A recent Pew Research Center poll found 46 percent of American adults saying they felt at least once a week a sense of wonder about the universe. Surprisingly, 24 percent said they seldom or never had that feeling. Another surprise: 24 percent of those who self-identified as Protestant evangelicals said they seldom or never had that feeling.

How can evangelicals not have that feeling when we look at the heavens that declare the glory of God? How can scientists not have that feeling, unless they keep congratulating themselves on how much more we know about the physics of the universe than we did a century ago?

Paul Langacker’s Can the Laws of Physics Be Unified? (Princeton, 2017) presents the standard model (SM) of elementary particles and their interaction—“a mathematically consistent theory that accounts for essentially all aspects of ordinary matter”—but also has the honesty to note that the SM “is very complicated and apparently arbitrary.” He acknowledges that the atoms and molecules we know about display “incredible fine-tuning,” but they “constitute only about 5% of the stuff in the universe. … The remainder is the mysterious dark energy (70%) and dark matter (25%) … one of the most intriguing issues in physics.”

I’m not recommending this book unless you have an advanced knowledge of physics (and I certainly don’t), but it can contribute to our sense of wonder.

Teachers at classical Christian schools sometimes have a sense of wonder about “the glory that was Greece.” They shouldn’t. During the centuries before the teachings of Christ partly civilized ancient civilization, city-states acted ruthlessly toward their enemies, as Jennifer Roberts shows in The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (Oxford, 2017).

For example, the island of Melos, a Spartan colony 80 miles off the Peloponnesian coast, wanted to stay neutral in wars among the city-states, but the strong Athenian army captured the island’s one city, killed all the males of fighting age they could find, and enslaved all the women and children. Roberts summarizes the final result of Greek pride in 371 B.C.: “Only then did the Peloponnesian War really end, but there were no winners, only losers.”

While some praise Athenian democracy, only 10 to 20 percent of residents could vote, since slaves outnumbered citizens. By 317-307 B.C. a general census was showing Attica (Athens and the surrounding region) with 21,000 citizens, 10,000 metics (foreign residents without citizenship), and 400,000 slaves. As Roberts reports, Athenians declared, “It is an eternal law that the strong should rule the weak.”

Bookmarks

The Nazis certainly believed in that Athenian “eternal law,” so they murdered 6 million Jews and millions of others. Evgeny Finkel’s Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival During the Holocaust (Princeton, 2017) shows how those who knew history were doomed not to repeat it. East European Jews for centuries had put up with occasional pogroms where a few were killed but most survived. Many had experienced German occupation toward the end of World War I and trusted Germans, from Europe’s “most civilized nation,” more than they did Russians and Poles. The result: passivity among the majority, until it was too late.

Most also knew their chances of survival in the forests were slim, so they hoped against hope. Others did fight back against overwhelming odds: One young man said, “We are fighting for three lines in the history books to make the world know that the Jewish youth did not go like lambs to the slaughter.” And a few survived because genuine Christians risked their lives to save other children of Abraham.

Also regarding strong ruling weak: Douglas Schoen’s Putin’s Master Plan (Encounter, 2016) describes the new Russian czar’s plan to dominate Europe and central Asia. Schoen proposes a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine, along with improvements in our nuclear capacity and missile defense. —M.O.