It is unfortunate that the 21st Century meanings of truth and love do not do justice to the important ancient Greek and Hebrew words translated as truth and love in most English Bibles. Now we tend to talk easily of scientific truth, religious truth, and personal truth, giving the most weight to scientific truth but […]
The Protestant Reformation was a rebellion against some positions and practices of the 1500-year-old Christian Church which had been described as catholic or universal since the second century. The use of Roman Catholic Church as the official name became common after the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church today, with about 1.4 billion members, still considers […]
Angels have a prominent role in the bible with 130 mentions in the Old Testament and 178 in the New Testament. In the New Testament, they are most prominent in Matthew, Luke, Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation, 85% of the NT instances being in those five books. Only three angels are named in the Bible. Michael […]
The Catholic teachings of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, and Assumption into Heaven are certainly among the most mysterious to Protestant believers in Jesus. Granted these are not specifically stated in the Bible but even among the Reformers agreeing on Sola Scriptura, there were two positions. Some argued that unless something is specifically stated in […]
It is a common temptation to see God as a sort of superhuman, created in our image but perfected, no character flaws, no sin, and the ability to do perfectly all the things we fail to do or do imperfectly. He is sometimes seen as the kindly “Man Upstairs,” waiting to hear from us and […]
I grew up in the shadow of the East Tennessee Smoky Mountains. All my exposure to church was Southern Baptist. I remember my dad’s skepticism about local Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. They did not forbid alcohol consumption! Except for some delinquency during my college years, I have always been a church attender actively involved in […]
Introduction The Catholic Church emphasizes Bible readings in its worship, hearing readings from the Old and New Testaments at Mass and usually hearing a homily about one of those readings. However, tradition and Church authority are also important. The pertinent words from the Nicene Creed are these: I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic […]
For an introduction to this series of theology inquiries to Magisterium AI see this POST. Today’s question to Magisterium AI: What does the Catholic Church teach about creation of the universe? Magisterium Response (Hot links deleted for simplicity) The Catholic Church teaches that God freely created the universe out of nothing, an act rooted in […]
Artificial Intelligence is the hot news item this year. It is at least a super-fast search engine able to summarize and analyze data. It is projected to save time and money and eliminate millions of jobs. The radical view is that it will eventually eliminate the need for humanity! An issue is that there are […]
The first eleven chapters of Genesis consist of important pre-historic oral traditions included in the Torah because of divine inspiration. They express the efforts of early humans to understand why things were the way they were, how they came to be, how they were to live. In the Bible, recorded human history begins in Genesis […]