Ai! laurie lantar lassi súrinen…

For the faith to take root fully in China, and not as an imitation of another civilization – or, worse, of its cultural degeneration in recent times – it seems necessary to me that churches be built in the manner of the Chinese, not aping the buildings of Europe, nor merely putting native-inspired decoration over Occidental bones. But we have no surviving Chinese church buildings from early…

Latin continues to be important for the life of Anglo-Saxon cultures. The Anglo-Saxon world, however, has four fully competent pronunciations of Latin with each its own integrity; all other variants commonly used by Anglo-Saxons are imperfect attempts to approximate one of the four. The restored classical pronunciation. This is a pronunciation more or less reliably reconstructed as having been…

The more I learn about Charlotte Mason’s understanding of man and the ends of education, and the pædagogical methods by which this understanding is used in the actual teaching of children, the more I think it a remedy to the problems I have encountered in my actual experience teaching children in Christian schools that consider themselves classical. While I have not yet received practical…

Sola Scriptura vs Nuda Scriptura: On Buggery and the Ordination of Women

Forgot earlier this month to link to my article for Ad Fontes journal, ‘Whose Classical Education? Which Canon War?’ Check it out.

‘Can it be good, from the age of 10 to the age of 23, to be always preparing for an exam, and always knowing that your whole worldly future depends on it: and not only knowing it, but perpetually reminded of it by your parents and masters [i.e., teachers]? Is this the way to breed a nation of people in psychological, moral, and spiritual health?’– C. S. Lewis, letter to Warfield M. Firor, 3…

One reason, I believe, that 18th-century England’s neglect of the Holy Communion service’s Ornaments Rubric ought not to be interpreted as a norm for Anglican practice today, a reason implied by Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton in The English Church in the Eighteenth Century: There were some special reasons for disquietude in those who feared to diverge a hand-breadth from the established…

This week, two of my essays have been published, one with (Christian and non-Christian) American revisionists and the other with Anglicans: at The American Sun, ‘Oil in Your Lamp to Keep Your Literary Flame Burning’, an article about keeping the flame of your culture burning in the face of effectively genocidal policy enacted by church and state; at The North American Anglican, ‘Ash Wednesday…

Alain de Benoist says in his essay ‘L’Idée d’Empire’ (English translation at Gornahoor) that empire has a spiritual aspect to its authority, distinct from territorial definition. In consequence, in his judgement, ‘the decline of the empire throughout the centuries is consistent with the decline of the central role played by its principle and, correspondingly, with its movement toward a purely…

If you like poetry, I have two poems published over at the poetry journal Atop the Cliffs last year: ‘Of Valediction’s Silence, an Elegy’ (June 2022) and ‘Love the Sin and Hate the Sinner’ (November 2022). For those who like whole volumes, I also make an appearance in Small Victories: Antelope Hill Writing Competition 2022, as perhaps the only Asian writer in that volume. I’m grateful to those…

Gunpowder and the End of the Aristocracy

Gunpowder for ever changed the social relations of Europe over the course of six centuries by gradually rendering irrelevant the traditional reciprocal obligation between knights and peasants, and with the First World War came the death knell of the warrior aristocracy. We cannot intelligibly return to the particular arrangements of the old system, but on the other hand no adæquate replacement…

It would be interesting to see the Arabic muwashshaḥ strophic form used in the context of Hong Kong to write songs in classical Chinese with a kharja (‘exit’) in either colloquial Cantonese or English (or both).

Peter Lombard on the Priest’s Power to Bind and Loose Sin

The great mediæval schoolman Peter Lombard, in Distinction 18.6 in his Sentences, may surprise papists with his understanding of the priest’s power to bind and loose. He says, But he [i.e., God] did not grant this power [i.e., of remitting sin] to priests although he did grant them the power of binding and loosing, that is, of showing that men are bound or loosed – wherefore the Lord himself…

Calvin on Baptism’s Efficacy to Remit Sins and Regenerate the Baptized

John Calvin says in his Antidote to the Council of Trent 1.5, We assert that the whole guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains of sin still existing are not imputed. That this may be more clear, let my readers call to mind that there is a twofold grace in baptism, for therein both remission of sins and regeneration are offered to us. We teach that full remission is made, but…

Why I Stick to the Sermon Manuscript

When I go off script for a sermon, I say things in ways that only I understand, and the Bible says I should not speak in tongues without an interpreter!

Lordship in Psalm 8

Read Psalm 8 carefully, considering how God has ordained strength out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, God who has been mindful of frail man and visited the son of man and crowned him with glory and honour. And then look at this image and think about the psalm again:

Peter Lombard on the Self-Offering of Christ

To start off Advent a fortnight early like an old Hispanic of the Mozarabic Rite, I give you Peter Lombard, 12c. mediaeval schoolman and Bishop of Paris, the Master of the Sentences (as Aquinas calls him), on the self-offering of Christ: Christ is the priest, as he is also the victim and the price of our reconciliation. He offered himself on the altar of the cross not to the devil, but to the…