For Erasmus, Thomas More, and the other humanists of that era, literature and figurative language were the key to preventing people from falling into abstraction, moralism, and incessant warfare. Pagan literature, the humanists held, could be read with profit by Christians because it is possible to absorb and be enriched by the artistry without embracing…

Picture The Old Humanist standing at his desk. The year is 1533. Desiderius Erasmus is living in Freiburg, as he says to a friend, “like a snail in its shell.” It’s another temporary stop on his long, peripatetic march through northern Europe, as he seeks to avoid persecution at the hands of Reformers and Catholics…

Dear Friends: I received two emails recently from writers you likely know and admire. Like clockwork, I can expect an email from Annie Dillard a week after each new issue is published. Her response to issue #92 arrived right on schedule: “This is the best Image ever published. These writers stun me.” Then, the day after…

The following two-part post was originally delivered as the 2017 commencement address for Trinity Academy in Portland, Oregon. Read yesterday’s installment here. As you graduates well know, one of the most popular genres in books these days is the dystopia. Dystopia can be a powerful and revelatory form of writing, one that prophetically criticizes harmful…

The following two-part post was originally delivered as the 2017 commencement address for Trinity Academy in Portland, Oregon. Thank you for the high honor of inviting me to speak on this special occasion. My heartfelt congratulations to you graduating seniors for having reached this important milestone in your lives. Given the deep and demanding curriculum…

Today Gregory Wolfe continues his periodic exchanges on the nature of beauty with Image contributor Morgan Meis.  Dear Morgan, Well, yesterday you took your swing all right. I just can’t tell if you’ve decked me or…whiffed. In either case, I’m certainly dazed! I told you last time that I have no formal philosophical training, so…

This post, which appears as the Editorial Statement in Image issue 92, is continued from yesterday. “I consider myself a sort of portrait artist,” Carrère says, and his other books bear this out, but in The Kingdom most of the best portraits are of the bit players. Carrère’s rendering of Saint Paul, on the other hand,…

This post appears as the Editorial Statement in Image issue 92. When The Kingdom landed on my desk with a thud, I could tell that it would pose a challenge—that it would be a book I had to contend with. In addition to being a substantial tome, it comes with the cultural imprimatur conveyed by its…