God is not the “judge” of men in the sense of a magistrate who passes sentence and imposes a punishment, testifying to the transgression. He is judge because of what He is: the possibility of life and true existence. When man voluntarily cuts himself off from this possibility of existence, he is automatically “judged”. It is […]

“Those who have come to be known as the ‘Church Fathers’ led Christianity during the first centuries of its existence after the apostles… One only qualified as a ‘Church Father’ if he met four tests: antiquity, holiness of life, orthodox teaching, and ecclesiastical approval…Being accorded the designation ‘Church Father’ was a stamp of approval; it […]

“If suffering is the sign of our election by God, why do we then pray to be spared from suffering and to have a painless and peaceful end? It is the same with temptations: in the Lord’s Prayer, we entreat God not to be led into temptation, but the Holy Apostle James says that when […]

Since the Second World War, Roman Catholicism has had enormous influence on American intellectual conservatism. The postwar rebirth of conservatism had two sources: libertarianism—a reassertion of classical liberalism against statism—and cultural traditionalism. For Russell Kirk and other leading traditionalists of the era, the Roman Catholic church, with its soaring intellectual edifice and unitary vision of […]

How do know if a particular doctrine is true or false? What defines the boundaries of orthodoxy? We’re not the first believers to face these questions. Within a generation of Christ’s death and resurrection, the church broke free from the orbit of Jerusalem and swerved into the path of the Gentile world and its bewildering […]