Playwright David Mamet (here) recently had an interesting observation on the Book of Jonah. His synagogue’s congregation was meditating on the book during the recent Yom Kippur; his insight was triggered by remembering Rush Limbaugh’s observation once that, when you’re arguing with someone intransigent, it isn’t necessarily futile, because some third party might be listening: … [Read more…]
I was googling “best gospel books” or something like that and, lo and behold, I found the subject of this blog post, namely Leo Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief. My thought then was, well, Tolstoy was one of the great writers of all time, and a committed Christian, and so it would make a lot … [Read more…]
Jesus’ famous dialogue in the synoptic Gospels with the “rich young ruler” is intriguing and was the subject of a sermon and then small-group discussion at our church recently. Here’s the version in Mark 10: 17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good … [Read more…]
There is an almost surreal quality to the last chapter of John, the last chapter of the Gospels. Jesus has already be resurrected and appeared to the disciples, and Peter decides to go back to his fishing. And other disciples join him, and they fish all night, unsuccessfully. Jesus then appears on the shore, cooking … [Read more…]
A couple of weeks ago (on October 18) a friend of mine sent around this short biography of St. Luke, which I generally enjoyed and thought I would share here. My friend cautions that he drew this from a number of sites and that he may have been guilty of some plagiarism in doing so, … [Read more…]
Here are the last two paragraphs from an article by Alexander Riley in the latest (November/December 2024) issue of Touchstone magazine (page 17): Nietzsche admired Pascal greatly, though he also criticized him, and considered him perhaps the most tragic victim of Christianity. Like Nietzsche, Pascal gazed at the infinity of indifferent time and space. Unlike … [Read more…]
I’ve discussed here on this blogsite my suggestion that the Lord’s Prayer is structured as a chiasm, including an argument that the center of the Prayer (promising that we will forgive others) is especially important, as is characteristic of chiasms. So I wanted to note that I recently discovered that it is commonly noted that … [Read more…]
Is There a God? I have some good news for you, gentle reader: I can recommend to you a wonderful apologetics book by a distinguished Oxford philosophy professor, it’s only 123 pages long, and you can read it right now for free since the whole book is online here [link: https://ia801904.us.archive.org/13/items/RichardSwinburne/RichardSwinburne-IsThereAGod.pdf ]. I was led … [Read more…]
Maybe it’s the lawyer in me, but I find that sometimes it’s useful to pretend you have to make arguments supporting the opposing side. So, how would you imagine an intelligent rejection of Pascal’s Wager? This imaginary person would, it seems to me, have to say this sentence to himself: Okay, I understand that it … [Read more…]
Our church’s summer sermon series was on the first eight chapters of Acts, so I thought I’d share a few notes on it. Of course we know that, in Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira became famous — or, rather, infamous — for their dishonesty in contributing the proceeds from a land sale to the early … [Read more…]