A guest post by Dan McClain.  Dan is a doctoral student of theology at the Catholic University of America and blogs at The Land of Unlikeness.
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How to read the Consolation with a touch nuance
Two contemporary scholars have argued against this kind of didactic reading. Both Joel C. Relihan and John Marenbon share the theory that [...]

A guest post by Dan McClain.  Dan is a doctoral student of theology at the Catholic University of America and blogs at The Land of Unlikeness.
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Let’s get didactic
The idea that Boethius’ use of poetry is not so simply wrangled into Philosophy’s service, but is actually functioning as part of a larger satirical structure, is not [...]

Some of you have kindly brought to my attention that you have had trouble as of late viewing Per caritatem in Microsoft Internet Explorer.  We are now aware of the problem, which has something to do with to a “communication” issue between Microsoft Word and the WordPress text editor that I use.  I believe that [...]

A guest post by Dan McClain.  Dan is a doctoral student of theology at the Catholic University of America and blogs at The Land of Unlikeness.
…the enchantment of her song left me spellbound. I was absorbed and wanted to go on listening. After a moment I spoke to her.
‘You are the greatest comfort for exhausted [...]

In chapter one of V. Phillips Long’s highly recommended book, The Art of Biblical History, he begins by asking whether the Bible is a history book.  If we mean by this label to define the essential character of the Bible, then surely this is not the case.  However, by answering in the negative, Long does [...]

If you are a regular reader of this blog and have benefited from it or enjoy it, would you please take the time to join my blog network and rate Per caritatem?   It may require that you set up a facebook.com account, which, if necessary, will only take a few minutes.  (Beware:  Facebook.com is [...]

In chapter 4 of N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Christian, he presents a wonderful illustration of the incomplete beauty that we encounter in our world in its present state.  He describes a collector who was rummaging through an attic in a small Austrian town and happened to come across what seemed to be an unknown score [...]

Jeremy Begbie continues to impress me with his creativity and theological astuteness.  Listen to the following passage on the Christian God who freely creates and freely loves. 
“We have seen that for the Christian, the world we inhabit can never be seens as just there, a naked fact, to be treated as a neutral boundary or [...]

St. Paul in Acts 17, by quoting a Greek poet, essentially claims that the Christian gospel takes up and fulfills (though at the same time corrects) a theme in ancient Greek religion, which religion both St. Paul and we would consider to be historically fictitious. Is it possible that God could have given Israel a mythology which [...]

“Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you-we who carry our mortality about us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart [...]

In case you are interested, the church and postmodern culture blog recently posted my mini-essay, A Gadamarian Critique of Hirsch’s Meaning/Significance Distinction. 

Part of Rousseau’s project is to try to create citizens who are both courageous (his “savage man” in the state of nature) and yet tolerant.  In book IV.viii of the Social Contract, Rousseau divides religion into two types:  (1) “religion of man,” “true theism,” or “natural divine right,” and (2) religion of the citizen (p. [...]

Scotus makes a distinction between natural law in the strict and extended sense.  A natural law in the strict sense is either a precept that is (1) per se nota (a self-evident, analytic proposition)-its truth is evident from the meaning of the terms or, (2) a precept that can be demonstrated from self-evident propositions.  In [...]

Jeremy Begbie, in his book, Resounding Truth:  Christian Wisdom in the World of Music, presents a nice definition of theology, viz., theology is “the disciplined thinking and rethinking of the Christian gospel for the sake of fostering a wisdom that is nourished by, and nourishes, the church in its worship and mission to the world” [...]