Tag: Bible

Letting God in to the Broken Parts of Our Lives

Fotos de Don José Prieto para Catedrales e Iglesias

In the aftermath of certain types of sins, we can be tempted to close off parts of ourselves: for instance, you sin sexually, and you start to think that your masculinity/femininity (or your body more broadly) is evil. But that’s not what Christianity teaches. We need to remember that sin is a perversion of something good, and our hatred of sin shouldn’t lead us into a hatred of the underlying good, and that God doesn’t just want to heal you when you fall, He wants to heal you where you fall.

Who are the “Four Living Creatures” of Revelation?

Today’s First Reading is from Rev. 4:1-11, in which St. John presents a heavenly vision. There are many strange details, but one of the ones that has captured the imagination of Christians for the last two millennia is of the “four living creatures.” Here’s what John describes (Rev. 4:6-8): And round the throne, on each… Continue reading Who are the “Four Living Creatures” of Revelation?

Burden-Shifting Protestants and Atheists

Protestants and atheists are dissimilar in most regards, and I suspect both sides would be happy with my making this observation. But there is one area in which the two groups behave all too similarly: a fallacious sort of burden-shifting argument. For purposes of this post, we’ll call it “the Norseman and the Atheist.”

Through Jewish Eyes: A New Way to Understand the Advent and Christmas Scriptures

You’ve heard the Biblical accounts of the Virgin Birth, but I’m willing to bet that (like most people) you misunderstand them. For example, were Mary and Joseph married at the time of the Annunciation? Why does Matthew refer to Joseph as Mary’s “husband,” and yet common translations of Luke have Mary saying to the angel, “I have no husband” (Matt. 1:19; Luke 1:34)? What does it mean that Joseph “took his wife,” or that Joseph “knew her not until she had borne a son” (Matt. 1:24-25)? And finally, why did Joseph consider divorcing Mary, and why does the angel respond by telling him not to be afraid?

The Hidden Eucharistic Meaning of “Not by Bread Alone”

In Matthew 4:4, Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” What does this have to do with the Eucharist?

You may be inclined to say “NOTHING, He’s talking about reading the Bible,” or even “IT DISPROVES THE EUCHARIST, because it shows He uses eating imagery when He just means belief or Bible reading.” But those answers are Biblically ignorant, since they’re ignoring the context of Jesus’ Old Testament quotation. It turns out, there’s a Eucharistic dimension to His Scriptural quotations here that almost everyone misses.

The Curious Case of the Protestant Bible

Perhaps no area in Catholic-Protestant apologetics involves as many outright falsehoods as the history of the Bible. To be sure, there are lots of theological topics on which Catholics and Protestants disagree, but for sheer number of popular Protestant arguments that are explicitly and undeniably false, nothing tops the question of where the Bible comes from… Continue reading The Curious Case of the Protestant Bible

Does Prayer Change Things?

Jean-Eugène Buland, Visit to the Virgin of Bénodet (1898)

Does prayer change anything? And if so, is that a good thing? There are three major objections to consider:

First, that due to predestination, everything is set in place, and our prayers can’t change anything. 
Second, that “prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me.” So the only one changed by prayer is me. After all, God is perfect and changeless. 
Third, due to God’s omniscience and omnipotence (that is, that He knows everything and is all-powerful), His plan is perfect, so our prayers shouldn’t do anything. After all, we’re not going to tell God anything that He doesn’t already know, and we’re not going to have a better plan than the one He already has, right?