In the last few weeks I have read “Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters,” by theologian and scholar N. T. Wright, “Killing Jesus” by Commentator Bill O’Reilly and historian Martin Dugard, and a short reflection on the tenth day of Lent, “Why Was the Cross […]
Revised, with apologies, December 17th, 2013. The Experience of God by Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart is a critique of both the faulty logic of modern atheists and of the easy targets provided them by simplistic understandings and explanations of God by people of faith. To whet your appetite for Hart’s books, […]
I first read this 688 page document, paying particular attention to the scripture references, while I was a student at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary eight or ten years ago. It is great educational and devotional reading for any Christian, Catholic or not, if taken in fifteen or twenty page bite size pieces at a time. […]
Listening to yesterday’s Gospel reading from Luke 10 about Jesus sending the Seventy out and instructing them to “rejoice in one thing only,” I was reminded that it was the text for the one and only prepared sermon I ever delivered. Near the end of my three years of Lutheran seminary, I took Professor Tom […]
Below is a short paper I wrote in May, 2002, to fulfill a requirement for a Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary course, Introduction to Theology. The professor was Dr. David Yeago, prominent Lutheran theologian, who was always challenging us to do a better job of “unpacking” the texts we were studying or quoting and who must […]
Listening to the Gospel reading this morning from Mark 10 about the young man who went away sad after Jesus told him to sell everything he had and give to the poor inspired some reflection on the difficulties we have understanding scripture and formulating a cohesive theology from it. A couple of things I learned […]
A Ross Douthat column in the July 14, 2012, NYT is titled, “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” It includes interesting data on trends in membership of the Episcopal Church and how those trends may be related to shifting positions on theological and social issues. The bottom line is that, while there is no proof of […]
As a recent Catholic convert, I’ve been thinking a lot about confession lately. It has been almost a year since being confirmed at St. Peter’s in Columbia, SC, and Catholic faithful “go to confession” at least once per year. I did it just prior to the confirmation, dumping on the priest a bunch of shameful […]
134 All sacred Scripture is but one book, and this one book is Christ, “because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine Scripture is fulfilled in Christ” – The Catholic Catechism The diagram below started with one I published earlier, Chaos to Church. I had some feedback and suggestions on that one, and […]
Below is an early version of a diagram which I developed a few years back after first hearing the term “henotheism” in a theology course at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary and after some discussion of ecclesiology at that same institution. Who else but me is going to try to express in a simple diagram on […]