Originally published in Classis, Volume XXVII, No. 3 By William Isley During this coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown, it occurred to me to read a few of the descriptions of plagues in some classic texts of Western civilization. In times like these, which are...
Orginally published in Classis, Volume XXVII, No. 3 We are sustained by the saints and trail our thoughts behind the truths of others. —Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought In these books, I commend not my own teaching but the words of the...
Originally published in Classis Volume XVI, no. 1 By Mitchell Stokes Genuine mathematical understanding is like a three-legged stool. Doing calculations or deriving theorems is only one of the legs. The other two legs are math’s history and philosophy, respectively....
Originally published in Classis Volume XIV, No. 5 By Gregory Soderberg "Out of all the sciences above named, however, the ancients, in their studies, especially selected seven to be mastered by those were to be educated. These seven they considered so to excel all...
Originally published in Classis Volume XIX, No. 4 By Phil Arant In viewing the original frontispiece from Francis Bacon’s 1620 work Novum Organum (“New Method”), the observer is intended to notice ships leaving the familiar waters of the Mediterranean and venturing...
Due to a torrential rainstorm that ripped its way through Houston, Texas, in the middle of April, 2016, my university shut its doors for two consecutive days. Not wanting to waste away my enforced leisure time, I took up two books, written thirty years apart, that had...
Originally published in Classis Volume XXVI, Number 2 Over the last decade, I have had the privilege of speaking for classical Christian schools and conferences across the country. Imagine a Jesuit school from a century ago that was fully committed to the goodness,...
This article first appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of the Modern Age published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is reprinted by permission. Reprinted in Classis Volume XXVII, Number 3 There’s a chilling image from my youth that I’ve never been able to...
Originally published in Classis Volume XX, No. 4 By Joshua Butcher “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have...
There are dozens of topics to explore when considering how to improve a Latin class: textbooks, methodology, inductive vs. deductive, paradigm memorization, morphology presentation, etc. But, as important as these all are, they are really only secondary issues. The...