Always deny there's any evidence to the contrary when promoting the virgin birth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As does Walter Russell Mead, who says Christmas is a feminist holiday lol, here:

The early church wasn’t facing a sea of rumors about Mary’s prenuptial behavior, and if it had been, there are more convincing ways of scotching rumors than proclaiming a miraculous virgin birth. 

 Meanwhile . . .

I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 

-- John 8:38ff.

Cave art all over the world shows digits may have been ritually removed, rendering Christian gospel accounts calling for self-mutilation less exceptional

In a paper presented at a recent meeting of the European Society for Human Evolution, researchers point to 25,000-year-old paintings in France and Spain that depict silhouettes of hands. On more than 200 of these prints, the hands lack at least one digit. In some cases, only a single upper segment is missing; in others, several fingers are gone. ... Four sites in Africa, three in Australia, nine in North America, five in south Asia and one in south-east Asia contain evidence of finger amputation. “This form of self-mutilation has been practised by groups from all inhabited continents,” said Collard. “More to the point, it is still carried out today, as we can see in the behaviour of people like the Dani.”

More. 

 

The Christian gospel accounts have been dismissed perennially as mere hyperbole:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 

-- Matthew 5:29f.

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

-- Matthew 18:8f.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff.

 

This older tradition is remembered in stark contrast to the miracle working Jesus of resurrection imagination who is wont to undo some of these extreme expressions of repentance:

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. 

-- Matthew 11:5

And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them:  Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel. 

-- Matthew 15:30f. 

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. 

-- Matthew 21:14 

And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.

-- Luke 7:21f.

The Procrustean bed of the needless bonds of rhyme

 Rhyme sure in needless bonds the poet ties,

Procrustus like, the ax or wheel applies,

To lop the mangled sense, or stretch it into size.

-- Edmund Smith (1672-1710)

Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things

 

Only 25% of America is good ground

 Some fell by the way side . . . some fell on the stony ground . . . some fell among thorns . . . other fell on good ground . . ..

-- Mark 4:4, 5, 7, 8

7 in 10 U.S. Adults Consider Themselves Spiritual 

Jason DeRose, NPR

7 in 10 also say it's morally acceptable to have a baby out of wedlock.

 

All equal now

 

Repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance

God abhorred human sacrifice by the children of Israel but somehow planned the sacrifice of his own son?

 They did not destroy the peoples, as the LORD commanded them, but they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the harlot in their doings. Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he abhorred his heritage; 

-- Psalm 106:34ff.

Good news: Really handsome 30-year old Catholic soon to be ex-priest marries 18-year old . . . woman

 What a relief.

Story here.

Butthurt Roman Catholic thinks Luther himself would want to put his genie back in the bottle lol, opts for the authoritarianism of the old magisterium

Yeah, just disconnect your brain and do what we tell ya.

 

 

 

 

 

 

37.5% of the world's Christians now beg to differ as Protestants because Luther and his heirs thought otherwise, but Rome's problem with schism long predates Luther.

 

Unintended Consequences Of Martin Luther’s Reformation

 

Over the last 500 years, most American Christians — Protestant and Catholic — have operated as functional Lutherans. All I need is a Bible, a brain and the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture. How has that worked out? Western missionaries, European and American, have exported a gospel around the world that has yielded more than 45,000 Christian denominations globally and more than 200 in the U.S., according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.

 

If you think this is a problem (I do), remember that we can’t solve a problem using the same mind that created it. I suggest returning to the early centuries of the church, when a magisterium, an authority beyond individual interpretation, settled these sorts of disputes.

 

Swift contra phonics

 Another cause, which hath maimed our language, is a foolish opinion that we ought to spell exactly as we speak.

-- Jonathan Swift

Prosperity corrupts

 Their manners wax more and more corrupt, in proportion as their blessings abound.

-- Francis Atterbury

Anti-Christian Pope Francis removes Joseph E. Strickland as bishop of the diocese of Tyler, TX

 The pope has indirectly accused Strickland of being a reactionary who has replaced the faith with political ideology.

 

 

 

 

 

From the story here:

Last year, when the Vatican defrocked ultra-conservative U.S. anti-abortion priest Frank Pavone for “blasphemous” social media posts and disobedience to bishops, Strickland was one of the few American bishops to defend him publicly.

“The blasphemy is that this holy priest is canceled while an evil president promotes the denial of truth and the murder of the unborn at every turn, Vatican officials promote immorality and denial of the deposit of faith and priests promote gender confusion devastating lives...evil,” Strickland wrote on the platform then known as Twitter.

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died

 Who were there then in the world, to observe the births of those first men, and calculate their nativities, as they sprawled out of ditches?

-- Richard Bentley

The credulity of Rod Dreher is one thing, the insufficiency of Christ's sacrifice quite another

 *'Get Me Out Of Here!'

How Danny called out to his family from beyond the grave -- and they responded

 

"And we did what we could to help his soul to reach heaven."

If looks could . . . you know

 Careless of thunder from the clouds that break,

My only omens from your looks I take.

 

-- George Granville

Imagine the National Catholic Reporter running a story urging Catholics to be on Hitler's side in World War II

 

In Israel-Hamas War, Christians Should Be on Every Side

T. Roberts, NCReporter

 

 We know that people of many religious stripes, Catholics included, are involved in various ways on every side of the current dispute. Maybe that's where we should be, on every side, not to exacerbate or further inflame but to do what we can to tamp down the ancient hatreds and the inclinations to violence.

 

 

Sounds all too familiar.

 

Scholars Are Learning More About What the Catholic Church Did—and Didn't Do—to Save Jews During the Holocaust

 

At the same time Catholic rescuers were helping Jews, some of those same people were also helping Nazis. The Catholic Church worked to win clemency for convicted Nazi war criminals after the war. “The justification given for aid to Nazi war criminals was Christian love and mercy,” says Brown-Fleming, whose research focuses on this effort.

Phyllis Diller's short course in comparative religion

 I've tried Buddhism, Scientology, Numerology, Transcendental Meditation, Qabbala, t'ai chi, feng shui, and Deepak Chopra, but I find straight gin works best.

Apparently she's experienced both things lol

 GOLDIE HAWN: An alien touched me and it felt like the finger of God...

Bibi Netanyahu identifies Hamas with the Sons of Darkness from the War Scroll at Qumran Cave 1

 Netanyahu: "All Hamas Activists Must Die," "We Are The People Of Light, They Are The People Of Darkness"

October 7th felt apocalyptic to Israelis.

Commie Pope Francis has intemperate geezer eruption, says he's ignorant about international politics but eagerly blames The West for ISIS

 Yeah, and those Israelis had it coming from Hamas.

I consider myself ignorant when it comes to international politics, but I believe that the appearance of ISIS is based on an unfortunate Western choice.

More.

Swift against the Stoics

 The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

-- Jonathan Swift

War erased Adolf Hitler and Nazi genocide, but the pope is a terrible simplifier whose ideological blinders keep him from seeing that

 

One thing leads to another

 

OMG hardly ever springs to my lips anymore, and then I stumbled over this

 

IVP used to be a respectable evangelical publisher, now also gone the way of Eerdmans.

... helpless man, in ignorance sedate, rolls darkling down the torrent of his fate.

Run for your lives.

Pope Chicken Little

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Pope Francis warns planet ‘is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point’ :

The world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.

Sanctities thick as stars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 About him all the sanctities of heav'n 

Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv'd 

Beatitude past utt'rance.

 

-- John Milton

The likes of John and Paul made this man to offend above all others, others not so much

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This man, that of earthly matter maketh graven images, knoweth himself to offend above all others.

-- Wisdom of Solomon 15:13 

Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

-- John 5:18

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

-- John 10:33

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

-- Philippians 2:6

Indeed, Allah does not forgive associating others with Him in worship, but forgives anything else of whoever He wills. And whoever associates others with Allah has indeed committed a grave sin. ... Surely Allah does not forgive associating others with Him in worship, but forgives anything else of whoever He wills. Indeed, whoever associates others with Allah has clearly gone far astray.

 

-- Quran 4:48, 116

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 

 

-- Deuteronomy 6:4

 

And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:  

-- Mark 12:29

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. 

 

-- Matthew 19:17

 

John Dryden describes justice according to The Democrat Party

 Cheaply you sin, and punish crimes with ease,

Not as th' offended, but the offenders please.

-- John Dryden

The Disciples of Christ are down to fewer than 300,000 members as COVID-19 all but buries denomination decimated by "theological revisionism"

 

Membership is down a whopping 85% from almost 2 million since the 1960s.

By the 1990s it was already down 50%, and another 50% by the 2010s. But COVID-19 has now all but buried the Christian Church Disciples of Christ.

Who will attend the funeral?

From the story, here:

From 2019-2022, there was a 21 percent drop in membership, a cataclysmic rate of decline. … Disciples have firmly moved in a theologically revisionist direction on matters of human sexuality, gender expression, and radical individual moral autonomy. …

Somehow I don't think Christianity Today's Paul D. Miller would have been in favor of the American Revolution at the time

 

On June 9, 1772, the Sons of Liberty burned HMS Gaspee, a British customs schooner in Narragansett Bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unless it was “moderate” lol.

The Problem with Anti-Anti-Christian Nationalism :

Moderate Christian nationalists shouldn't be smeared. But neither should extremism be defended. … American Christians have a special duty to lovingly correct Christian nationalism. … moderate Christian nationalists have a special duty to denounce extremists in their ranks, even if they remain persuaded of Christian nationalism’s tenets.

That son, affecting to subdue rational liberty

 Justly thou abhorr'st

That son, who on the quiet state of men

Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue

Rational liberty.

-- John Milton, Paradise Lost

Eyewitness to earth-shattering day 60 years ago doubts himself, contradicts official statements he filed at the time, says he put the magic bullet he found in JFK's seat on JFK's stretcher

Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.

 

 As with all things related to the assassination, of course, his account raises questions of its own. Mr. Landis remained silent for 60 years, which has fueled doubts even for his former Secret Service partner, and memories are tricky even for those sincerely certain of their recollections. A couple elements of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities immediately after the shooting, and some of the implications of his version cannot be easily reconciled to the existing record.  

 

But he was there, a firsthand witness, and it is rare for new testimony to emerge six decades after the fact. He has never subscribed to the conspiracy theories and stresses that he is not promoting one now. At age 88, he said, all he wants is to tell what he saw and what he did. He will leave it to everyone else to draw conclusions.

More. 

 

Peter, James, and John, in the holy mount: We were eyewitnesses of his majesty

 

 

 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. 

 

-- II Peter 1:16ff.

Religion begins with experience of the holy

 The holy man, amaz'd at what he saw,

Made haste to sanctify the bliss by law.

-- John Dryden

All kidding aside, it's stunning that a believing Catholic like Ross Douthat thinks morality is a secondary aspect of religion

 Here:

But the challenge does run a little deeper if the only parts of church that Dad believes in are the secondary goods of religion (community and morality and solidarity and choral music), while the primary good — communion with God and the integration of human life with divine purposes — is assumed to probably be so much wishful thinking even before the specific dogmatic questions get involved.

 

 

Stunning because Douthat elsewhere recognized, in 2011, that the unique human characteristic of passing moral judgment is demonstrative of the way human beings strangely stand outside nature, just like God:

Second, the idea that human beings are fashioned, in some way, in the image of the universe’s creator explained why your own relationship to the world was particularly strange. Your fourth- or 14th-century self was obviously part of nature, an embodied creature with an animal form, and yet your consciousness also seemed to stand outside it, with a peculiar sense of immaterial objectivity, an almost God’s-eye view — constantly analyzing, tinkering, appreciating, passing moral judgment.

God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13; 12:7):

Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:  Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.  

-- Matthew 18:32ff.

Douthat, like much of Christianity and the West, suffers from too much vertically-oriented individualism, at least this year, for which we'll just have to forgive him.

Elmo knows

 

Where Should Agnostics Go on Sundays?

Ross Douthat, New York Times 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOL Pastor Doug Wilson thinks Democrats forgot to rig 2016 and the world will end if Trump wins in 2024

Trump won in 2016, as I noted, because the opposition didn’t have their “just in case” machinery in place. They were caught flatfooted. If the legal persecution of Trump causes any kind of major sympathy swing toward Trump in unusual places (e.g. among blacks, let’s say), it is possible that the left could be caught flatfooted again, only in localities that they had assumed to be safe. Because they assumed them to be safe, taking them for granted, they did not have their machinery in place.

If the American people are maneuvered into the position of thinking that there is only one way to vote ourselves out of clown world, and that is to vote like it is time to be Transgressive, then that would be a Trump vote. But even if such a thing were to happen, it would fall more in the category of bringing everything to a head, and not in the category of fixing anything. It would be kind of like the moment when Samson pulled down the Temple of Dagon.

Here.

OK Doug.

We must both fortunes try, and bear our evils, wet or dry

 That people live and die, I knew,

An hour ago, as well as you;

And if fate spins us longer years,

Or is in haste to take the shears,

I know, we must both fortunes try,

And bear our evils, wet or dry.

-- Matthew Prior

How to print money on the gold standard

 How happy should we be if we had the privilege of employing the sheers, for want of a mint, upon foreign gold, by clipping it into half-crowns!

-- Jonathan Swift

Same as it ever was: This present age, full of tongue and weak of brain

 And of discerning goodness there are but these two ways: the one the knowledge of the causes by which goodness is made good; the other the observation of those signs and tokens, which being annexed always to goodness, argue that where they are found, there also goodness is, although we know not the cause by force of which it is there. The former of these is the most sure and infallible way, but so hard that all shun it, and would rather walk as men do in the dark by haphazard, than tread such long and intricate mazes for knowledge’s sake. As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of curing as themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by their patients’ impatience are obliged to try the best they can, in taking that way of cure which the cured will yield to; in like sort, considering how the case does stand with this present age full of tongue and weak of brain, behold we yield to the stream thereof; into the causes of goodness we will not make any careful or deep inquiry; to touch them now and then it shall be sufficient, when they are so near at hand that easily they may be conceived without any far-removed discourse: that way we are contented to prove, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked.

-- Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity I.8.2 (1594) 

The mouth of fools poureth out foolishness. 

-- Proverbs 15:2

The concept of cheap grace was formulated at least 300 years before Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 All the arguments to a good life will be very insignificant to a man that hath a mind to be wicked, when remission of sins may be had upon such cheap terms.

-- John Tillotson (1630-1694)

Benevolent night conceals our weakness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Heaven, when the creature lies prostrate in the weakness of sleep and weariness,

spreads the covering of night and darkness to conceal it.

-- Robert South

Laser-focused middle class Christianity Today finds the speck in a brother's eye, doesn't like it when the poors complain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is there no minimum wage? Is there no welfare? Do we not pay taxes?

 

Christianity Today publishes ethical monster Francis Collins, former head of NIH, in order to irk conservative Christians

 

Tim Keller Taught Us How to Live and How to Die

Francis Collins, Christianity Today

 

 

 

 

The history of the fall of Methodism in America is a cautionary tale for today's Christian nationalists, but they'll probably ignore it

 Mark Tooley, here:

The collapse of Methodist social influence in America began with its greatest political victory: Prohibition. After Prohibition’s repeal, Methodism first began to lose in its share of American population, and then later in absolute numbers, all the while becoming politically less and less relevant. Presidents Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson all spoke to Methodist governing bodies during the lead-up to Prohibition, after which another president never again addressed a Methodist juridical convention. In the 1950s, Bishop Bromley Oxnam was exasperated when the Methodist bishops met with President Eisenhower, who offered only a photo op, and no interest in hearing their views. Oxnam was not discouraged from pursuing other channels of political influence for his denomination.

All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full

 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. 

-- Ecclesiastes 1:7

Abraham Lincoln's ancient faith was human equality, his touchstone for it the Declaration of Independence more than the Bible

 

This is the point of view pioneered by Harry Jaffa in a nutshell, a Jew who saw Lincoln as a restorer of the principles of the Declaration, which go back to Aristotle, starting from John Locke.

Not mentioned by the Christians here:

And yet Lincoln emphasized the Declaration of Independence far more than the Bible in building his case against human bondage. He described the assertion that “all men are created equal” as his “ancient faith.” He argued pointedly that the immorality of slavery could be proved “without reference to revelation.” In sum, without penetrating Lincoln’s heart, it’s hard to know whether he viewed the Bible as morally authoritative, as Leidner claims, or selectively cited it when it corroborated what he already believed.     

This dread of nations, this almighty Rome

The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna

 The boasted ancestors of these great men,

Whose virtues you admire, were all such ruffians;

This dread of nations, this almighty Rome,

That comprehends in her wide empire's bounds

All under heaven, was founded on a rape.

-- Joseph Addison, Cato

Forget the Christian nationalism, Christian globalism is where it's at, Jack

Mark Tooley, here:

But disdaining Emmett Till’s murder, and the civil rights revolution it helped unleash, as part of the wider ongoing, 2000-year-old Christian revolution of equality and dignity for all, is helpfully clarifying.

And don't you forget it™you Christian soldiers you, marching as to war.

The proud but more modest aims of the American nation died in 1865.