#The Epistle of First John

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Overcoming the World

Anything which comes from God is able to overcome the world: and the power by which we have overcome the world is our faith. — 1 John 5:4 | Bible in Basic English (BBE) The Bible in Basic English is in the public domain Cross References: John 1:13; John 3:3; 1 Corinthians 15:57; 1 John 2:13; 1 John 2:29; 1 John 3:9; 1 John 4:4

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How is faith the victory that overcomes the world?

[k-star-holic]

"BTS resemblance and height over 180cm" Ryu Jin, storm growth Two sons boast (Okmunah)

Source: k-star-holic.blogspot.com

[biblebloodhound]

Believe, Love, and Obey (1 John 5:1-12)

Faith, love, and obedience are words so tightly woven together, that to pull one of them out, is to unravel the whole bunch. 

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the…

[heresylog]

Hello heresylog! Is it blasphemous to believe that Jesus was an out of wedlock child? Also, is it blasphemous to believe that married Mary Magdalene? Thank you for your time!

Hello! Yes, to the first part of your question.

Jesus was not an out of wedlock child.

Even if you were to look at only Mary's earthly spouse, Joseph, they were still married eventually before Jesus' birth and they were already betrothed at conception. But Mary's yes to the Holy Spirit constituted as a form of marriage itself. So either way you slice it, Jesus was not a bastard. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.*)

The second part of your question is not blasphemous but it is heresy. Jesus didn't have a wife. He and Mary Magdalene were friends. He exorcised demons from her many times. Had Jesus gotten married it would have been mentioned by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John...or even in Acts or the epistles of St. Paul.

*imagine me saying this like Jerry Seinfeld

[whencyclopedia]

Bible

The Bible takes its name from the Latin Biblia ('book' or 'books') which comes from the Greek Ta Biblia ('the books') traced to the Phoenician port city of Gebal, known as Byblos to the Greeks. Writing became associated with Byblos as an exporter of papyrus (used in writing) and the Greek name for papyrus was bublos.

Although the Bible is often considered a single, cohesive, work, it is actually an anthology of ancient writings by many different authors over many centuries, which were collected in a single book. The Bible contains works of poetry, religious-themed narratives, philosophical musings such as The Book of Ecclesiastes, epistles, and the apocalyptic masterpiece known as The Book of Revelation.

The common thread in all these collected works is the existence of an all-powerful deity who is the creator of the universe and has an interest in the personal lives and final fate of human beings. The books of the Christian Bible were arranged in the sequence one finds them in today to tell the story of the creation of the world by a supreme deity, the fall of man from paradise, and humanity's redemption by the Son of God but these books were not written in that sequence nor would the original authors of the Old Testament works have had that particular story in mind.

The Bible of Judaism (collected and authorized by c. 3rd century BCE) contains the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the Tanakh (the stories of the judges and prophets) and makes no mention of Jesus Christ. The God of the Bible in these works is the God of Judaism - a single all-powerful deity - and, prior to the appropriation of Hebrew scriptures by early Christianity, the stories which made up the Bible told the story of God's care for and intervention in the affairs of the Israelites of the Middle East.

Structure of the Bible

In Judaism, the scriptures are called the Tanakh and are recognized as comprising 24 books divided into three categories: The Pentateuch (or Teachings of the Five Books of Moses), The Prophets, and The Writings. Christianity, which appropriated the Tanakh and claimed it as their own early theological history, call it the Old Testament. Early Christian writers, years after the probable date of the death of Jesus, penned the gospels and The Book of Acts. Paul the Apostle wrote most of the epistles which make up the 27 books of the Christian New Testament and whose theology informs the gospels. The Book of Revelation, attributed to John of Patmos, is the last book of the Christian Bible.

It is difficult to accurately date the composition of the books which make up the Bible, but scholars generally agree that the Pentateuch dates to the 10th and 6th centuries BCE and that the Tanakh was fixed as scripture well before the 1st century CE. The books of the Christian New Testament were composed between 60-110 CE (the Gospels), 45-130 CE (the Epistles), and 68-100 (The Book of the Revelation of St. John). Many people of the ancient world, and even today, believe the Bible to have been written by God. It is held to be the bestselling book in history and has influenced religious thought worldwide for centuries.

Continue reading...

[tamamita]

Is it heresy if there are christian denominations that don't believe in the Trinity such as Unitarianism?

I mean the very first Christians were Unitarians who believed in the theological concept of adoptionism. Adoptionism involved the idea that because Jesus (a) was such an upstanding moral figure among the Israelites, God declared him to be the son of God in the metaphorical sense. Adoptonists never accepted Christ as a divine figure, seeing him as fully human. The idea of Christ's divinity was mostly an issue that came to appear later in Christian history. Docalism, Marcionism, Modalism, Monarchianism, Montanism, Arianism and various other doctrines introduced between the 1st-4th century became the foundation of Jesus as a divine being, albeit with various definitions and interpretations. The Church adopted the Trinitiarian (albeit still in development) view as its mainstream theology in the Council of Nicaea, Council of Constantinople, introducing the Nicene-Constantinpolitan creed and apostole's creed respectively. The creed also deemed every other Christian doctrine to be heretical, surpressing any other heterodoxy, especially Arianism. It wasn't until Augustine that the concept of the Trinity was fully introduced in the 5th century, finalized by the Athanasian Creed. However, it wasn't until we the court of Charlemagne that we were introduced to the Johannine Comma that included the Trinity in brackets of the first epistle of John to substantiate its inclusion, so this was effectively the first alteration of the Greek Bible in the West. Enter Augustine, the man who described the Trinity in relation to each other. We can go further, but the doctrine of the Trinity has never been established with one single definite meaning, since the personal relationship and the meaning between each essence keeps being debated and discussed among Christians, even till this day.

Christadelphians are one of the few Unitarian Christians today, but they don't adhere to adoptionism, they simply hold that Jesus (a) was the son of God, but not in the literal sense. However, they reject Jesus' divinity, seeing him as fully human, subordinate to the Father. The adoptionists were very much the first true Christians, but not in the eyes of the Church. As you can see, the Trinity was a later invention that took several centuries to form and was not ultimately defined by the Church Fathers. Indeed, this is evident by the fact that several Christian scholars had to redefine the Trinity throughout history.

[opencommunion]

Hello, I really don’t want to be rude or anything like that but I would love to know any more information about the Christians in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria like, is it true Gaza had family lineages dating back to Jesus Christ? Asking because Ziocucks love making it seem as if Christians don’t exist over there

omg not rude at all, actually this is my favorite thing to talk about (it was a major focus of this blog prior to Al-Aqsa Flood) it's a huge topic so I'll link a ton of resources, but to answer your main question: yes, many Palestinian Christians in Gaza and elsewhere can trace their family history with Christianity back to the 1st century. the Christian community in Gaza is said to have been founded by the apostle Philip. the first bishop of Gaza was the apostle Philemon, the recipient of a Pauline epistle. a core zionist myth is the idea that contemporary Palestinians only arrived in Palestine in the 7th century or even the 20th century (see the links for debunking). but there's plenty of documentation of continuous Christian (and Jewish) presence in Palestine before, during, and after the emergence of Islam. Palestinians (and Levantine ppl more generally, but esp Palestinians because of the totality of their colonial dispossession—stories are often literally the only heirlooms refugee families have) typically have very strong family oral histories going back many centuries, so if a Palestinian tells you their family has been Christian since the time of Christ, take their word for it. community continuity is also about more than family trees—even if someone's family came to Christianity later, they're still part of the continuous living heritage of their community. the continuity of Palestinian Christianity is also evidenced by Palestinian holy sites. because Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire until Constantine took power, dedicated churches weren't built until the 4th century, but many of these churches were built around existing sites of covert worship—for example the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was built around a grotto that was already venerated as the site of Jesus' birth, the Church of St. John the Baptist in 'Ayn Karim (a forcibly depopulated suburb of Jerusalem) was built over a 1st century rock-cut shrine marking the site of John the Baptist's birth, and the Church of the Multiplication in Al-Tabigha (a destroyed and forcibly depopulated village on the shore of Lake Tiberias) was built over a limestone slab believed to be the table were Jesus fed the multitude. throughout the Levant there are also many ancient shrines (maqamat) that are shared sites of prayer for both Christians and Muslims; in Palestine many of these sites have been seized by the occupation and Palestinians are prevented from visiting them.

Palestinian Christian communities who are able to travel to the villages they were expelled from in the Nakba will sometimes return there to celebrate weddings and holidays in their ancestral churches, e.g. in Iqrit and Ma'alul (x, x). of course because the occupation heavily restricts Palestinian movement this isn't possible for most refugees.

here's some resources to get you started but feel free to hmu again if you have any more specific questions! Zionism and Palestinian Christians Rafiq Khoury, "The Effects of Christian Zionism on Palestinian Christians," in Challenging Christian Zionism (2005) Mitri Raheb, I am a Palestinian Christian (1995) Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes (2014)

Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace (2012) Faith and the Intifada: Palestinian Christian Voices (1992) The Forgotten Faithful: A Window into the Life and Witness of Christians in the Holy Land (2007) Faith Under Occupation: The Plight of Indigenous Christians in the Holy Land (2012) Palestinian Christians: The Forcible Displacement and Dispossession Continues (2023) Donald E. Wagner, Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000 (2003)—can't find it online but worth checking your library for

Pre-Zionist History James Grehan, Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (2016) Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (2008) Kenneth Cragg, The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East (1992) Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (2007) John Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314-631 (1996) Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City: an Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire (1966) Aziz Suryal Atiya, A History of Eastern Christianity (1968) Michael Philip Penn, When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (2015) Early Christian Texts The Acts of the Apostles (1st century, Palestine. yes I'm recommending the bible lol but I promise I'm not trying to evangelize, it just really paints a good picture of the birth of Christianity in Jerusalem and its early spread) The Didache (1st or 2nd century, Palestine or Syria—the earliest known catechism, outlining how Christians were supposed to live and worship) Cyril of Scythopolis, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine (6th century) Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers (early Christian monastics)

for more resources specific to my tradition, the Maronite Church, see this post. for other misc Syriac tidbits see my Syriac tag. this is just scratching the surface so again, if you (or anyone else who sees this post!) have more specific interests lmk and I can point you in the right direction

[dammit-tazmuir]

So I'm still relatively new to the fandom and I'm not sure if there are common "fanon" or widely held theories about the pre-Resurrection names, but I did try looking around and didn't see any so...

Hear me out. ✨Even more Biblical symbolism.✨

I don't have strong thoughts for Ulysses, Cassiopeia, or Nigella. And with Cristabel's new name (still?) having ties to "Christ" I wonder if she's closest or even was allowed to keep her old one (which, yeah two C—s without clear hierarchy would have gotten confusing, but could be another reason she was only "the nun" instead of given the same name treatment as the others), or perhaps hers was more Greek (Cassandra, for being the one who kept telling John things he didn't want to believe?).

But for others, I suspect...

Alfred / "A— Junior" was originally Andrew, after the first apostle to join Jesus. More importantly, Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter, who was the most prominent apostle, generally considered in Catholicism to be the first Pope, the first bishop of Antioch, and a lot of other stuff that could make him an interesting parallel to Augustine (not that I think he shares a name, just potentially some indirect parallels). Also the literal meaning is "manly/man", see Augustine below. -

Titania / "T—" (on her papers) was originally Tabitha, after a woman who was literally brought back to life. (This was done by Saint Peter, so not the most direct parallel with the above thoughts on Augustine, but with him being part of the very original project with John, not fully disconnected either.) -

Pyrrha / "P—" was originally Priscilla or Prisca, who notably shared a home for a time with (Biblical) Paul. (It means "ancient", but that's hardly unique here, though I guess her being the last surviving member of the original aside from John and Alecto is worth something there.) A secondary guess would be Phoebe, who's mentioned in Paul's epistles; the name means "bright, pure" and also has Greek meaning (moon goddess and grandmother to Artemis), so it would kinda hit both the major name origins in this series. Or as a third guess, while I think parallels would be shared/split rather than having this instead of the other Peter thoughts, something like Petra could also work, though that might be too similar to Pyrrha to consider. -

Gideon / "G—" was Gabriel, the archangel and messenger of God who announced the births of John (the Baptist) and Jesus. The name comes from the words for "God" and "strong man" or "hero". -

Augustine / A—, the First Saint to serve the King Undying, was Adam, sharing a name with the Biblical first man, first of humanity. The literal meaning is also arguably "man", which makes for a bonus with A— and A— Junior having that much more similar names. -

Lastly, the one I'm most utterly convinced of, Mercymorn / M— was Mary. Perhaps Mary-something, mimicking the "two names" format of Mercymorn (ex: Maryanne, Mary Lou, Marilyn), or maybe a name from a Marian title (Mercedes would be especially amusing), possibly both (Marisol, Marigold). But 10,000% her name comes from the Virgin Mary in some form.

For starters, the first time Harrow sees her, she's described as

"Virginal" as one of the first words ever associated with her, with further description making her sound very much like the kinds of paintings one would associate with Mary.

But much more interesting is her role in Dios Apate, Major. Both

and

She was the both the one who managed to get the sample despite John trying to be careful about that and had been intended to be the genetic mother of the baby, but not to carry. While certainly not literally "virgin" here, she's still in a very real sense a sort of "virgin mother of (space) Jesus".

Any of them could be adjacent or have nicknames, of course. G— could have been "Gabe." The idea of P— being called "Prissy" is funny enough to me that I'd fully buy it. A— Junior could've gone by "Andy", etc. But I feel like all these have some solid merit, especially Mary-Mercy.

[findingrome1]

Peace be with you. For those of you may not have heard the Paris Olympics used drag queens in its opening ceremony and at several points mocked Christianity. Hopefully I can share some of my thoughts that are helpful and thought provoking.

First a little on my feelings. I am upset and saddened, and hurt even honestly but not surprised. We are currently living in what can be described as a post-Christian (in my opinion Christian decaying) world. This doesn't mean going to take this passively that's one of the reasons I'm writing this. I can boycott the olympics and be honest why, further digest information and better express my thoughts.

Going on, we Christians shouldn't be surprised at all. Jesus did teach in John 15 in his last supper discourse the world would hate us because it hated Jesus first our head. During the early church times, Christians endured waves and cycles of persecution from mockery and social ostracization to state sanctioned violence because they were seen as a legitimate threat to the social order in the Roman world.

The picture attached is one of the earliest records of Christianity outside the epistles. It depicts a Roman slave, worshipping Jesus with a donkey head and it says "Alexamenos worshipping his God". This graffiti comes from an academy for promising slaves where they would be taught to be tutors to rich families in Rome dating to the 1st century.

The right response is to be patient with our anger. Let us take our time in discernment in articulating ourselves but be honest. Tolerance is not the answer but neither is hatred. Furthermore it is improper to dwell and stew on this either. The Olympics will come and go, but God's steadfast love endures forever. Pray for the people involved earnestly as Christ taught to pray for our enemies. Rather than posting over and over again online (don't judge me this is a single post) and let our anger fuel righteousnes. The answer to this secular decay is virtue. Let us build loving communities by making Christ our center. Reach out to that friend who haven't talked to awhile. Invite a friend to Church, participate in a community event and get to know a stranger. It isn't enough to be against the evils of this world, we must be the stewards of God that makes his good things grow.

Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him.

[teenageascetic]

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is”

(First Epistle of John 3:2)

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Effective Prayer

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. — 1 John 5:14-15 | New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide. Cross References: 1 Kings 3:12; Psalm 145:19; Proverbs 10:24; Matthew 7:7; John 14:13; James 4:3; 1 John 2:28; 1 John 5:18-19 and 20

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What is the significance of “if we ask anything according to His will”?

[k-star-holic]

'ADHD + Autism' brother direct stool Churry .. 'First Epistle of John' is crying 'a gold piece'

Source: k-star-holic.blogspot.com

[no-where-new-hero]

Emily of New Moon Catch up

Chapter 16: Check for Miss Brownell

We have a reversal of the account book burning here. Emily will destroy the account book, but that was younger Emily in a state of self-protection. Now, grown in confidence and self-assurance, she will defy Miss Brownell by saving her work and declaring herself a writer whose work is worthy of respect.

"Cousin Jimmy, in his grey jumper, was perched on the edge of the wood-box, whistling at the ceiling, and looking more gnome-like than ever." Jimmy 🤝 Barney Snaith: sympathetic gnomes.

I have always wondered whether Perry having his clothes off meant he was literally stark naked or if he had at least his underwear on. His subversion through obedience is really quite remarkable in any case.

Chapter 17: Living Epistles

"Mike is a smee cat. Smee is not in the dictionary. It is a word I invented myself." Emily "invented" this word 10 years before JM Barrie, I suppose. Although when I Googled it, it does appear in Old English, so Emily can't all the credit.

I am VERY surprised that Emily doesn't know basic punctuation and has to be taught this by Miss Brownell. Like?? Presumably she reads a lot??

Chapter 18 and 19: Father Cassidy and Friends Again

I CANNOT believe this is the first time we get actual Teddy dialogue. I know Batrachised pointed it out before, but I can't believe it took us this long. It is a good exchange and a rare time that Teddy is a supportive force, but considering how effective it is, you'd think LMM would give him more to do more often.

Okay, rereading this actually gives me more fondness for Father Cassidy. LMM writes him so surely, with such whimsy, and Emily does put him on the spot for his more condescending moments, able to see through his jocularity to what might be mockery. He's actually a fantastic appetizer for Dean Priest--the same assigning to Emily of elvishness, the acknowledgement of her writing, the religious connection, the subtle double-meanings in his kindness. Cassidy is also--like pretty much every other sympathetic figure in the story--marginal to the rest of the dominant society, in this case Protestant. He represents a nice bridge between Emily's fanciful world and the real adult world.

"She clasped her hands, she looked up through her lashes at Lofty John, she smiled as slowly and seductively as she knew how--and Emily had considerable native knowledge of that sort." This is one of those moments when its very clear that LMM is writing a century ago because no good children's writer of the 21st century would ever dare writing something like this about their 12-year-old heroine.

[gayleviticus]

I was skimming thru the gospels recently, trying to get a feel for how they're structured for myself, and smth that caught my eye are what events each Gospel use to open Jesus' ministry after the initial baptism, gathering disciples etc

Matthew, wanting to present Jesus as a second Moses, opens with the Beatitudes, and the sermon on the mount. Jesus is an authoritative teacher of God's Law, the Torah, and how he tells us to live is important.

Mark similarly opens with Jesus teaching in a synagogue, except - we aren't told any of what he said! But we know he teaches with authority, an authority he demonstrates in a very dramatic way by casting a demon from a possessed man. Jesus is God's representative, one who speaks and acts with authority, and yet there's something mysterious about him that can't yet be grasped.

and it's interesting, bc it's sometimes said by people trying to push back against a hyper-theologised protestantism that neglects the social justice implications of the Gospel, that christians spend too much time focusing on the epistles theologising about who Jesus is, than the Gospels which tell us about his moral teachings. But if we accept such a binary division (which I don't), Mark is much closer to the latter than the former; he gives us some teaching, for sure, but much of his Gospel is about establishing Jesus' authority not just through miraculous works but through his Passion and Resurrection.

Luke, meanwhile, opens with Jesus at the synagogue in Nazareth, applying the words of the Prophet Isaiah to himself to declare the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to proclaim liberation and the year of the Lord's favour - in response to which he is rejected by his own hometown. This is doing a lot of things at once; firmly placing Jesus in the tradition of the OT prophet hated by others for speaking the truth and championing social justice, but also foreshadowing Luke's interest in the eventual way Christianity was rejected by Jews and went to Gentiles (which btw i acknowledge this raises issues of supersessionism, but we do not have time to unpack those; suffice to say Luke wrote with a specific agenda at a specific point in time when there was a v specific relationship btwn Jews, Gentiles, and Christianity as a Jewish sect).

Finally, John opens with... Jesus turning water to wine? It almost seems like a parody next to the other gospels! Next to handing down the law, casting out demons, and fulfilling biblical prophecy, throwing out some extra booze at a party seems rather indulgent.

Jesus even seems to acknowledge this "What concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come." The Son of gOD should be making a big, dramatic debut, not performing party tricks. And yet he does it anyway.

I'm sure there's much to be said about the theological significance of this - a reference to the Eucharist, a fulfillment of OT themes of the great eschatological banquet with wine running freely, 'the best wine saved for last' as symbolising Jesus.

But what strikes me most is how low-stakes it is - and it's not as if the rest of John is exactly slice-of-life; unlike the other 3 gospels people are much more consistently out to get Jesus here. And yet as his first great sign, through the miracle of water into wine Jesus celebrates the goodness of God's creation, of wine to make man's heart glad, of weddings to join two people in commitment, of parties to celebrate family and friendship. In a sense he's hallowing everyday life here; the lack of drama is the point.

And I think it makes for a poignant book-end with the epilogue to John, which involves no dramatic ascension to heaven as in Luke, nor the giving of the Great Commission as in Matthew, nor the ambiguous cliffhanger ending of Luke. It involves Jesus having breakfast on the beach with his besties. Jesus' ministry in John starts with a wedding and ends with brunch with the bros.

[churchblogmatics-blog]

Books for spiritual formation

Books that have left an indelible mark on my understanding of God or the Christian faith in some way. My spiritual development is unfinished, so this list is unfinished - I'm always open to suggestions

Soren Kierkegaard

The Sickness Unto Death - Explained how sin works psychologically, illustrates how it can be its own punishment

Works of Love - What it means to love, what it costs, what it gives us

Fear and Trembling - What faith means, its miraculous nature

Karl Barth

Evangelical Theology - What theology actually means, how the gospel is good news

The Epistle to the Romans - Shows the need for continual reformation of thought within the church, introduced (to me) the idea of God's freedom in communication to man

Church Dogmatics II.2 - Election is good news! It is God willing to choose humanity despite sin - universal reconciliation can and should be hoped for

The Journal of John Woolman

What undying commitment to justice means, what it looks like

Martin Luther King Jr

Letter from a Birmingham Jail - Made me understand how Romans 13:1 can be integrated into radical politics

A Gift of Love - Brought to life 1 John 4:20

A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving

A narrative illustration of unwavering faith

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas Kempis

What we're saved to, salvation has a telos

Flannery O'Connor

Wise Blood - Life without Christ, the perils of sola scriptura

A Good Man is Hard to Find - Shows grace as an intrusive lived experience

Marilynne Robinson

Gilead novels (Gilead, Home, Lila) - Rich illustration of Imago Dei

When I Was a Child I Read Books - Bolstered my understanding of the 8th commandment (reading with charitable intent, in interactions with others in life and on the page)

What Are We Doing Here? - Illustrates what the glory of God means in daily experience

Garry Wills

What Paul Meant - Paul and Jesus were of a unified mind, stop reading Paul as a bible thumper, start reading him as a man who loved dearly and wrote with urgency on live issues

Religio Medici, Thomas Browne

Ecumenism is a beautiful thing and should be strived for in all Christian communities

The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton

The gospel brings peace of mind and soul, searching for peace is a valid epistemology

Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt

Wickedness is not inevitable, it arises from moral and intellectual sluggardliness

The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Learn to love the church, it is the arms of Christ; great exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount; great companion to the book of James

White Evangelical Racism, Anthea Butler

Evangelicalism did not emerge from theological first principles, it is a diseased expression of the faith informed by racism at the root

Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes du Mez

Evangelicalism did not emerge from theological first principles, it is a diseased expression of the faith informed by misogyny at the root

C.S. Lewis

The Great Divorce - Eternity begins now, sin is its own punishment and grace is its own reward

Till We Have Faces - God has compassion and patience for those who wrestle with him, to summon the boldness to contend with God can be a blessed thing

The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich

The dynamics of Christian faith explained in the abstract

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

The thinness of intellectual assent, the richness of faith

The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker

Explanation of the existential need faith meets in the language of continental philosophy

Confessions, St. Augustine

The most theologically and philosophically rich testimony besides that of St. Paul

An Unpublished Essay on the Trinity, Jonathan Edwards

What is the trinity, why is it important

John Milton

Areopagitica - Enforced virtue means nothing

Paradise Lost - Human beings are worth saving even if they aren't deserving of God's favor

Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud

Illustrates the necessity of grace by exploring a world through the assumption of its absence (excellent foil to A Gift of Love)

[whencyclopedia]

Ghosts in the Middle Ages

The medieval Church informed the people's religious imagination during the Middle Ages (c. 476-1500) and the world was therefore interpreted - even by heterodox Christians - through the Church's lens. Ghosts – referred to as revenants – were no exception in that the Church defined such apparitions as souls in purgatory requiring human intervention to find eternal peace.

In the Early Middle Ages (c. 476-1000), there was no consensus on the meaning of ghostly appearances since, following the biblical injunction to "test all spirits", it was usually thought that such an apparition was a demon. As the Church began to emphasize the reality of purgatory, however, the concept of the ghost-as-soul-in-purgatory gained more ground.

The souls most likely to return to haunt the living were those whose burial rituals were not performed correctly or who had unfinished business which required closure; suicides, women who died in childbirth, or people who died suddenly and tragically without time for confession and absolution. Another reason, often entwined with these, was the need of the living to properly say goodbye and let the deceased person go. Elaborate rituals developed to enable the living to cope with the loss of death, release their memories of the dead in order to lay a ghost to rest, and move on with life.

Ghosts in the Ancient World

In the Early Middle Ages, the Church distanced itself from the concept of ghosts as understood by pagan Rome – as the disembodied spirits of the dead – and interpreted them as demonic entities. The biblical epistle of I John 4:1-3 warns believers that not every spirit is "from God" and they should be carefully evaluated for demonic origin. If an apparition appeared in the form of one's departed loved one, it was most likely a demon assuming that shape in order to damn one by tempting them to question God's plan.

The Church taught that God was in ultimate control of every aspect of one's life and that, when one died, there was a place for every soul in the afterlife – in heaven, hell and, eventually, the in-between of purgatory – just as there had been in the social hierarchy of life. A ghost threatened that understanding because it was not only out of place but had returned to where it no longer belonged. If God actually was in control, how did a ghost slip its assigned place in the afterlife to return to the living? The answer, reflecting the I John 4 passage, was that the apparition was not a 'ghost' but a demon in disguise.

Prior to the rise of Christianity, ghosts were understood as a natural – albeit uncomfortable and unwanted – aspect of human existence. The pagan belief systems held to the same understanding of ghosts that the Church would eventually adopt – that spirits of the dead could return to ask help from the living in completing unfinished business, to punish the living for incomplete or inadequate funerary rites, or because some aspect of their death left them unsettled – but this concept was at first resisted by the medieval Church.

In ancient Egypt, people could write letters to the dead addressing problems ranging from why the writer was being haunted or experiencing misfortune to asking where some treasured artifact or document had been placed. In Greece, the continued existence of the dead depended on the memory of the living as expressed in monuments and rituals. The more vibrant the memory, the more vital the spirit in the afterlife. This same paradigm was understood and observed by the Romans who developed societies a citizen paid into which, upon one's death, ensured proper funerary rites and continued remembrance. An apparition, in all three of these belief systems, was a sign that the soul of the deceased was not at rest and some action was required on the part of the living.

The Church had to distance itself from this understanding in the same way it did with all other aspects of pagan thought in order to make its message completely new. Ghosts were demonized in the same way women, cats, attention to personal hygiene, and anything else valued by the pagans were.

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