The Calvinist International
I recently wrote about Steven D. Smith’s arguments in The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, and more specifically, about how he demonstrates the vacuity of many of the Western world’s central political buzzwords, such as equality and freedom. In the course of his critique of Martha Nussbaum, he mentions another one that I thought deserved its own […]
I appreciated Andrew Fulford’s recent essay on the relationship between the classic Protestant understanding of supererogatory works and civil polity. He gets down to the basic theological and philosophical distinctions that the older Protestant thinkers made regarding law, justice, charity, and the political life of the commonwealth. However, I was left feeling that Mr. Fulford had […]
Elsewhere I have written about Protestant resistance theory, and how the cases of justified opposition to magistrates are limited in scope: Calvin also wanted to preserve a relatively just and peaceful social order, believing that such was natural good of human beings. As an implication of this principle, he upheld the basic principles of just […]
What is a friend worth? The Preacher taught us long ago: Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falls; for he has not another to help him up. […]
In a previous post, I tried, through a reading of part of Letter 10.96 of Pliny the Younger to Trajan, to sketch a way of formulating the spectrum of possible answers to this question as it relates to “politics” in the narrow sense of government self-definition and legal policy. There is a broader aspect to “politics” […]
One often sees the question in my title posed, and also regularly sees generically affirmative or negative answers given to it. However, the question–like many others of its kind–is nonsensical as framed. There is no answer to it. Or, rather, there is an answer; and that answer is, “It depends.” I would submit that the […]
The About page of TCI describes one aspect of our activity, which we aim to continue: Working from the political philosophy of the Reformers, we have begun to turn the conversation from “high church” to “high commonwealth,” caring for the city and providing for non-apocalyptic solutions to civic concerns. One recent book on what one […]
Herewith another passage from City of God Book 5 that is relevant to a post from a couple of weeks ago, and that probably, therefore, should have been included in that post–so take this as a supplement to that. In this passage, we get a nice summary of his views on virtue, religion, time, and eternity […]
Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) is perhaps the most famous and influential of the group of Anglican divines that scholars since the 19th century have dubbed the Cambridge Platonists. These divines were some of the first, if not the first, English philosophers to discuss and critically engage with the new philosophy of René Descartes. They were certainly attracted to […]
In the beginning, everything was whole and pure. Out of his infinite self-possession, God diffused goodness into being, and created this cosmos with human beings at its apex, in a Garden for their first home. In the Garden human beings had everything they needed: food and land, each other, access to the gift of eternal […]