Welcome to Great Books & Big Ideas!
If you are wondering what this Substack is all about, let me explain. C.S. Lewis wrote an introduction to the 1944 edition of Athanasius classic book, On The Incarnation, and that introduction was later reprinted as an essay in God in the Dock titled, “On the Reading of Old Books.” In this little essay, Lewis makes a wonderful case for reading the “classics”… books which have stood the test of time. Indeed, Lewis argues that for every three contemporary books, we should read at least one “old book.”
Reading old books rescues us from “chronological snobbery” or “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.” Chesterton had railed against this same tendency, calling it “historical provincialism.” Reading old classics can do more than save us from error, however. When we read “time-tested” books we become increasingly intimate with the great theological consensus shared by all faithful christians through the ages. Lewis calls this theological consensus, “Mere Christianity,” and he describes it as follows:
Measured against the ages "mere Christianity" turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognise, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante….
We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity.
As a professor of theology, Anglican priest, and now seminary president, I’ve spent my career following Lewis’s advice and commending old books to my students and anyone willing to listen. I’ve created this Substack as a way to put my recommendations to paper, commending not only great books, but the consequential ideas found therein.
About Me
My ecclesiastical title is The Very Rev’d Canon Dr. Bryan Hollon, and I am the 8th Dean & President and Professor of Theology at Trinity Anglican Seminary. Before joining Trinity, I served for sixteen years as a Professor of Theology at Malone University in Canton, Ohio and as Resident Theologian and City Director for the C.S. Lewis Institute of Northeast Ohio. In 2017, along with my wife Suzanne, I planted St. John’s Anglican Church in North Canton, Ohio.
As a scholar, I have tended to specialize in ressourcement theology, which is best exemplified in the work of Henri de Lubac. As a seminary Dean and President, I am keenly interested in the ways that Christians and Christian churches engage contemporary culture and remain faithful to the gospel in different contexts. Most importantly, I am a proponent of the great consensual tradition that C.S. Lewis referred to as “Mere Christianity.”
I have been married to Suzanne since 1993. We grew up on opposite ends of the great state of Texas and met at Baylor University. We have three grown children: Harrison, Claire, and John.
About Trinity
For those who do not know of Trinity, we are located in the Pittsburgh area and have approximately 250 students as well as thousands of alumni serving in churches and ministries all over the world, on every continent besides Antarctica. Our seminary was founded to reform and renew The Episcopal Church and was, for many years, one of the eleven official episcopal seminaries. However, we are no longer affiliated with The Episcopal Church but with the Anglican Church in North America, a Province developed by faithful Anglicans from across the globe, many of them Trinity alumni and friends.
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Subscribe to receive letters, essays, and notes in your inbox, be part of a community of people who share your interests, and participate in the comments section. In the summer of 2024, I’ll launch a podcast and begin to publish on a consistent schedule.
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