Playtime for the Atheist, by Anthony Esolen

By Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine, Feb. 16, 2022

Anthony Esolen, a contributing editor at Crisis, is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. He is the author, most recently, of Sex and the Unreal City (Ignatius Press, 2020).

When the young Augustine was in his long years of struggle, he was not searching for surges of good feeling. He got that from the mistress he kept, to whom he was faithful, and who bore for him his dearly loved son, Adeodatus. He was not searching for eminence in the world. His brilliance as a writer and teacher could win him that. He did not want the comfort of being told that God would respect his Manichean notions of a deity spread out through the universe like an all-penetrating ectoplasm, corporeal but too slender to see with the naked eye.

He wanted to find the truth, and to rest in it, as in an assured dwelling place. When he found it, he found Christ, whom he sometimes called by the simple and powerful name Truth. He was not the only ancient father to do so. …

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