Category: Christian Doctrine
-
Christian Stoicism
Richard Wurmbrand, From Torture to Triumph (Monarch, 1991), p. 5: A brother who had been terribly tortured by the Communist police shared the same prison cell with me and told the following incident: I once saw an impressive scene in a circus. A sharpshooter set out to demonstrate his skill. In the arena…
-
From the Mail: Christianity and Judaism
Dear Mr. Vallicella, I want to begin by thanking you yet again for your fantastic blog. Your recent posts on Osama Bin Laden, the correct response to his death, and on evidentialism have been absolutely superb. I have linked to a great many of your posts in recent days on my facebook and I…
-
The God of Christianity and the God of Islam: Same God?
One morning an irate C-Span viewer called in to say that he prayed to the living God, not to the mythical being, Allah, to whom Muslims pray. The C-Span guest made a standard response, which is correct as far as it goes, namely, that Allah is Arabic for God, just as Gott is German for God.…
-
Easter Morning Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15:14
Biblia Vulgata: Si autem Christus non resurrexit, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra. King James: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Orthodox Christianity stands and falls with a contingent historical fact, the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the…
-
Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75: The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which…
-
The Christian ‘Anatta Doctrine’ of Lorenzo Scupoli
Buddhism and Christianity both enjoin self-denial. But Buddhism is more radical in that it connects self-denial with denial of the very existence of the self, whereas Christianity in its orthodox versions presupposes the existence of the self: Christian self-purification falls short of self-elimination. Nevertheless, there are points of comparison between the 'No Self' doctrine of…
-
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem…
-
Was Camus Contemplating Baptism?
Albert Camus, one of the luminaries of French existentialism, died on this day in 1960, in a car crash. He was 46. Had he lived, he might have become a Christian. Or so it seems from Howard Mumma, Conversations with Camus. This second-hand report is worth considering, although it must be consumed cum grano salis. See…
-
Kerouac October Quotation #30: The Holes in Jesus’ and Buddha’s Bags
Vanity of Duluoz, Book Thirteen, X, pp. 274-276, ellipses and bold emphases added: . . . .Mad Dog creation has a side of compassionate mercy in it . . . we have seen the brutal creation send us the Son of Man who, to prove that we should follow His example of mercy, brotherly love,…
-
Schall on Belloc: Islam as a Christian Heresy
This is a thought-provoking essay. Excerpts with a bit of commentary: Belloc’s thesis is that Islam began as a Christian heresy which retained the Jewish side of the faith, the Oneness and Omnipotence of God, but denied all the Christian aspects – the Incarnation, the divinity of Christ, who, as a result, became just a prophet.…
-
On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo with ex nihilo nihil fit in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if…
-
The Christian Delusion
According to Michael Martin, The Christian Delusion "completely destroys Christianity." The folks at Triablogue are not impressed.
-
East Versus West on the Trinity: The Filioque Controversy
Our meeting with the affable and stimulating Dale Tuggy on June 20th at St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox monastery a little south of Florence, Arizona, got me thinking about the Trinity again. So I pulled Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Church off the shelf wherein I found a discussion of the differences between the Eastern Orthodox and…
-
Milan Kundera’s Misunderstanding of the Basic Thesis of Christian Anthropology: Imago Dei
In Giles Fraser's excellent Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief (Routledge 2002, p. 140) I came across the following quotation from Milan Kundera's Art of the Novel: When I was small and would leaf through the Old Testament retold for children and illustrated in engravings by Gustave Dore, I saw the Lord God standing…
-
Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Romans 1:18-20
Joe Carter over at First Things argues that "We have to abandon the politically correct notion that atheism is intellectually respectable." My own view is that theism and atheism are both intellectually respectable. Carter makes his case by invoking St. Paul: In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his…