The Philosophical Optimist

              As we come to the close of yet another year, we have just passed through the Christmas season; and so, it is an appropriate time to reflect upon the man whose birth is celebrated by that season: Jesus of Nazareth, son of David, son of Abraham.   What do we know of him, and how?   Such questions would take entire libraries to explore fully, but this is a mere essay, and in it, I wish simply to explore a few thoughts that might help all of us think about these questions more clearly, without having to delve into the mountainous minutiae of ancient history.             The first thing to recall is that Jesus is a figure of history, and so we should ask: what are our historical sources for learning about him?   For many, especially Christians, the first thing that comes to mind is the set of four biographies of Jesus which begin the New Testamen...

In the last few decades, few aspects of the practice of medicine have been more debated than the topic of abortion. Often, the very terms used by one side of the debate differ from the terms used by the other side, to the point that clear communication is almost impossible. What is needed now is someone to clarify the terms of the debate—someone like Gilbert Keith Chesterton, whose brilliant, sometimes paradoxical observations were often based on careful attention to the very words people use in everyday speech. Presented here are a number of reflections, in the spirit of Chesterton, on some of the terms central to the abortion debate: 1. Abortion The very word “abortion” is a point not sufficiently heeded in the debate that centers on it. People speak of aborting a fetus, but a thing cannot be aborted, only a process. People abort missions, they abort computer operations, but they do not abort computers or cars. When one aborts a pregnancy, it is like aborting any operati...

            I have heard it said that you should not care about what a man thinks about anything unless you first know what he thinks about everything.   That is, a man’s general worldview affects everything about him, and is perhaps the most important thing about him to know.   It is unfortunate, then, that too many of us spend so little time reflecting on how we view the stage upon which we find ourselves playing out this drama we call human history, and how much of our thinking on the subject we allow to be outsourced to the general cultural climate of our time.             That climate is, as it has always been, one of idolatry; it is only the specific idols of the era that change, and even those only so much.   Two thousand years ago, Christ had warned us that we could not serve both God and Mammon—a Canaanite deity who, like his Classical equivalent Plut...