But Deliver Us

In his feature story this month, “Defacing the Devil,” Ralph Wood writes, “In Eastern and Western traditions alike, evil has been understood to have no proper existence of its own. It is privatio boni, the absence, the twisting, the perversion of the Good. Yet precisely because it is Nothing—i.e., a no-thing—it can assume innumerable forms.”

Attentive readers may recall the opening paragraphs of Adam Mac-Leod’s “The Unreal Vortex”(Touchstone, March/April 2023), where Mr. MacLeod analogizes the non-negotiable destructiveness of Critical Race Theory with a tornado, which “at its center—at the core of what it is  . . . is the absence of being.” The roaring black funnel and the destruction in its path are not the tornado, but only the effects of such voids.

I have never seen a tornado, but as a kid, nothing struck more fear in my heart than a tornado warning, which I thought meant certain death (if not a wicked witch). My childhood horror soon dissipated, though, and by my twenties I couldn’t imagine anything cooler than to see one of those black twisting funnels live and up close. In my paralytic twenties I had grown used to a lot of things that should have scared the hell out of me.

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.

Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.


more on Philosophy from the online archives

25.6—Nov/Dec 2012

Clashing Symbols

The Loss of Aristotelian Logic & the Social, Moral & Sexual Consequences by Peter Kreeft

29.4—July/August 2016

The Very Idea

on Anselm's God & the Virtue of Existing  by Tara L. Jernigan

32.3—May/June 2019

Theodicies & Messy Desks

on the Infinite Problem of Goods & Evil by Hugh Hunter


more from the online archives

32.5—September/October 2019

Peter's Sword

by Patrick Henry Reardon

31.2—March/April 2018

Reason Takes Up Arms

How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture by R. J. Snell

30.5—Sept/Oct 2017

The Unforgotten

on Costly Grace in Breece D'J Pancake's Flyover Country by Casey Chalk

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00