There’s been an ongoing bloggersation about pluralism, universalism, inclusivism and so on involving this blog and several others. I’ve already posted a quote of the day for today, but then I came across this: I can’t help but think of the scenario in Jn 8.1-11 involving the woman caught in adultery. I wonder, if at the moment of judgment, once we have been fully confronted with both our own sinfulness, our own complicity in the broader structures of sin, and... Read more

“We are always entitled to call the Torah to witness against itself, that is, to apply its own moral standards to some of its passages. We do it no disservice when we let it teach us the highest moral principles, standards so high that the Torah itself – the work of human hands and minds and the product of its own age – sometimes fails to live up to them. We show no disrespect in reading the Bible critically in... Read more

Tonight’s episode of LOST was wonderful. We learned how Daniel Faraday, in 1996, was working on an experiment that would allow the consciousness of a living thing (in practice, a rat named Eloise) to be “unstuck” in time. He meets Desmond, after his future self tells him to go find him at the Department of Physics at Queens College in Oxford. We later learn that Desmond will be Daniel’s “constant” in both times if something goes wrong, just as he... Read more

“There is no gospel that does not wear cultural clothes, no simple faith that owes nothing to general education for its expression and understanding. It is a necessary corollary of the Word made flesh, that the message of Jesus wears the clothes of Jerusalem and Athens, Illinois or Cambridge” (Doug Chaplin, “The rhetoric of Athens and Jerusalem”, blog entry on Metacatholic. I recommend reading the whole post). Read more

It will not take you very far, and is focused on the modern spoken dialect, it would seem, rather than the classical form of most interest to scholars. Nevertheless, the resources recently made available on a Mandaean site in Australia for learning the Mandaic language are still a welcome addition. Thanks to those who’ve made them available! Read more

April DeConick proposed having a “blog co-op” on the theme “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Before proceeding to the source of this quotation, good old Tertullian, I do want to share an anecdote. I distinctly remember (although I cannot remember precisely when) suddenly realizing that “Joppa” (which I remembered from the movie Clash of the Titans) was “Jaffa” in the coastal region of modern Israel. Although it is not clear that this site was associated with Andromeda before... Read more

Yesterday’s episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was arguably the most powerful yet, at least as far as the series’ exploration of religion and artificial intelligence is concerned. If anything, the episode could be criticized for overplaying this aspect – often times a subtle approach is best – but in in the end it seems to work. The episode explores, among other things, the question whether the apocalypse in the Bible and that predicted by Sarah Connor could be... Read more

Everyone (well not quite but lots of bloggers) are talking about the recent Pew Forums study on religion. The study itself can be found on the Pew Forums web site.The Quixotic Infidel has a nice chart (and post) about the development of the New Testament canon.The Bad Idea Blog focuses attention on the hypocrisy in churches that condemn homosexuality and tolerate divorce.Sun and Shield has an interesting post on the moral status of embryos.Pharyngula shares statistics on the extent to... Read more

A student in my class on Paul’s letters had a very thought-provoking reaction to the summary of Israel’s experiences wandering in the wilderness in 1 Corinthians 10:6-12. There a series of actions in violation of the Law are listed, and the punishments that resulted. For this student, the text was a description of how each time the Israelites did something displeasing to God, God got violent with them. Israel in these stories, the student suggested, seems like “God’s battered wife”,... Read more

Doesn’t exclusivism inevitably place the focus for salvation more on assent to doctrine than on either one’s attitude to God or one’s behavior? Thus far I’ve approached the subject from the standpoint of passages in the Bible that seem to me to be relevant. Let me in this post try a different approach. I suspect that Quixie, who has now joined the conversation, may find this approach easier to dive into than the “in-house” one we’ve been having so far,... Read more