I decided to read The Problem of Pain by C S Lewis as part of my preparation to preach on the Fall. I thought I’d read it before, but on reading it, I’m not sure I have read it all – there’s lots of material that’s really striking me as fresh and interesting that I […]
Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my […]
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved? There […]
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died at the weekend. I’ve not read much written by him, particularly not his most famous works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or The Gulag Archipelago, but I’ve read some of his writings such as his 1970 Nobel Lecture. As well as a brave man who exposed the […]
What’s the point of time travel if you can’t change the past? Similarly, what’s the point in studying the events of history, or telling stories about them? “Don’t try to understand why a fine man is cut off in his prime and an evil one prospers. Try to understand what benefit there is in observing […]