“Our culture has inherited another of its virtues from the Christian vision, and that is irony. There is already a developing streak of irony in the Hebrew Bible, one that is amplified by the Talmud. But a new kind of irony dominates Christ’s judgements and parables, which look on the spectacle of human folly and wrily show us how to live with it.” —Roger Scruton
This Trinity Forum Update features a quick year-end update and some recent items on our Provocations journal, which happen—ironically, along with the most recent edition of David Aikman's column—to have a common theme in irony.
Year-End and Looking to 2008
Our Winter Reading on Muggeridge is in print and has turned out beautifully. Copies are reaching mailboxes now. If you've moved recently, please let us know, since we are shipping at US nonprofit rates and the postal service will not forward.
Please note that we are raising prices on our Readings in the new year to $5 for individual booklets, with breaks at 50 copies for $4 each and 100+ copies at $3.50 each.
The events calendar for 2008 is shaping up nicely as we work out ways to capitalize on our new U.S. offices at Evermay in Georgetown. Look for details next month.
Please consider The Trinity Forum in your year-end giving! You can make a donation online at our store.
New on our Provocations Journal
- “The Elusive Goal of Mastery: The Shadow Side of Technological Control.” Senior Fellow Wilfred McClay looks at the inescapable ironies of our quest for control. Progress is good, right? Longer lives and less suffering is good, right? Sure. But all treatments have side effects and every advance has unintended consequences.
- “Two Virtues of Western Culture: Irony, Sacrifice, and the Transmission of Culture.” Senior Fellow Roger Scruton gives us a first-person view of a Cambridge education to help explore the purpose of education and highlight two virtues in Western culture that make it worth celebrating and preserving.
David Aikman’s column
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