The Bible and Homosexuality: Introduction

There’s been a lot of renewed dis­cus­sion (read: debate) over what the Bible says con­cern­ing homo­sex­u­al­ity, espe­cially where the “clob­ber verses” (listed below) are con­cerned. As it’s begin­ning to come up time and time again, I fig­ured I would exam­ine the clob­ber verses, both views for and against, and see if we, or I, can con­clude where exactly the bible stands in regard to this issue (how­ever obvi­ous it may be for some on both sides). I’ll prob­a­bly get one post in this series writ­ten every week, but we’ll see for sure what hap­pens. So then, this just serves as the (very) brief intro­duc­tion. Post Series: The Bible and Homo­sex­u­al­ity Part 1: Intro­duc­tion Part 2:…

Book Review: Between Heaven and Hell

Pages: 142 Pub­lisher: Inter­var­sity Press Year: 1982 (2008) Author: Peter Kreeft I believe this is the first major Socratic dia­logue Kreeft pub­lished (1982) and, unlike the oth­ers pub­lished by Inter­var­sity Press, does not fea­ture Socrates as the cen­tral char­ac­ter. But, instead, fea­ture Lewis as the main char­ac­ter. Between Heaven and Hell is a dia­logue between Chris­t­ian author and apol­o­gist C.S. Lewis, Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy and Eng­lish author Aldous Hux­ley. While the orig­i­nal was pub­lished in 1982, a revised edi­tion was pub­lished in 2008 — the edi­tion I own — and includes an Appen­dix (A World With­out an Easter) and out­line of the book. How­ever as far as I know, the main text has…

Kreeft’s Ecumenical Jihad

Well, it seems a mid-term and essay have taken con­trol of my life, so I won’t be able to put any sub­stan­tial thought towards post­ing (for today). I do think it’s worth men­tion­ing, how­ever, a talk given by Peter Kreeft on some­thing he calls “ecu­meni­cal jihad”–that through (reli­gious) sep­a­ra­tion comes unity (mighty para­dox­i­cal, isn’t it?). It’s about an hour and a half long, but it’s well worth the lis­ten if you’re inter­ested in hear­ing a lit­tle about inter­faith coop­er­a­tion. Though, to be clear, Kreeft is not a plu­ral­ist. You can lis­ten to the lec­ture here.

Hell’s doors: locked on the inside

I’ve noticed that a lot of dis­cus­sions tend to talk about “the damned” (for lack of a bet­ter phrase) with­out actu­ally talk­ing about them. That is to say that on the one hand, we argue over the exis­tence of Hell, and if it does exist, what kind of God would pos­si­bly cre­ate such a place. On the other hand, when we talk about the souls of those who will pop­u­late Hell we make a par­tic­u­lar assump­tion: they don’t want to be there.  I think the rea­son­ing is some­thing like this: “Every knee will bow and con­fess Jesus as Lord. There­fore, all will want to be with Jesus, espe­cially those going to Hell, who will be…

Inconsistent self

This is just a short thought in con­tin­u­a­tion from my post yes­ter­day on the virtue of mag­na­nim­ity. I find that there are cer­tain feel­ings which are related to those of inad­e­quacy, and I’ll call them ‘thoughts of con­sis­tency”. To give an exam­ple, this would take the form of doing or say­ing some­thing early in life and then com­ing to dis­agree with that view as one grows older. Truth­fully I don’t think there is any­thing wrong with this, and would think it rather hard to grow if not for express­ing views which are allowed to evolve. Take for instance a post I wrote quite a while ago, “Response to Post­mod­ern Bib­li­cal Author­ity” (it’s worth read­ing, so…

Virtue of Magnanimity

I have some­thing of a con­fes­sion to make: a lot of the time I feel inad­e­quate. I feel inad­e­quate in almost every­thing I do, espe­cially in the things oth­ers tell me I’m (really) good at.  When I do feel con­tent with myself, the moment is fleet­ing. I’m con­tent until I come across some­one else who does some­thing sim­i­lar to what I do–except they do it bet­ter. Or at least that’s what I think. It doesn’t mat­ter their age, their edu­ca­tion or their back­ground. It only mat­ters that I see myself as insignif­i­cant com­pared to them and what they are doing, even if the real­ity is the oppo­site. I’ve had feel­ings of inad­e­quacy to the point…

Apologist’s Evening Prayer

I just fin­ished Peter Kreeft’s Heaven and Hell, and he closes the book with a piece of poetry writ­ten by C.S. Lewis. I’m sur­prised I haven’t come across this before, the admirer of Lewis that I am (I’m told its from his book Reflec­tions on the Psalms). He seems to be say­ing that there is a cer­tain dan­ger in intel­lec­tual argu­ments and log­i­cal proofs for God’s exis­tence. Namely, that such things may very well deaden one’s faith, turn­ing it into an intel­lec­tual exer­cise, rather than a mat­ter of the heart (if one’s not care­ful). (Unfor­tu­nately) from expe­ri­ence, I can attest to this. From all my lame defeats and oh! much more From all the vic­to­ries that…

Mohler: Christian, Muslim Dialogue

Justin Tay­lor has posted a link on his blog to a pre­sen­ta­tion on Islam by Dr. Al Mohler. A good intro­duc­tion to the Chris­t­ian / Mus­lim dia­logue, Mohler’s talk is described as an exam­i­na­tion of “some of the fun­da­men­tal ways in which Islam and Chris­tian­ity are at odds with one another, and how Chris­tians and local churches can best think through their impli­ca­tions for life and min­istry.” Hav­ing lis­tened to it last night, I can say that it’s very infor­ma­tive and a worth the lis­ten if you’re inter­ested in the Chris­t­ian / Mus­lim dynamic. You can find the pre­sen­ta­tion here.

Plantinga and Gale on God and Evil

One of the most inter­est­ing (and humor­ous) dis­cus­sions I’ve ever seen on the topic of God and evil was one between philoso­phers Alvin Planti­nga and Richard Gale. Planti­nga is notable for two things; he’s regarded as one of the pio­neers in the renais­sance of Chris­t­ian phi­los­o­phy, as it’s called. He’s also con­sid­ered to have put an end to the intel­lec­tual argu­ment from evil. Gale has him­self writ­ten quite a few books on meta­physics, ontol­ogy and God. The dia­logue is very infor­ma­tive and the dis­cus­sion easy to fol­low (even if at times a bit dif­fi­cult to under­stand­ing). So please, watch Which gives me an idea for another post…

Stretched Illustrations?

(**Spoil­ers below**) Some times I won­der how peo­ple arrive at cer­tain inter­pre­ta­tions of “art”. Strangely enough, I came across this arti­cle which sets about using Avatar  as a metaphor for “emer­gent evan­ge­lism”. The main thrust of the arti­cle is that we “don’t bring God to the other,” rather, that “we find God in the other”–Jake Sully is the per­fect exam­ple of this sort of mind­set, or so it’s claimed. I don’t want to exam­ine the entire arti­cle, only one para­graph. Evan­ge­lism is a two-way street This is where the Avatar movie is a great metaphor for what evan­ge­lism could and should become. Although Jake Sully entered the Na’vi world (Pan­dora) ini­tially with an agenda in mind,…