Archive for the ‘Bible’ Category

The lion and the lamb are two of the most important biblical images of Christ.  Obviously, the lion depicts Christ’s power and the lamb his loving sacrifice for us sinners.  Nevertheless, we fail to do justice to these images, if we do not see how the Bible relates them to one another.   Two Christian novelists, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, can help us to grasp the profundity of the biblical portrayal of Christ as both lion and lamb or better be grasped by it.[1] Read the rest of this entry »

As far back as Irenaeus of Lyon (AD 120-202) and probably earlier, Christians have drawn parallels between the sin of man having come by means of eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and salvation being accomplished on the cross of Christ.[1]  Our two American Christmas poets tie in the tree of Genesis and the cross of Christ with the crib of the baby Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »

The initial response of Fox News to the murder of nine people attending a Bible study in a Charleston, South Carolina church was to question that the attack was racially motivated and instead claimed that it was an attack on Christianity. http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/18/foxs-steve-doocy-its-extraordinary-that-charles/204043 The friends who forwarded the video link countered correctly that it was a racist attack.  While Dylan Roof, the attacker, has not yet explicitly mentioned any religious motives, he appears to have been influenced by “Christian” white supremacists.  Thus, the reality is that it was both a racist attack and an attack on Christianity because racism is a heresy that opposes and perverts orthodox Christianity. Read the rest of this entry »

The ancient Greeks tragedies saw all of man’s efforts overruled by cruel and blind fate.  Karl Marx said man was subject to economic determinism.  B.F. Skinner contended that human behavior was determined by genetics and environment.  For atheistic existentialists, like Sartre, the human condition is to be trapped in a meaningless universe from which there is no escape.   Both fairy tales and the Bible disagree. Read the rest of this entry »

            One of the challenges of a Christian aesthetic or theology of beauty is the cross of Christ.  Hymns, paintings and sculptures have its beauty as their subject.  Crosses are some of the most beautiful jewelry in the world, but how can such a brutal event as the crucifixion of Jesus be seen as beautiful?  Read the rest of this entry »