Joseph Pierce is the author of many books, including literary converts, the quest for Shakespeare, and biographies of Oscar Wild, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton.

His new book is The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful. Our topic today. Welcome, Mr. Pierce.

It's good to be with you.

First question about a phrase early in the book, which has it that, quote,

The Gospel is the very template of the pattern of history.

That's kind of a key to your approach here,

but go ahead and explain what you mean by that.

Yeah, so basically, you know, on the assumption,

and as a Christian I have that assumption,

that Christ is who he says he is,

and the incarnation, therefore, is the key moment in history.

This is a book of a history of Christendom, which obviously begins with the incarnation

and with the time of Christ.

And what I say at the beginning is really the gospel story gives us the template for what follows.

In other words, we have the good, which is basically doing the will of Christ, becoming Christ-like, so the saints.

We also have the power of secularism.

We have Caesar.

And we have the power of corruption, treachery and heresy within the church. We have Caesar and we have the power of corruption, treachery and the heresy within the church.

We have Judas.

And, you know, obviously we have beauty in the presence of Christ.

So the book as a whole looks at those three dimensions.

The good.

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