Quodlibet
Julian's Shadow
When the emperor Julian the Apostate wanted to attack the Church but not create martyrs because he remembered how the martyrs had been honored, "he enacted a law by which Christians were excluded from the cultivation of literature" lest they "be able the more readily to meet the arguments of the heathen." Thus wrote Socrates (not the philosopher but the church historian) in a.d. 479.
Isn't it sad that so many Christians voluntarily subject themselves to this edict today—with the same result as that intended by their ancient enemy? Study the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) as your lifeblood, second only to the Scriptures themselves. Indeed, without them, how will you even read the Scriptures, much less proclaim or defend them? Don't let Julian's evil plan succeed.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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more on history from the online archives
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
28.3—May/June 2015
Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
31.1—January/February 2018
on Ragnarök, an Extreme Weather Event & the Paths to Conversion by Timothy J. Burbery
more from the online archives
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
35.4—Jul/Aug 2022
The Death Rattle of a Tradition
Contemporary Catholic Thinking on the Question of War by Andrew Latham
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