Did God Rape the Prophet Jeremiah?

Last updated on: June 10, 2016 at 11:37 am By Artur Rosman

Jeremiah seemed to think so and that’s more interesting than a thousand vapid “current events” articles on gorillas. Modern Christians have talked about the strange new world within the Bible at least since the time of Karl Barth. Actually, this trope goes back all the way back to one of Barth’s sources, Albert Schweitzer and his The Quest of the Historical Jesus. In that book the good humanist doctor “discovered” in Jesus an apocalyptic prophet-figure that didn’t play nice with the liberal-bourgeois Jesus of... Read more

Ever Wonder Why Saint Paul Went to Arabia?

Last updated on: June 6, 2016 at 7:06 am By Artur Rosman

Arabia is a geographical entity familiar and vexing to the contemporary Westerners, but what could it have meant to Paul? There’s no indication in Galatians 1 the future saint went there to combat ISIS, or to fight for Israel in the hope of igniting Armageddon: But when God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles, I went into Arabia and then... Read more

Obama Used Original Sin to Explain Hiroshima

Last updated on: May 28, 2016 at 7:45 pm By Artur Rosman

If one bothers to scratch even a little below the surface then it becomes clear as day that the doctrine of Original Sin was the primary trope of President Obama’s speech at the Hiroshima Peace Park. But that’s only one part of a larger biblical story that should also include apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. What follows is a reading of the text following the interpretive hints dropped by The Irony of Barack Obama: Barack Obama, Reinhold Niebuhr and the Problem... Read more

Jesus Didn’t Call God Daddy

Last updated on: May 26, 2016 at 9:42 pm By Artur Rosman

One of the perennial temptations for Christians is to forget their Jewish roots. Anthony Sciglitano has a great book, Marcion and Prometheus: Balthasar Against the Expulsion of Jewish Origins from Modern Religious Dialogue, about how these very Jewish roots were recovered during the 20th century. The major symptom of this temptation is at least as old as Marcion. Marcion dumped the Old Testament, and much of the New Testament, because the old God didn’t seem to fit the picture of... Read more

3 Easy Steps for Beating Amazon.com’s Fluctuating Prices

Last updated on: May 25, 2016 at 6:58 am By Artur Rosman

Many of you have no doubt experienced one of the two following scenarios when purchasing items from Amazon: An item you saved for later drastically increased in price An item you saved for later dove in price to your pleasant surprise Some other variation on these. These might have led you to track the prices of things you want to purchase in the hope of getting the best deal. But there is a much more effective way to do this.... Read more

Freedom of Religion Isn’t Free

Last updated on: May 24, 2016 at 5:14 pm By Artur Rosman

You might think this post will be about how great a price Catholics will have to pay in order to gain back their God-given American “religious freedom.” Instead it is about how great a price there is to pay in being granted “religious freedom” in the way it is understood in modern-day America. Freedom of religion isn’t free. The conclusions I draw here grow out of some incisive questions Anne Carpenter of The Rule and the Raven posed to me after... Read more

TOP10 Books to Build Upon Trinity Sunday

Last updated on: May 24, 2016 at 5:04 pm By Artur Rosman

We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged. –Karl Rahner, The Trinity I remember being shocked while reading Karl Rahner’s short and dense book on the Trinity as an undergraduate at the University of Washington. Rahner still seemed to be right about the main thrust of Western Christian theology. However, I later came to discover that his critique had... Read more

The Democratic Clown Bus Parks Alongside the GOP Clown Bus . . .

Last updated on: May 21, 2016 at 12:57 pm By Artur Rosman

It was so much fun for the Democrats to ridicule the GOP “clown car” that they didn’t see what was parked in their own driveway. This is the elephant in the room of the left. The LA Times reports Democratic mainliners are greatly puzzled by Bernie Bros refusing to tow the party line and go down lightly into the electoral night: Now that the actions and attitudes of Sanders supporters have become a national issue thanks to the chaos at... Read more

This is How Corrupt Our Political System Is

Last updated on: May 20, 2016 at 7:18 am By Artur Rosman

There were numerous objections to my proposal for Catholics to vote for Donald Trump. Good intentions paving the way to hell were behind them. The readers assumed I had no idea what Trump stands for. It is as if they did not read what I had written. The reason why Trump should be elected is because he is a symptom of everything that’s wrong with American political culture. The disaster of his presidency would reveal how much corporate culture is... Read more

Big Win for Little Sisters is a Huge Loss for Catholicism

Last updated on: May 24, 2016 at 9:31 pm By Artur Rosman

Is religious freedom really free? The big Supreme Court religious freedom win for the Little Sisters of the Poor might be a Pyrrhic victory. As I’ve explained in American Idol: Religious Freedom, religious freedom is the problem itself. Before we get to that here’s the WSJ’s rundown, “Big Win for Little Sisters,” of what went down with the SCOTUS: First the good news: Though it was more a TKO than a straight-up ruling, the Little Sisters of the Poor prevailed at the Supreme Court... Read more