If you are wondering why Jews have always been reticent to utter the holy name of G-d, you won't learn why in this article in Christianity Today by a Texas theology professor, lol

 

 

The God Who Must Not Be Named

Brad East, Christianity Today

 

He makes no reference whatsoever to The Ten Commandments, which constituted from the time of Luther the first of the six chief parts of the Christian catechism, and from time immemorial the heart of the Torah for Jews. But the professor is otherwise a very educated imbecile. 

 

Now you may understand why Texas law will require Ten Commandments posted in every classroom... ! 

 

 

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

 

-- Exodus 20:7

 

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

 

-- Deuteronomy 5:11

Peter Thiel rationalizing the post-war as the Age of Antichrist is the flip side of Christians rationalizing the church age as the kingdom of God

... Douthat: ... I’m just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule.

 

Thiel: Well, there are these different gradations of this we can describe. But is what I’ve just told you so preposterous, as a broad account of the stagnation, that the entire world has submitted for 50 years to peace and safetyism? This is I Thessalonians 5:3 — the slogan of the Antichrist is “peace and safety.” And we’ve submitted to the F.D.A. — it regulates not just drugs in the U.S. but de facto in the whole world, because the rest of the world defers to the F.D.A. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission effectively regulates nuclear power plants all over the world. You can’t design a modular nuclear reactor and just build it in Argentina. They won’t trust the Argentinian regulators. They’re going to defer to the U.S. And so it is at least a question about why we’ve had 50 years of stagnation. And one answer is we ran out of ideas. The other answer is that something happened culturally where it wasn’t allowed. And the cultural answer can be sort of a bottom-up answer, that it was just some transformation of humanity into this more docile kind of a species. Or it can be at least partially top-down, that there is this machinery of government that got changed into this stagnationist thing. Nuclear power was supposed to be the power of the 21st century. And it somehow has gotten off-ramped all over the world, on a worldwide basis.

Douthat: So in a sense, we’re already living under a moderate rule of the Antichrist, in that telling. ...

 

Here in The New York Times. 

 

It's truly precious to see a gay man's warnings about cultural decadence, and Christianity, taken seriously by a purportedly Christian interlocutor for a purportedly serious newspaper. 

 

As Rod Dreher likes to say . . . 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Decadence 101

 Taught, half by reason, half by mere decay,

To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

Gospel claims forty years removed and more from Jesus' resurrection are not the same thing as claims which are "only a short time later"

Jesus After the Critics

Michael C. Legaspi  

 ... Like most New Testament scholars, she holds Mark to be the earliest Gospel (composed sometime around the year 70), with Matthew and Luke—both of whom use Mark as a source ­document—coming along a generation later. John, independent of the other three, came later still. ... 

Pagels’s own position is that the question of Jesus’s resurrection goes beyond what a historian can say: “Historical evidence can neither prove nor disprove the reality”; it can only verify that “after Jesus died many people claimed to have seen him alive.”

Pagels is not entirely wrong. The evidence that Jesus was put to death—actually killed, in public, on a cross, by the governing ­authority—and that many people claimed, only a short time later, that they saw the same Jesus alive cannot seriously be doubted. ...              

 

Nice try, but no. 

We do not know that many people claimed that they saw Jesus alive "only a short time later". 

Pagels' claim to fame has been all about making this very kind of chronological error, placing later Gnostic sources on the same level as the New Testament as evidence to argue for multiple Christianities and their legitimacy. That Legaspi shrinks from calling her out on that tells you everything you need to know about Legaspi.

The only sense in which it is true that the modern phenomenon of scholarship is "now in retreat" is in the extent to which scholars like Pagels and her reviewer Legaspi themselves retreat from the critical project.  

Meanwhile in A.D. 69, around the time of the composition of Mark, many dreamers thought Nero had come back from the dead, too, but just because they existed doesn't mean we take them seriously or believe them, any more than Tacitus did, whose case proves yet again that human nature is unchanging, a mixture of credulity and incredulity from time immemorial:

... About this time Achaia and Asia Minor were terrified by a false report that Nero was at hand. Various rumours were current about his death; and so there were many who pretended and believed that he was still alive. The adventures and enterprises of the other pretenders I shall relate in the regular course of my work. The pretender in this case was a slave from Pontus, or, according to some accounts, a freedman from Italy, a skilful harp-player and singer, accomplishments, which, added to a resemblance in the face, gave a very deceptive plausibility to his pretensions. After attaching to himself some deserters, needy vagrants whom he bribed with great offers, he put to sea. Driven by stress of weather to the island of Cythnus, he induced certain soldiers, who were on their way from the East, to join him, and ordered others, who refused, to be executed. He also robbed the traders and armed all the most able-bodied of the slaves. ... Thence the alarm spread far and wide, and many roused themselves at the well-known name, eager for change, and detesting the present state of things. The report was daily gaining credit when an accident put an end to it. ...

-- Tacitus, Histories 2.8 

 

Yeah, the filioque is such a novelty, it took 'em centuries to think of it lol

 

 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

-- John 20:21ff.

This day be bread and peace my lot . . .

 

 This day, be bread and peace my lot;

All else beneath the sun

Thou know'st if best bestow'd or not,

And let thy will be done.

-- Alexander Pope 

When the free are slaves

 

 We are industrious to preserve our bodies from slavery,

but we make nothing of suffering our souls to be slaves to our lusts.

 

-- John Ray (1627-1705) 

Some men left us constitutional papers, others left us the trees

 

 Hence, lastly, springs care of posterities,

For things their kind would everlasting make.

Hence is it, that old men do plant young trees,

The fruit whereof another age shall take.

 

-- Sir John Davies 

Being king is not the thing

 Condition, circumstance is not the thing;

Bliss is the same in subject or in king. 

 

-- Alexander Pope 

Sometimes the news is just too much for me

 How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold

The end of all thy offspring end so sad.

 

-- John Milton 

 

 

Good riddance, phony demon UFO, Good riddance, infernal Pentagon!

 

 I felt him strike, and now I see him fly:

Curs'd demon! O for ever broken lie

Those fatal shafts, by which I inward bleed!

 

-- Matthew Prior 

 

 

Poor Rod Dreher: Evidence is emerging that government efforts to propagate UFO mythology date back all the way to the 1950s

The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology: U.S. military fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumors to fester to cover up real secret-weapons programs

... At times, as with the deception around Area 51, military officers spread false documents to create a smokescreen for real secret-weapons programs. In other cases, officials allowed UFO myths to take root in the interest of national security—for instance, to prevent the Soviet Union from detecting vulnerabilities in the systems protecting nuclear installations. Stories tended to take on a life of their own, such as the three-decade journey of a purported piece of space metal that turned out to be nothing of the sort. And one long-running practice was more like a fraternity hazing ritual that spun wildly out of control. ...

The many in America who have been gulled by the disinformation should take heart. Hundreds upon hundreds of military men have been taken in by the stories too, and some of them believe them to this day.

It will die out soon enough, like the Shakers

 

The Assisted Suicide Movement is Gaining Momentum

Mariya Manzhos, Deseret 

 

"I joined a suicide cult but we just couldn't grow our membership for some reason." 😏

The celibate Shakers are down to just three members.

NT Wright shreds his credibility singing about evolution in Genesis to the tune of Yesterday with the already incredible former NIH Director Francis Collins

 Here.

Probably the most cringe-worthy thing you'll see today in a world absolutely teeming with cringe-worthy.

New Testament scholar NT Wrong laughably believes in the unfolding Kingdom of God through the church, so it is entirely consistent for him to believe humans evolved from the cosmic kiss of heaven and earth 14 billion years ago. 

Genesis means DNA, double helix in the Milky Way, dontchaknow.

Francis Collins, with Anthony Fauci, suppressed from the very beginning of the pandemic the belief by some of their own trusted scientists that COVID-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, a charge doggedly demonstrated with evidence over the years by none other than Richard H. Ebright, Professor of Chemistry at Rutgers.

 

 

The folly of strong drink

 

 The giant, gorg'd with flesh, and wine, and blood,

Lay stretch'd at length, and snoring in his den,

Belching raw gobbets from his maw, o'ercharg'd 

With purple wine and cruddled gore confus'd.

 

-- Joseph Addison

 

Thrice I brought and gave it him, and thrice he drained it in his folly. . . . and reeling fell upon his back, and lay there with his thick neck bent aslant, and sleep, that conquers all, laid hold on him. And from his gullet came forth wine and bits of human flesh, and he vomited in his drunken sleep.

 

-- Homer, Odyssey 9.360, 370

 

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. 

-- Proverbs 20:1

 

Infant woe awaits us all

 There oft are heard the notes of infant woe,

The short thick sob, loud scream, and shriller squall.

 

-- Alexander Pope

The dog must learn it, when he is a whelp, or else it will not be . . .

 

 . . . for it is hard to make an old dog to stoop [submit]. 

-- Anthony Fitzherbert, The Book of Husbandry (1523/1534), paragraph 41:

 

 

 

Beware of sadness

 

 Such a wantwit sadness makes of me,

That I have much ado to know myself.

 

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 1

They need to think bigger at Big Think lol

 

 Why historians can only give Jesus a one-sentence biography

 ... In the ancient world, gods, heroes, and even Caesars were resurrected with fair regularity. ...

Right, right, that's why the Athenians laughed out loud at the idea.

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked . . ..

-- Acts 17:32 

 

A certain diseased beggar named Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate, but never once was he fed from his sumptuous table

 Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

 

-- Jonathan Swift

What in the world is the heart of Islam coming to?

 First we have MBS shaking hands publicly with the openly homosexual US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and now we get this headline:

Saudi Arabia to lift booze ban at 600 tourist locations ...
 

... Spirits and hard liquor above 20% ABV will remain banned, with no sign of shops, takeaways or home brewing being permitted. ...

O believers! Intoxicants, gambling, idols, and drawing lots for decisions are all evil of Satan’s handiwork. So shun them so you may be successful.

 

-- Qur'an, Sura 5:90 

And ˹remember˺ when Lot scolded ˹the men of˺ his people, ˹saying,˺ “Do you commit a shameful deed that no man has ever done before?

 

You lust after men instead of women! You are certainly transgressors.”

 

But his people’s only response was to say, “Expel them from your land! They are a people who wish to remain chaste!”

 

-- Qur'an, Sura 7:80-82

 

 

Look thou be true

 

 Look thou be true: do not give dalliance

Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw

To th' fire i' th' blood.

 

-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

Today shalt thou be with me in paradise, not tomorrow, nor on the third day, but truly, today

 

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. 

καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἀμήν λέγω σοι σήμερον μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ.

 

-- Luke 23:43 

σήμερον is obviously in emphatic position. The promise to the penitent thief is that there will be no lingering death, and the conviction of Jesus is firm belief in immediate immortality for both himself and this thief, not in future resurrection.

She dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun

 

 She her airie buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Scene 3 (the reading is Samuel Johnson's)

Time is an ocean

 

 

 I consider time as an immense ocean, into which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up, many very much shattered and damaged, some quite disjointed and broken into pieces.

 

-- Joseph Addison

Pope Leo graduated in 1973 from Saint Augustine Seminary High School in Allegan County, Michigan, which closed in 1977

 

... The estate was built by inventor Dorr Felt in 1925 and bought by the Augustinian order in 1949 for use as a school, with the goal of educating between 50 and 60 students at a time who were interested in becoming priests. The mansion included the dorm and chapel and a garage was converted to host classes and include a library. By 1965, the Felt Estate said, the school was serving 180 students and had a waiting list of 400. But interest later waned and enrollment was below 70 by the mid-1970s. The school closed in 1977. The state bought the land and Laketown Township bought it for $1 in 1996. The mansion is now a venue and museum. ...

More.

The new pope's a wiener in Chicago

I am not ecumenical when it comes to hot dogs.

The Chicago style is without doubt the very best, the top dog, yes, the pontifex maximus of salsicce, as long as it comes from Vienna or Frankfurt.

 

 

Leo XIV, the first pope born in America, in the city of Chicago, had an extensive career in Peru for the Augustinians from 1985

He had been created cardinal by Pope Francis only recently, in 2023.

He's also a tweeter.

 

The tyrant is the real slave, possessed of desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and of more wants than any one

But he does know how to stay in the news.

Posted at 10:29 PM Friday night.

Promoted by the irredeemable Rod Dreher Saturday morning.

Trending #1 at CNBC Saturday night.

If Trump had any real power, US Treasury Bills wouldn't be yielding more as he posted this than they have in nine weeks.

 

 

Pope Francis is gone, but not forgotten

 

Pope Francis' last laugh: Latin Mass for me, but not for thee

 

 ... While Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, began the liturgy, the crowd stayed silent. Most of the mass was in Latin and punctuated with hymns and Gregorian chants. A light breeze ruffled an open gospel placed on the coffin. ...

More.

J. D. Vance succeeds where others have failed, finally makes Easter a religious holiday again

 

I kinda gave up Rod Dreher for Lent, he gave up milk in his latte

Nothing screams serious like giving up milk.

 

Angel of Death visits Pope on Easter Sunday, Francis dead Easter Monday

 

Once a man is dead there is no resurrection

 But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there is no resurrection.

-- Aeschylus, Eumenides, 647f.

... ἅπαξ θανόντος, οὔτις ἔστ ἀνάστασις.

 

Jesus wasn't killed for blasphemy but for challenging Jewish complicity with Roman economic tyranny

 

I'm glad to see this argument gaining wider circulation, even if it appears in an essay which more broadly is mistaken to think that Jesus imagined that terrestrial injustice could be overcome by anyone or anything short of the coming of God's celestial kingdom to earth. Not even the resurrection has done that.

The argument was first made by St. Luke.

And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King.  

-- Luke 23:1f.

Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession

 ... The next day, Jesus walked into the Temple, the heart of Jerusalem’s religious and economic life, and flipped the tables in the marketplace, which he described as “a den of robbers.” The Temple wasn’t just a house of prayer. It was a financial engine, operated by complicit leaders under the constraints and demands of the occupying empire. Jesus shuts it down. This is what gets him killed.

Jesus wasn’t killed for preaching love, or healing the sick, or discussing theology routinely debated in the Temple’s courtyards, or blasphemy (the punishment for which was stoning). Rome didn’t crucify philosophers or miracle workers. Rome crucified insurrectionists. The sign nailed above his head — “King of the Jews” — was a political indictment and public warning. ...

Ordinarily you would want a saint who can intercede to get you out of an economic collapse, not get you into one lol

Actors are rarely known for their intelligence. And as we are all very painfully aware, Donald Trump is an actor, too.

 

Oh, the pervert is dead . . .

 

Theodore McCarrick, Cardinal Defrocked Over Sex Abuse, Dies at 94

NYTimes

 

"... Three of the four bishops, it said, found that Mr. McCarrick had shared a bed with seminarians and young adult men, but said they were not sure there had been sexual contact. ..."

 

 

Oh, McCarrick is dead, and his boyfriend don't know it

His boyfriend is dead, and McCarrick don't know it

They both are dead in the very same bed

And neither one knows that the other is dead.    

-- Johnny

 

 

Actor Val Kilmer, a follower of Christian Science, has died of pneumonia at 65

Reported here:

... His daughter Mercedes told The New York Times the cause was pneumonia. He was 65. He had been battling throat cancer for several years. ...

A lifelong Christian Scientist, Kilmer was unwilling to confirm his cancer diagnosis when it was revealed by Michael Douglas in 2016. He combined his fascination with Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy with his love of Mark Twain in a screenplay that featured the two figures. He toured the country with his one-man show “Citizen Twain” for several years, which incorporated film and live readings of the humorist’s work. ...