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Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament

on December 12, 2021

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Coming Spring 2022, from Baker Publishing.

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Progress and Decline

Following up on my post about responsibility and goodwill, I feel compelled to write on what will perhaps seem to many an outdated idea, namely that collectivities of persons can go through progress and decline. "Progress" has a very simple meaning for Lonergan: genuine insights, good judgments, and responsible decisions build one upon another, such that society is organized and technology is created so as to objectively improve conditions for as many people as possible. Decline is the opposite: oversight, bad judgment, and irresponsible decisions compound each other such that society becomes fragmented, technology that could alleviate suffering is not developed, etc. The grand scheme of history has seen a general trend towards technological progress, and I would argue also intellectual, social, and moral progress as well. Once we had barely mastered the wheel, now we can send people to the moon. Once we thought that the sun went around the world and was perhaps a personal

Putting the "Myth" in Mythicism

Once again, someone with only very little knowledge on the subject has posted a blog post loudly declaring that there is good reason to doubt that Jesus existed. Once again, the reasons given are without an exception logical fallacies. Let us consider. Here is the link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/30/did-the-historical-jesus-exist-a-growing-number-of-scholars-dont-think-so/ Here are the five reasons the author gives, and the fallacies involved. 1) "No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef." This is of course an argument from silence, and thus only compelling insofar as one should expect there to be something other than silence. In point of fact, given that Christianity in the first century is quite marginal, it is hardly surprising that those outside the movement take little notice of the movement. Moreover, given the paucity of evidence from the ancient world few silences are unexpected. 2) "The e

Paul, Conversion, and Homosexuality

Exodus International has apologized for forty years of harm done to homosexual persons and shut its doors. Pope Francis has said that it is not his place to judge homosexual persons. Vicki Beeching, beloved Christian songstress, is gay. Reactionaries are all in a tizzy. What is happening to Christian values? The answer is simple: they're winning out. Let us go back to Paul. I'm not going to rehearse the arguments that have suggested that we have misread what Paul intended by his statements on homosexuality, as valid as these arguments might be. I'm going to say something that somewhat more radical, namely that Christian ethics and moral theology is only quite inadequately understood when conceived as the work of reading the biblical canon as if it were a law book. That this is the case should be clear from Paul's own statements about the letter of the law. Of what do Christian ethics and moral theology consist, then? Well, here, again, Paul is of some help. Let us

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Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament

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