The Shield of Achilles was god-fashioned for a god-man in the dawn of the age of Iron. It symbolizes, just as Achilles himself personifies, a reversal of the "downward drift of history to degeneration," a remnant of an earlier, primodial state of purity and integral wholeness. The hero and his shield show us material and man caught between two ages and natures: "It was as though for a moment the river of time flowed back on itself in brief eddies, caught up in memories of its source."

In this article Casey seeks to “indicate some of the problems involved in our attempt as Christians to enter into fruitful dialogue with the scientific thought of the west and the metaphysical doctrines of the east.” He points out that a lot of common problems in communication arise from the misunderstanding of words like science, metaphysics, revelation, religion and so forth. His goal is to examine the use of words and come to some general understanding of their true meaning, he begins by simply outlining some of these terms. Then Casey examines these terms within a Christian theological context, while simultaneously commenting on the future of Christianity internally and in relation to the rest of the world.