No evil can come to a good man either in life or after death, and God does not neglect him. –Plato, Apology 41d A friend of mine passed away a week ago, on February 28, 2018. When I received the news, the first thing that came to mind was the above saying of Socrates. It is fitting to remember her on International Women’s Day, for she was one of the […]
Read moreCategory: Conversation and Reflection
On Abuse of Authority in Interpretation
Ideally, a translation should give the readers of the Bible in their own language the same interpretive options that a reader of the original will have. I’ve been struggling with a troubling phenomenon in public discourse in the past two years, namely, the abuse of authority in interpretation. The above quote from a recent blog post by Dr. Daniel B. Wallace on Bible translation caught my attention, because it speaks directly […]
Read moreWhat is Creative Open-Mindedness?
An online acquaintance recently sent me a private message recommending a Catholic apologetics book — my post on sola scriptura was an upshot of a debate with her and a few others. I thanked her for the recommendation, but politely declined, saying that I had a very long to-read list and wouldn’t have time for it. Her reply suggested that I was not “open-minded enough”. I was a little taken aback, […]
Read moreIncarnation: II. Seeking Evidence of God
I asked, “Let us suppose, sir, that after you have left this sorry vale, you actually found yourself in heaven, standing before the Throne. There, in all his glory, sat the Lord—not Lord Russell, sir: God.” Russell winced. “What would you think?” “I would think I was dreaming.” “But suppose you realized you were not? Suppose that there, before your very eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was God. […]
Read moreBeware of Procrustes: Second Metaphor of the Scientific Method
The Procrustes in Us According to Greek mythology, Procrustes offered hospitality to passers-by with the intent to kill them. He had only one bed for all comers. To make them fit the bed, he hammered the short men and stretched them across the length of the bed, but sawed off the portions of the long men that projected beyond it. The hero Theseus eventually subdued Procrustes by forcing him to […]
Read moreEvolution: The Problem of Non-Identity
A Matter of Identity As an armchair Platonist, I find the philosophy behind Darwinian evolution not only intellectually unsatisfactory, but also self-contradictory. On the one hand, it asserts constant change, that, given enough time and proper conditions, anything can change into anything else; on the other hand, it asserts identity, that there is a “struggle for existence” of the individual and/or group. It is a self-contradiction to state that something […]
Read moreWitnessing Creation
Creation in Seven Acts In my previous post “A Layman’s Interpretation of Genesis”, I made the point that the Days in Genesis 1 are defined, not by any physical entity, but by divine command. The Days, and time itself, are God’s creation. To give a further illustration, I’d liken the Creation account in Genesis 1 to a seven-act play, and the recurring phrase “there was evening and there was morning, […]
Read more