In Circadian Dreams

Today marks the anniversary of that fateful day in 1517 when Martin Luther, a Catholic monk and professor of theology, posted his 95 Theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Though the event…

There are three things I’d like to say, in relation to the first three parts that have been posted from my review. Firstly, thank you very much for many useful comments and discussion. One good thing…

I have just returned home from the Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science Conference in Austin, Texas. This is likely the first conference of its sort ever held. Although no young earth creation…

Every semester I ask my students certain questions that begin, “How many of you have heard of…?” When the name “Copernicus” was attached to the end of that question this term, and several students…

averillata:

By Prof. Jeremiah Reyes

are, at their basest and crudest form, SEX and VIOLENCE, which is why they will always be the greatest forms of entertainment, and will have the greatest pull on our appetites and senses, from literature, to the movies, to real life events. The greatest forms of selfish-gratification are these: the way of using someone else’s warm body as an instrument of pleasure, and the anger that knocks down another, in a shout of superiority, in a splatter of blood. They say we share these primal instincts with animals, but because we are men who can choose, we can go even lower than the animals, to depths that could make the animals cringe in disgust. To inordinate frequencies and addictions and excesses that make the soul implode into itself: a star turned into something dark, negative, and monstrous.

But if you would go higher you would agree that the two themes are more properly LOVE and HEROISM. And that these are the more noble, the more tasteful, the more human. And the difference between sex and love is the difference between a moment and a lifetime, the different between a stranger’s body and a golden ring—a commitment that spreads through our whole lives, to this other person’s life, with her precious name and the sweet tone of her voice. My soul turned into half and then formed again into a whole. And the difference between mere violence and heroism is the difference between the means and the end, the knight fighting valiantly for the kingdom he loves, or the soldier fighting for freedom, ready to risk his own life for this whole endeavour: shouting, I am for you, and I can be your hero, though my name be forgotten by the rest, but please, please remember me. And these will ever be the greatest themes in the history of mankind, that we were actually capable of these things: that we almost flew. But one could really fly then he would enter the highest form of these themes, HEAVEN and HELL, and here the boundless and the speechless and sparkling—here the difference not between moment and lifetime, but lifetime and eternity. And one could speak of eternal lovemaking, or the glory of golden gates and splendour, though all these metaphors fall short. It is, through a glass darkly, like the love in the table of a family you have long lost and have now found again. It is you sitting on a table, and Jesus Christ smiling while he pours sparkling water into your cup, and serves you the hot meal he just cooked, wiping his hands and then saying, “Eat, eat child, and welcome home!” By his victory the great war was over and won even before it began, like the blink of an eye. And the fire was too strong for the enemies who rebelled, and against those who would proclaim themselves kings, against the one, true King. But the King has won, and our family is at last reunited. And now we spend our time light-speeding through the stars of the universe, and creating new earths and new jungles and seas, and not to mention the most hilarious and furry-looking creatures. We laugh and laugh, through this everlasting adventure, and tell the story of long long ago, after aeons and aeons, how God saved us.

On the sixth day when God created humanity, Genesis 1:26 says something that has attracted the attention of biblical interpreters from early on until today: “Let us make humankind in our own image,…

In this video “Conversation,” Daniel Harrell, Senior Minister of Colonial Church in Edina, Minnesota, discusses what often gets in the way of getting Christians to consider evolutionary science….