I know. Everyone’s had their say. A good survey of the disparity responses to the film appears in Part I of Annie Crawford’s insightful series on the Logres Institute Substack. But above the noise of opinions perhaps the most accurate and compelling response came from Dr. Martin Shaw, when he shook his grey beard and said, “They’d robbed it of its essential pagan-ness.” In an interview with Jonathan Pageau, Shaw went on to explain, why, for instance, this is a “strange thing for a Christian to say.”

I'd love Odysseus to have a conversion experience on the beach, but it's not in the story. And what is in the story is humor, sex, wonderful language, and a world ensouled with gods and goddesses and a great kind of tragic [and] beautiful story about nostos—about getting home. And so the moment the [opening] credit said, “In a time of apparent magic,” I just thought, “Oh, we've had it. We've had it already. We've moved from a kind of shamanic encounter with a great myth into sort of Vegas trickery.”

The bad script notwithstanding, Shaw exposed what I think is its most fatal flaw: “I didn’t care. I just didn’t care about anybody. I didn’t weep. And for me, as somebody that loves that story dearly.” He summed it up as, “Visually sumptuous, emotionally vacuous.”

His overall critique is centered on two concerns: (1) the substance of the story and its proper meaning in light of the Western tradition of the great myths, and (2) the reception and effect it produces in relation to being human. But notice that the former is parent of the latter. Insofar as Nolan’s film was robbed of its “essential pagan-ness,” it was also “emotionally vacuous,” enough to not care. It was—like so much of pop-culture desiderata—forgettable. And the real Homer is anything but forgettable. (And for all you deconstructionists, whose knowing smiles are already stretching across your faces, yes, there was a real Homer.)

As to Nolan’s changing of the story—the altering of characters, the strange choice in casting, the terrible lines of dialogue, the significant omissions—Peter Leithart suggests it’s not so bad a sin as it seems, that “Hollywood didn’t invent Homeric revisionism.” Those indignant with the Nolan’s changes “take Homer far more seriously than the classical tradition they claim to champion.” Leithart points out some typical examples: Virgil, Dante, Tennyson, Auden, and others take liberties with the Homeric elements—the structure of the story, the heroic nature of Odysseus himself, the integrity of certain characters. Leithart argues, “Shakespeare is the greatest offender.” He cites Troilus and Cressida, calling it “a burlesque on a popular medieval tale of Troy.” He argues,

Long before Christopher Nolan, “woke” Will Shakespeare deconstructed one of Western civilization’s founding stories. But that’s what “the classics” do: plunder, rewrite, subvert, and twist earlier classics. … The great writers of the Western tradition don’t offer solemn homage to impeccable predecessors. Western literature is more like a transcript of the struggle to exorcise the ghost of Homeric influence.

It’s a compelling argument, and stated forcefully in clever Leithartian prose. But I think he might be missing something. Modern attempts of retelling the old stories seem doomed to always get it wrong. If there is a tradition in Western art and literature of plundering and rewriting Homer, then Nolan seems outside of it. He misses the mark not merely because he puts a “woke” spin on things (as bad as that may be) but because he fails to tell a good and human story. This is what Martin Shaw meant when he said the film had been robbed of its “essential pagan-ness.” It couldn’t rise to the dignity of paganism. Dignity of paganism? Yes. Lewis (and Chesterton before him) had been saying it for years, that the only hope for real Christian conversion of a people living in a post-Christian secular age is to become pagan first.

In his essay “A Christmas Sermon for Pagans,”1 C. S. Lewis writes, “It looks to me, neighbours, as though we shall have to set about becoming true Pagans if only as a preliminary to becoming Christians.” Were it not from the mouth of Lewis, such a statement would normally cause the modern evangelical to break out in hives. What can he possibly mean? Lewis answers,

I don't mean that we should begin leaving little bits of bread under the tree at the end of the garden as an offering to the Dryad. I don't mean that we should dance to Dionysus across Hampstead Heath (though perhaps a little more solemn or ecstatic gaiety and a little less commercialised “amusement” might make our holidays better than they now are). I don't even mean (though I do very much wish) that we should recover that sympathy with nature, that religious attitude to the family, and that appetite for beauty which the better Pagans had. Perhaps what I do mean is best put like this.

If the modern post-Christian view is wrong—and every day I find it harder to think it right—then there are three kinds of people in the world. (1) Those who are sick and don’t know it (the post-Christians). (2) Those who are sick and know it (Pagans). (3) Those who have found the cure. And if you start in the first class you must go through the second to reach the third. For (in a sense) all that Christianity adds to Paganism is the cure. It confirms the old belief that in this universe we are up against Living Power: that there is a real Right and that we have failed to obey it: that existence is beautiful and terrifying. It adds a wonder of which Paganism had not distinctly heard—that the Mighty One has come down to help us, to remove our guilt, to reconcile us.

All of the world (even in Japan, even in Russia) men and women will meet on December 25th to do what is a very old-fashioned and, if you like, a very Pagan thing—to sing and feast because a God has been born. You are uncertain whether it is more than a myth. Well if it is, then our last hope is gone. But is the opposite explanation not worth trying?

Who knows but that here, and here alone, lies your way back not only to Heaven, but to Earth too, and to the great human family whose oldest hopes are confirmed by this story that does not die?

This is perhaps what Leithart misses. Nolan’s film isn’t merely rewriting The Odyssey, as other classics have done. It doesn’t participate in the great human family, of which Homer is a grandfather. Change comes in a few different forms. There is a kind of change that improves or enhances. And there is a change that disorders. The former is ordered to God’s purposes for created things to go from strength to strength. The latter is ordered towards disintegration and chaos. This is what separates one revision from another.

Those Homeric revisions of the medieval tradition rewrite Homer in a way that still manages to honor the poet-father, preserving some integrity of his meaning in text and character. To Leithart’s point, it’s important to remember that Shakespeare wasn’t merely having fun with Homer’s heroism; he was also responding to Chaucer’s own Troilus and Chriseyde and the ideal of courtly love. Even if the result was a lesser tragedy than that of Hamlet or King Lear, the writing alone was good enough to be remembered, as Samuel Johnson notes—good enough for C. S. Lewis to quote in one of his letters.

The changes of Nolan, however, are typical of modern retellings. They alter without being good enough to remember. After all the table reads, the treatment meetings, the committee changes, the talent and casting notes—the result is a bad script and a weak and secularized film version of what is one of the greatest pagan stories. Shaw was right: “Visually sumptuous, emotionally vacuous.”

In this episode, Devin, , Aaron, and Heather discuss how the rise of isolated seminaries and the influence of pietism inadvertently siloed theology away from the broader culture. By looking back at the Reformers and Puritans—who were men of the university rather than standalone seminaries—we explore why theology was historically seen as the unifying core of all human knowledge and learning.

Key Topics Covered:
—How pietism divorced theology from daily culture and public life
—The historical impact of siloing theology into standalone seminaries
—Why the Reformers and Puritans viewed theology as integral to the university
—Restoring "unity" to the concept of the university

Subscribe for more deep dives on faith, culture, and theology!

In this episode of The Four—Heather, David, Kajsa, and Devin—explore why teaching church history is so important, whether faculty should know the Church Fathers well, and if schools should take a stand on secondary doctrines. Additionally, they ask, “What has changed in the modern church that classical Christians should stand against?”

Whether you’re a school leader, teacher, pastor, or parent, this conversation offers practical insights into building theological clarity while remaining rooted in the historic Christian faith.

As people interested in returning to Classical forms of education, we know that Grimm, Perrault, or even Hans Christian Andersen are all part of the Western literary canon. But what are these strange stories, these “fairy tales” that often contain no fairies? As Christians, we can sometimes be put off by them.

In his plenary talk at our annual conference this past June, explores how Fairy Tales use language similar to Scripture and how they can capture truths almost as deep.

If you’d like more info about ACCS and the work that we do to establish and equip classical Christian schools, please visit classicalchristian.org.

If you’re already a member school, you can access additional conference talks at classicalatlas.com.

How should we teach Dante’s Inferno? Many readers get lost in the names, historical references, and medieval politics. But Dante’s primary concern is not simply identifying who is being punished—it’s revealing what sin does to the human soul.

In this discussion, we explore the principle of contrapasso, Dante’s poetic justice in which each punishment reflects the nature of the sin itself. The lustful are blown about by the winds of their passions. The schismatics, who brought division and discord into the world, are themselves divided.

More importantly, we discuss how teachers can help students read Inferno well: by focusing first on the actions, images, and spiritual realities Dante presents rather than getting lost in every historical detail.

Dante’s vision invites us to see not merely the consequences of sin but the shape it gives to the soul itself.

The modern world has been baptized in the dogma of multiculturalism, the belief that antithetical cosmologies can harmoniously co-exist and assimilate into one another.

In his plenary talk at our annual conference this past June, discusses the failure of this belief to bring about harmony and social order. He answers questions about why cultural disparities exist and how to establish strong foundations that enable people to thrive.

If you’d like more info about ACCS and the work that we do to establish and equip classical Christian schools, please visit classicalchristian.org.

If you’re already a member school, you can access additional conference talks at classicalatlas.com.

The irony cannot be lost on us, though. Reepicheep’s very existence is one continual rebuke to any human in proximity who lacks virtue. Lewis believed that men had souls, and that it was the business of education to form virtue in those souls. In this sense is Reepicheep a kind of tutor. He was vehemently opposed to utilitarian education, even then glimpsing the smartly dressed educational innovators emerging like dragons from their lairs; in his day the utilitarian beast was already slouching towards Bethlehem to “slay the little childer” once more. But by this time the Herodian blades had begun to take the form of lessons in English. His remonstration remains present in many of his works. The Chronicles of Narnia, for instance, however veiled in the garments of narrative, contain no less potent arguments than those contained in his lectures. Let us examine one scene.

Only the humanely educated author C. S. Lewis could have given so sharp and subtle a rebuke of utilitarianism in the Narnian stories. In the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis places this rebuke on the lips of the most pious and honor-bound beast in all Narnia, the “martial mouse” Reepicheep. The irony of having a mouse reprove the men, hardy sailors no less, is a recurring delight, but its educational pertinence is often overlooked. Lewis, knowing that education should propagate virtue in the soul, raises the question of usefulness in the activities and adventures of man. As the Dawn Treader proceeds towards the unknown of Dark Island, Lord Drinian disguises his fear by asking what appears to be a very sensible and advantageous question. But with this question, Lewis offers his characters and readers a subtle test of virtue:

“But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that blackness?” asked Drinian.

“Use?” replied Reepicheep. “Use, Captain? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great an adventure as ever I heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honours.”^[1]

The crew, King Caspian included, groans and grumbles at these words, but it is only because they know that the mouse is manlier than the men.

We would be wise to apply Reepicheep’s words to our ongoing discussion of leisure and schola, which is the soul and noble activity of a proper education, as Josef Pieper makes plain. In Planet Narnia, Dr. Michael Ward, argues that this particular scene reveals Lewis as a “staunch defender of liberal education.”^[2] In noting the planetary influence of “Sol” in the Dawn Treader, Ward, quoting Lewis, reminds the reader that “Sol ‘makes men liberal,’ and that liberality is a theme played in various keys throughout the book.”^[3] The exchange between Drinian and Reepicheep is especially important for educators, as it illustrates liberality “in the sense of ‘liberal study,’ the pursuit of knowledge that (as Newman wrote) ‘stands on its own pretensions.’”^[4] Ward quotes Lewis here, who in Studies in Words cites Cardinal Newman’s Scope and Nature of University Education. “Free study,” writes Lewis, “seeks nothing beyond itself and desires the activity of knowing for that activity’s own sake. That is what the man of radically servile character…will never understand. He will ask, ‘But what use is it?’”^[5] Lewis rightly draws out the historic associations that leisure shares with freedom and liberality, but what is equally incisive is how he exposes the relationship between utilitarianism and slavish morality. Just as earnest study of the liberal arts makes men liberal and free, so the utilitarian approach to education makes men slaves. After all, imitation is inescapable; we are what we study. In light of this, we might well characterize leisure and schola as Lewis’ “free study,” which cannot abide the servile ethic of utilitarianism. “Thus Drinian is rebuked,” writes Ward, for “his question betrays an illiberal, utilitarian trait in his character.”^[6]

^[1] C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Collier Books, New York: 1977) 152.

^[2] Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2008) 113.

^[3] Planet Narnia, 112.

^[4] Planet Narnia, 113.

^[5] C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words, 127.

^[6] Planet Narnia, 113.

In this episode of Artes Mechanicae, we explore the work of furniture maker and writer David Pye, author of The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Pye distinguished between two kinds of workmanship: the workmanship of certainty, where outcomes are predetermined and repeatable, and the workmanship of risk, where success depends upon the judgment, dexterity, care, and wisdom of the maker.

What does this have to do with education?

Modern educators are often tempted by systems, analytics, scripted curricula, assessments, and technologies that promise predictable results. Yet teaching remains a profoundly human endeavor. Like a craftsman at the workbench, the teacher must observe, adapt, discern, and respond to the unique students before him.

Drawing connections between craftsmanship, wisdom, Proverbs, and classical Christian education, this episode argues that teaching is not a workmanship of certainty but a workmanship of risk—one that requires virtue, prudence, and the daily practice of loving God and neighbor well.

Drawing connections between rhetoric, poetry, and modern public discourse, Devin, Heather, and Kajsa are joined by Joe Carlson to discuss how words are not simply containers for ideas — they help to form the ideas themselves. If this is true, what happens when a culture loses its sensitivity to language?

Four questions covered in this episode:

1. Is it more important to teach students philosophy or poetry?

2. How important is the invention step of rhetoric to be free from the tools of AI?

3. Was Hitler a good rhetorician?

4. Did Christianity adopt and modify classical rhetoric or did classical rhetoric distort “Christian rhetoric” (as Cassiodorus claims)?

Let us know your thoughts!

In this episode, David, Heather, Andrew, and Devin answer questions about Socratic discussion, dual-enrollment, prep schools, and the tutorial Model.

Share your thoughts in the comments!

In this episode of Artes Mechanicae, Austin Hoffman examines the modern culture of consumption through the lens of the mechanical arts. From planned obsolescence and disposable products to endless scrolling and media saturation, he explores how modern life often encourages us to consume rather than create.

Drawing on the work of William Cavanaugh, Albert Borgmann, Joseph Pieper, Hugh of St. Victor, and Marshall McLuhan, Austin argues that the mechanical arts offer an alternative vision—one oriented toward craftsmanship, service, meaningful production, and love of neighbor.

What happens when we stop asking what we can consume and begin asking what we can make? What kind of life emerges when production is guided by service rather than profit and by stewardship rather than disposability?

Join us as we explore how the mechanical arts orient us away from endless consumption and toward the self-giving love that lies at the heart of the Christian life.

Devin O’Donnell is back with another word — Goodbye. It’s one of the most common words in the English language, but what does it actually mean?

In this episode of Isidore’s Pub, Devin traces the surprising history of the word goodbye, revealing how it began as a blessing: “God be with you.” Along the way, he explores the Christian roots hidden within our everyday speech, the connection between language and culture, and why words preserve the story of who we are.

What happens when we uncover the forgotten meanings buried in familiar words? And what does a simple farewell reveal about the Christian heritage of the West?

Join us for another journey into the history of words and the history of man.

What happens when students can outsource their thinking to AI? How should Christian educators respond? And what do Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Dante, and the classical tradition have to say about it?

In this episode, Austin Freeman (Chair of Apologetics at Houston Christian University) joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on AI, education, virtue, imagination, and the purpose of learning. Drawing from his essay “AI in the Path of Temptation,” Austin argues that the real challenge isn’t simply catching cheaters—it’s helping students understand what education is actually for.

We discuss:

• Why educators have become modern-day “Blade Runners.”

• How to recognize AI-generated writing

• Why the goal of education is formation, not graduation

• The role of imagination and reason in learning

• What Tolkien and C.S. Lewis teach us about technology

• AI, virtue, cheating, and the cultivation of the soul

• Dante’s Purgatorio and the temptation of shortcuts

• Why Austin believes educators should make AI the harder choice

• The growing cultural shift back toward the analog and tangible world

Austin also shares insights from his work on Tolkien, Lewis, imaginative apologetics, and his upcoming books on Narnia and classical literature.

Devin O’Donnell is back with another word — Coward. Where does the word come from, and why did the medieval imagination connect cowardice with a dog’s tail tucked between its legs?

In this episode of Isidore’s Pub, Devin traces the word through the Norman Conquest, Middle French, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and the classical understanding of courage as the mean between cowardice and recklessness.

Join us for another exploration into the history of words and the history of man.

In this episode of Artes Mechanicae, Austin Hoffman explores Ivan Illich’s critique of modern professionalism and the way industrial society slowly strips people of everyday human agency reducing human beings into functions, processes, and machines.

Drawing from thinkers like Ivan Illich, Michael Sacasas, David Epstein, and Hugh of St. Victor, Austin argues that the mechanical arts resist this reduction by requiring attention, creativity, judgment, and love. Whether woodworking, auto repair, teaching, or comforting a grieving friend, these deeply human activities demand prudence rather than mere procedure.

David, Heather, Devin, and Kajsa explore the role of fine arts within classical Christian education. What does it mean to pursue the arts faithfully and with excellence? Join the discussion as they consider what makes a strong fine arts program and why beauty matters in the life of a school.

Four questions discussed in this episode:

1. How can a small school start a competent fine arts program?

2. Does focusing too much on fine arts, especially theatre, contribute to the feminization of boys?

3. How can you create a school culture of singing?

4. Should music be required for every grade level?

Comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Austin introduces the concept of "The Double Watershed." This was discussed by Ivan Illich in his book Tools for Conviviality (1973). He illustrates how industrial innovations like those found in medicine, school, and transportation have an initial phase that is seen as beneficial to society, but it is often followed by a phase that brings more damage than good.

In this special episode, Austin Hoffman gets to share one of his favorite publications: Mortise & Tenon Magazine!

Michael Updegraff joins both Austin and Devin O’Donnell as they discuss the virtues of learning a craft and the blessings of working with your hands.

To get the newest issue visit: Mortise & Tenon.

For more from the Classis Journal, click here.

The Four returns to tackle the topic of athletics in the classical Christian school!

The questions covered in this episode:

1. Are Athletic programs worth it?

2. Does the “athlete scholar” really exist?

3. Would you hire a teacher that has an obvious and severe shortcoming in standards of excellence?

4. How important is it that a head of school is classically educated?

Please comment with questions or feedback!

What is the point of doing difficult things? If we can use technologies around us to complete tasks in a more efficient way, should we not opt to carry on in that manner? This is a topic that requires much more thought than a quick consideration. Join Austin Hoffman as he delves into this very thing in the world of the Mechanical Arts.