John Mark Reynolds Quotes

Modernity gone wrong has isolated humanity and made human reason autonomous of (and dismissive toward) revelation.

Some Christians believe the harder that one thinks, the colder faith will grow. Augustine grew more brilliant as he grew more pious, more creative as he became more orthodox. His period of heresy was imitative, but his traditional Christianity took mental risks.

In the time of to Augustine, the conversation in the West mostly had been a Christian reaction to outside ideas. After Augustine, the Great Conversation would be about his ideas for centuries.

Past ages come to us in new ways. For instance, they bore or disturb us. The dead say things we would or could not say in ways that appall , bless, and startle us. Reading them is part of diversity. The easiest voices to ignore are those of the dead; nevertheless, they often on the ones we need most.

It has never been easier to get books but never harder to find the quiet needed to study them.

By reading older books we get a taste of the conversation of Heaven.

Being will-read is not sufficient, and it isn't the highest virtue to which we can strive, but it is both necessary and practical. We are, after all, people of the Great Book; no Christian leader ought  to choose the illiteracy or intentionally fail to develop the  intellectual skills  needed to read well.

while modernity is not Christianity, modernity is the product of a Christian civilization. Lately the defects of modernity have been made plain to us while its virtues have been taken for granted.

What makes Geoffrey Chaucer such compelling reading is his creation of a riveting conversation between the ideal and the everyday.