The ruins of Rievaulx Abbey
Last year, Rod Dreher shook the world when he came out with The Benedict Option. Most Catholic and Orthodox people that I know hate the thesis of this book. I actually quite liked the book and while I have a problem with a few minor details, the overall thesis is a good blueprint for the Western world going forward.
Only Five Years Apart!
On May 24, Michael Coren came out with an article called Conservatives Don’t Own Jesus. The reason that I’m not addressing this sooner is because Coren long ago blocked me on Twitter so I haven’t been able to follow his work as thoroughly. He’s a pretty big voice in Canada so he cannot be ignored. It seems like only yesterday he was writing Catholic apologetic books but now he’s promoting full blown socialism.
King Henry VIII – Founder of the Anglican Religion
As I mentioned in a previous post, the religion of Judaism was born after the second Temple was destroyed. Judaism was formed by Jochanan ben Zakkai for the Jews who didn’t want to follow the Messiah. One thing about Judaism is that it is a tribal religion. A few converts come in here or there, but overall, it’s a tribal religion. Usually when someone converts the born Jews say: “Welcome to the tribe!”
St. Augustine of Hippo
We tend to think about Latin Christianity coming to an end in North Africa when the Arabs invaded in the 7th Century. However, that’s an overly simplistic way of putting it. For example, Donald Trump took the office of President in January 2017 but did anything really change in America? Not really. People just went about their lives.
A modern Passover Seder without the lamb – See Exodus 12
What was the religion of Jesus Christ? Most Christians will give one or two answers. Those answers are Judaism or Second Temple Judaism. The Muslim will say that Jesus practiced Islam. I believe that all three of these answers are incorrect. I won’t be dealing with the argument that Jesus was a Muslim but I will dispute the fact that Jesus practiced Judaism or Second Temple Judaism.
The Muqaddimah
One of my hobbies is reading what classical Islamic scholars said about Christianity. Recently I’ve been reading Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah which is a famous work that one could probably pick up a local bookstore; if not it can easily be ordered online. What I read is quite shocking. A while back, I wrote a few posts on how the Quran gets the Trinity wrong. Although that error is a big deal, it’s bush league compared to what Khaldun writes about Christianity, Judaism and the Bible.
The Book of Psalms in my Russian Bible
Last week I was having coffee with one of my friends who is a member of the Orthodox Church. She told me earlier that she wanted to get together and ask me about the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Instead, most of our conversation focused around Islamic apologetics. She’s from a Muslim country so this made sense to me. It was ironic because we were in a mall at a coffee shop and there was a Muslim at the next table. He seemed very knowledgeable. He was with a girl and it seemed that he was telling her about Islam. He was quoting sources like the Quran and the Hadith. I wanted to engage him in debate but I didn’t want to interrupt his conversation with this girl.
Christopher Hitchens
I was recently going through my book collection which is getting pretty large these days. I happened to come across a book that was published in 2007 and that I read in 2008. This was my early days of apologetics. The book was written by Christopher Hitchens and titled: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons everything. Ah yes, what a catchy subtitle.
Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. There is a lot of tension between the Jewish community and the Catholic community these days. This is especially evident amongst Israeli Jews and Polish Catholics. American Rabbi Shmuley Boteach shared a meal with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The account can be read here:
It is true that most Christians don’t know the Bible that well. In this day and age, we’re bound to run into some young zealous Muslim who engages in dawah and wants to sell Islam to us. The answer is simple, we need to know our Bible and how to debate.