The Nestorian Stele
After making my way from Beijing, Mount Tai, Qufu and Harbin in the east of China, I took a plane to one of the country’s former capitals, Xi’an. This was home to the massive translation project which taught Buddhism the Chinese language. That was in the mid-centuries of the first millennium A.D. I had come […]
Amor e união – apenas sinônimos?
Há uns 40 anos passei duas horas conversando em Kalady, Índia, com esse monge da Missão Ramakrishna. Eu havia estado doente por seis semanas antes desse encontro, de modo que estava mais magro e pálido que o usual. O monge era amável e muito disposto a conversar. Então, durante o chá, discutimos os méritos comparativos […]
The Past – behind us temporally, around us spatially
In a world that glorifies the future, treasures progress and tends to look down its nose at the past, we are presented with a literally astronomical paradox. Since the Age of Discovery and its disclosure of ancient cultures, along with the revelations of archaeology and paleontology in the last 200 years, knowledge of our chronological […]
O passado – atrás de nós no tempo, em volta de nós no espaço
Em um mundo que glorifica o futuro, que valoriza o progresso e que tem a tendência de desprezar o que veio antes, existe um paradoxo literalmente astronômico. Desde as viagens de descoberta a partir do século XV, e as revelações da arqueologia e paleontologia dos últimos dois séculos, o conhecimento do nosso passado cronológico tem […]
The Faux Humility of Arrogant Scientism
Carl Sagan (1934-96) Humility is easily the most basic of the virtues, as charity is the highest. They are similar, however, in one thing. Both must display their acts with a self-forgetfulness and spontaneity that is spoiled by any semblance of design. The words “I love you” ring hollow unless they emerge from the mouth […]
Things We Cannot Learn from the James Webb Telescope
For two of my adolescent years I was convinced I would become an astronomer. I even saved up over 200 dollars to buy a reflector telescope. Although other intrusive events of the 1960s soon diverted my attention – I ended up using the money to buy a guitar – I have remained a keen amateur […]
A vida e o tema de G.K. Chesterton
Versão portuguesa da minha Introdução à edição inglesa da Autobiografia de G.K. Chesterton (Ignatius Press, 1988; 2ª ed. 2006): A vida e o tema de G.K. Chesterton
Cenoscopy and Idioscopy in Peirce and Deely (open access seminar)
Orthodoxy and Philosophy
My introduction to a forthcoming new English edition of Chesterton’s ORTHODOXY in Brazil: There are many good reasons for reading Chesterton, but they can be quite different, even divergent. Some may love detective stories and find the Father Brown tales especially engaging, enlivened by Brown’s experience in the confessional and access to otherwise unavailable schemes […]
Empirical Easter – 2022
A common misunderstanding of Christianity views it as nothing more than belief in a series of abstract truths regarding a God who is one and three, a person who is God and man, and bread that is no longer bread. However, the more theological dimensions of these articles of faith were only fully worked out […]