Stuff they don’t talk about in Sunday School
August 19th, 2008 — Canon, Christian, History, Intellectualism, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Mormon, Old Testament, Scripture, Theology
When most of us hear the word “jihad” or “holy war”, we immediately know that a jihad is not what God wants. Most of us feel the same when we hear the word “crusade.” Really, does anyone think God wants people to fight in his name?
In the book of Joshua, Joshua claims to be commanded by God to destroy everyone and everything in what is now the land of Israel. Continue reading →
July 30th, 2008 — Canon, Catholic, Christian, Early Christian History, Gnosticism, History, Mormon, Scripture, Theology
I’ve learned some interesting concepts from class #23: Eastern Orthodoxy. The podcast is one from the Ancient and Medieval Church History class from Covenant Theological Seminary. First, let’s have a little background. (Incidentally, the seminary is a Presbyterian seminary.)
The Eastern Orthodox Church officially split with the Catholic Church in 1054. The Pope excommunicated the Patriarch in Constantinople, so the Patriarch did the same to the Pope. There had been some different emphasis on theology for quite some time. For example, while the Catholic Church claimed that the Pope held all the leadership, the Orthodox Church held a much less central authority. The Orthodox belief of revelation is that God speaks through these councils, not one central person.
July 17th, 2008 — Archeology, Book of Mormon, Canon, Christian, Early Christian History, History, Mormon, Multi-Faith, Old Testament, Scripture, Theology
The history of baptism is quite interesting, and much more complex than most people know.
Baptism seems to be related to the ancient Jewish rite called “mikvah”, which was/is used for conversion to Judaism, ritual cleansing (Law of Moses type things, childbirth, women’s menstruation, and other things.) If you go to this link at Wikipedia, you can see a contemporary Mikvah font which look quite similar to a modern-day Christian baptismal font (at the bottom of the article.)
Continue reading →
June 22nd, 2008 — Book of Mormon, Canon, Christian, Gnosticism, History, Judaism, Mormon, Old Testament, Scripture, Theology
I posted previously on the topics of Gnosticism, Marcionism, and Montanism in my previous three posts. While discussing Marcionism, there was a debate about the apostasy. The topic got sidetracked into a discussion of the definition of scripture, so I thought I’d post a new topic regarding that topic.
Falcon makes the case that Joseph is a fraud because of his polygamy, and by extension, the Book of Mormon should not be considered scripture. So, I decided to issue a challenge. Here’s the reader’s digest version of the challenge, but you can see the entire set of instructions here.
