At the end of the film version of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses , the principal character, Cole, asks whether God exists. Cole has been through a infernal trip to Mexico – his lover is taken away from him by her family, he watches a companion get shot, endures a brief stay in a Mexican jail where he is beaten and knifed. Does God exist? Cole says something like “I guess he must. Otherwise we wouldn’t survive a day.”... Read more
2 Chronicles 20: Every man of Judah and Jerusalem returned with Jehoshaphat at their head, returning to Jerusalem with joy, for the LORD had made them to rejoice over their enemies. They came to Jerusalem with harps, lyres and trumpets to the house of the LORD. And the dread of God was on all the kingdoms of the lands when they heard that the LORD had fought against the enemies of Israel. We live in a world still full of... Read more
1 Corinthians 7:3-4: Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. These days, Christianity is often characterized as misogynist, bigoted, or anti-feminist. The Apostle Paul, after all, warns women to be silent in the church, tells Timothy that women should... Read more
Paul’s description of the armor of God draws on Isaiah 59, the description of God’s own armor. We deck ourselves in the same armor He does. But Paul is also referring to another set of garments found in the OT. In the OT, the high priest wore a breastplate and crown and girded his loins, and Paul is describing a suit of armor similar to the “armor” of the priest, who was the commanding officer of Israel’s liturgical army. Baptism... Read more
The Psalter is the church’s primary Hymnal, and what do we find when we pick up the Psalter? We learn that God establishes the righteous man like a tree, but drives the wicked away like chaff. Then we learn that God has installed His Son as King of kings, and that the kings of the earth had better beware His rod of iron. Then David, fleeing from Absalom, cries out for God to deliver him from his adversaries, smiting the... Read more
Jeffrey Burton Russell, who identifies himself as a “lapsed atheist,” has spent most of his career writing about Satan and hell. His most recent book is a history of the modern “mislaying” of heaven. Early in the book, he points out that “The ‘decline of heaven’ was linked to the decline of hell and of the Devil, and these in turn were closely tied to the fading of the witch-craze that arose in the 1500s and gradually died away by... Read more
In his “Hortatory Address,” Justin claims that Plato’s theory of forms came from a misreading of the tabernacle texts of Exodus: “And Plato, too, when he says that form is the third original principle next to God and matter, has manifestly received this suggestion from no other source than from Moses, having learned, indeed, from the words of Moses the name of form, but not having at the same time been instructed by the initiated, that without mystic insight it... Read more
In his “Hortatory Address,” Justin claims that Plato’s theory of forms came from a misreading of the tabernacle texts of Exodus: “And Plato, too, when he says that form is the third original principle next to God and matter, has manifestly received this suggestion from no other source than from Moses, having learned, indeed, from the words of Moses the name of form, but not having at the same time been instructed by the initiated, that without mystic insight it... Read more
As Hugo Rahner made clear in his classic study of the patristic uses of Greek myth, the church fathers saw Christ anticipated not only in the OT but in ancient literature and philosophy generally. Some examples: In Plato’s Republic (2, 361d-e), Glaucon describes the perfectly just man as one who will be “whipped; he’ll be racked; he’ll be bound; he’ll have both his eyes burned out; and at the end, when he ahs undergone every sort of evil, he’ll be... Read more
In his “Hortatory Address to the Greeks,” Justin Martyr argued that the disagreements among Greek philosophers undermined their reliability, while the unity of the apostolic witness, and the witness of their successors, was evidence that Christianity came from God. “Since therefore it is impossible to learn anything true concerning religion from your teachers, who by their mutual disagreement have furnished you with sufficient proof of their own ignorance, I consider it reasonable to recur to our progenitors, who both in... Read more
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