Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'theology'

June 06, 2006

On infinite value

Yesterday I looked at the worth of human life, especially as relative to that of animal life. Today I want to refine the discussion about the value of human life, by making a fine terminological distinction. Continue Reading...
May 16, 2006

Jaroslav Pelikan 1923-2006

Jaroslav Pelikan, the great historian of the Christian Tradition, died May 13 at his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 82 years old and had been battling lung cancer. Pelikan wrote more than 30 books and over a dozen reference works covering the entire history of Christianity. Continue Reading...
April 21, 2006

The ‘gospel’ of Judas

Over at OrthodoxyToday.org, Fr. Theodore Stylianpoulos demolishes the media driven speculation that the so-called Gospel of Judas might somehow turn traditional Christianity on its head. The Gospel of Judas is but another small window to Gnosticism, a hodgepodge of religious speculations that exploded on the scene during the second century. Continue Reading...
March 16, 2006

Ethics and economics

Henry Stob, the longtime professor of philosophical and moral theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, authored a compendium of articles on various aspects of theological ethics in his 1978 book titled, Ethical Reflections: Essays on Moral Themes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Continue Reading...
March 10, 2006

The right to die, the duty to live

I take on the current upswing in public support for euthanasia laws, especially among certain sectors of Christianity in a BreakPoint commentary today, “Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death.” I note especially the stance taken by a Baylor university professor of ethics and the student newspaper in favor of legalizing euthanasia. Continue Reading...
March 07, 2006

Spurning the ‘supernatural’

In a recent post on the evangelical outpost, Joe Carter makes the case for discarding, or at least severely restricting, the use of the descriptive term supernatural by Christians. He notes that in using the term to refer, for example, to angels and demons, “we are implying that they belong on the same plane or realm of existence as God.” Continue Reading...
February 17, 2006

Fumbling with fundamentalism

One of the religion beat’s favorite canards is to implicitly equate what it calls American Christian “fundamentalism” with what it calls Muslim or Islamic “fundamentalism.” After all, both are simply species of the genus. Continue Reading...
February 14, 2006

Bonhoeffer’s legacy

Earlier this month, we marked the 100th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birth on February 4, in what is now Wroclaw, Poland. In a message before the International Bonhoeffer Conference on February 3, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a man immersed in a specific cultural heritage, and untroubled by the fact; he was a person of profound and rigorous (and very traditional) personal spirituality; he was someone committed to the ecumenical perspective from very early on in his adult life. Continue Reading...
January 30, 2006

Celebrating Bonhoeffer

PBS stations across the country will be airing Bonhoeffer, “an acclaimed dramatic documentary about theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The documentary “tells the story of the young German pastor who offered one of the first clear voices of resistance to Adolf Hitler and the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party.” Continue Reading...
January 03, 2006

Brief Stark review

First item in this month’s Christianity Today Bookmarks. Conclusion: “Disconcertingly, Stark argues without qualification, nuance, and the balancing of perspectives that academics love so much. Nonetheless, he may be right.” Continue Reading...