Posted on 07/23/2003 6:20:57 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:10:31 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A fair amount of attention, although not necessarily the attention one would seek, attends the production of ''The Passion,'' Mel Gibson's movie about the last days of Jesus Christ. Making a movie about Christ is a surefire path to instant publicity, most of it negative. And when one of the most bankable stars in the English-speaking world is backing the project, you can bet Christ won't go quietly this time.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Besides being Scriptural, the idea stands to reason. You have to know, at least to some degree, that which in you're putting your faith.
Yup. You just knew it wasn't going to go over well with him.
I wasn't, but I think their creed is great.
(I presume an "Aquinasfan" would most likely at least lean to Roman Catholicism.)
Yup.
"when people stop believing in religion, they don't believe in nothing".
Maybe his best line.
Just for myself (and even more after 9-11 and learning more about Islam and some other religions/moral-systems)...Christianity make more emotive AND intellectual sense to me that just about anything.
You're right. And it will make greater sense to you as you learn more, because The Truth was a person, Jesus Christ. The most surprising thing that I've learned in my search for the Truth is that the truths regarding God are the most certain.
Are you familiar with Aristotelian/Thomistic thought? It's indispensible for intellectual growth.
This site is the best, most concise introduction to Thomistic thought that I've found on the web: Thomistic Philosophy.
The pages regarding Substance and Accidents, The Problem of Change, The Four Causes, Identity of Knower and Known, Body and Soul, and Essence and Existence are worth their weight in gold. Absolutely essential.
Once you understand the terminology and the philosophy, you can move on to the Summa.
The gold standard in Christian Apologetics remains The Handbook of Christian Apologetics.
"What Michelangelo's Pieta did for the medium of sculpture, Mel Gibson's 'The Passion' has done for the art of movie-making. It just takes it to a whole different level... This is going to grip an entire generation."Audio link here. July 24 program. His comments begin at the 3-minute mark.
The Boston Globe is the realm of the absurd and Alex Beam is one of it's absurd minions. Crap is just what they love to play with.
I love where he refers to the Jesus Seminar as serious Bible scholars. They are serious Bible scholars in the same way that I, a fierce anti-communist, would be a serious Marxist-Leninist scholar if I spent my life studying the Communist Manifesto and it's effect on the world. In fact, that analogy still doesn't quite amke it, because if I studied Marx and Lenin I'd be looking for truthful information about my subject, not looking for a license to ignore all those inconvenient "Thou Shalt Nots."
People who are "Christians" for reasons unrelated to believing in a real and risen Christ who heads the church today are without a doubt the single dumbest group of people on Planet Earth. Why follow a religion if you believe that it's founders were lying when they took down historical events? How is such a "faith" a moral guide in any way? And if Beam digs Christianity for the beauty of the story, why not start a church that worships the firefighters and cops who died on 9/11? Their story is full of beauty, love and sacrifice, and nobody from the Jesus Seminar is going to tell you it's only 18% accurate.
Why would Beam never do such a thing? Because he knows that if he did follow his logic to it's conclusion (perhaps even founding something slightly less extreme, like founding "The Church of Really Cool and Beautiful Stories and Other Nice Stuff") the vast majority of humanity would look down on his foolishness with the same disdain that he has for those of us who believe in the real Christ.
Hutton is a crackpot. However, his son has repudiated the old man's views, repudiation that the media conveniently fails to come across when doing basic due diligence research.
However, Beam is a real and true idiot. Hutton Gibson may be an anti-Semite, but at least he doesn't go to church to knowingly worship a man who never existed, who founded a church built on a foundation of lies. Beam believes that's what Christianity is, yet he pats himself on the back for spending time every Sunday participating in such bilge. Christ is real and risen, Beam's brain is small or fictional.
Heh-heh! There actually was, this past spring. Two big differences from the Jesus Seminar, though:
1. It was just me.
2. I was looking at the facts, something the Jesus Seminar never let get in their way.
If you want a copy of the paper, freepmail me your email address.
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