether he thinks God, who is alone for all eternity, is possessed of happiness. Adam: Thou hast provided all things: but with mee I see not who partakes. In […]
Read more[AKA: My Religion] When I first read War and Peace five years ago, Tolstoy was nothing but a famous name to me. War and Peace was the first epic novel I’ve ever read, and, to me, it was perfect. Now that I’ve read most of Tolstoy’s works, I’d like to think that I have a decent understanding of the artist through his works, which make up a jigsaw portrait of […]
Read moreKierkegaard evidently read Descartes, because he objected to the latter’s famous argument, “I think, therefore I am”, and the notion that doubt is derived from knowledge. It might appear that the two of them belong to different camps, but I have reason to believe that Descartes influenced/inspired Kierkegaard in his conception of “subjective certainty”. Descartes’ Certainty It was Descartes who first brought “subjective certainty” to the forefront of philosophical thought, […]
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