Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Henry Dawson FBAwas a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century". The 1988–1989 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour...
strong league enlightenment
The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.
christian way ethics
Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology.
spiritual religious political
The modern dilemma is essentially a spiritual one, and every one of its main aspects, moral, political and scientific, brings us back to the need of a religious solution.
self creative littles
Unlike other peoples the United States found their origin in a deliberate act of corporate self-assertion, and ever since the Revolution every little American has been taught to associate himself personally with this creative act.
church culture impossible
It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends.
christian giving doctrine
It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions.
order grace divinity
Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in theorder of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being.
lying issues world
No society lies nearer to the cyclonic path of the forces of world change than the United States, and few societies are more intellectually aware of the nature of the issues that have to be faced
self law cities
The moment that the state came into conflict with the higher power, the moment that it set itself up as an end in itself, it became identified with Augustine's earthly city and lost all claims to a higher sanction than the law of force and self-interest. Without justice, what is a great kingdom but a great robbery, magnum latrocinium?
faith past promise
Reason lives on the systematization of the past, but Faith is the promise of the future.
christian lying culture
As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.
civilization political levels
This freedom of political discussion on the highest level is something which Western civilization has in common with that of classical antiquity, but with no other
war passion past
No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion
world literature western
American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World.