Here’s another answer to a question that I offered in a Facebook discussion, which I thought might be worth sharing here. It was an explanation of why I find the language of panentheism helpful. I don’t know that I, from my own human perspective, can sort out where Nature ends, or where God ends, or whether talking about either having an “end” really makes any sense. But by not positing a radical distinction between the two, I can note that... Read more
Fred Clark’s latest post in his ongoing review of Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist in the Left Behind series had me laughing out loud at one point. Here is the entire section that includes the reason for the title of this post, which is itself pretty funny, but then a bit that is even more hilarious – if you saw the episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus it refers to: I sympathize with Buck a bit here. He’s just trying to... Read more
Charles Haberl has posted a couple of things on his blog Philogastry, about a particularly intriguing Mandaean text, known as Haran Gawaita or “The Great Revelation”: Legends and Lore in the Great Revelation Legends and Lore in the Great Revelation, continued I also came across an article by E. S. Drower, “Mandaean Writings,” that has been added to the Internet Archive, and a PhD thesis by Max Aplin completed at the University of Edinburgh, “Was Jesus ever a disciple of... Read more
I am grateful to AWOL for pointing out that a large number of back-issues of the journal Vigiliae Christianae are now available online. Read more
Having just posted yesterday about treating the Bible as a card game, I was struck when Scot McKnight today shared quotes from an article in Relevant magazine about treating the Bible as an arms race. The point being made is much the same. Here’s a sample: I like to call this exercise a “Bible Verse Arms Race.” The key to winning is to pile up as many verses on your side of the argument as you can while simultaneously discounting your... Read more
Two comments on my recent “Mumpsimus” post seemed worth sharing. First, James Snapp shared an anecdote about the origin of the term: The story goes that there was a medieval priest who habitually mispronounced part of the liturgy; when he was supposed to say “sumpsimus” (we have taken/consumed), he instead said “mumpsimus,” a non-word. He did this for decades, and one day, another priest visited and informed him of the mistake. But the old priest replied, “For forty years I... Read more
Michael Zimmerman introduced me to the word mumpsimus when he used it in his recent Huffington Post piece to describe Ray Comfort. Michael refers to Anu Garg, who defines the word as “a view stubbornly held in spite of clear evidence that it's wrong; and a person who holds such a view.” Ray Comfort is misrepresenting scientists he interviewed for an upcoming movie. The video trailer below was shared by P. Z. Myers, who appears in the film and is... Read more
Unfortunately the sentence on this church sign can be understood in two different ways. And unfortunately there are churches for which each of the possible meanings is true. Read more
Thom Stark wrote the following on Facebook: In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, if someone didn’t like the Constitution of the U.S., they criticized it. In the 21st century, if someone doesn’t like it, they claim that it says what they’d rather it say. That’s because the Constitution has become a religious text. I think he is right, and would just add that this typical way of approaching religious texts is also problematic in and of itself. What... Read more
The Gospel of Luke depicts a Jesus who learned. Many fundamentalists view Jesus as someone who always knew everything, being a divine person unhindered by human frailties (even if in theory they claim he was fully human as well as fully divine). Yet this Jesus who is supposedly infallible is kept on a very short leash, and consistently becomes not the one whose teaching they seek to follow as perfectly as they can, but a spokesperson for their own viewpoints,... Read more
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