Skeptical Faith

Google Image If you are a Christian, you have probably recited the Our Father, also called “the Lord’s Prayer,” more times than you can count. Even if you’re not a Christian nor profess any faith, you have at least heard of the prayer and maybe even have recited it occasionally. That prayer, writes theologian and Scripture scholar, Leonardo Boff – who specializes in the branch of theology called “Christology” - summarizes “Jesus’ fundamental project.”  In the “Our Father,” he writes, there is no information that is considered essential to the Christian faith, such as the mystery of the Incarnation, the Church, the hierarchy, the Eucharist, the Trinity. It's a simple prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples, according to the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Salvific Plan? “What is important is our Father, his salvific plan which is the Kingdom," writes Boff, " and Our Bread, the human being in his basic needs.” Last week’s Skeptical Faith focused on Boff’s view that p...

Google Image Some people don’t believe there was a Jesus. Others believe he was merely one of the many revolutionaries of his time, fomenting rebellion against the Roman occupiers of Israel. Others believe there was an historical Jesus, but he certainly wasn’t God. So, just to address these issues before moving on to the main topic of this blog, the existence of the historical Jesus is more certain than that of any person of his era, according to many scholars. Besides the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, which the vast majority of scholars – religious or not – believe are historical, there are non-biblical sources that attest to his existence. As for his being just another revolutionary of his time, some authors have tried to demonstrate that idea but the books I’ve read on this subject failed miserably. Jesus’ message and actions were overwhelmingly religious; that is, efforts to bring God to his people. More Complicated The third claim, about Jesus being God, is more complica...

CNN In a recent article, Sam Sawyer, editor of America Magazine, quoted Pope Francis describing politics as “a lofty vocation,   and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good.” This, writes Sawyer, who like the Pope, is a Jesuit priest, “would be considered catastrophically stupid from the standpoint of political tactics.” It’s true, Pope Francis would make a terrible candidate for the job of political adviser. Sawyer writes these thoughts in a column about Jimmy Carter, Nobel Prize winner and the 39 th U.S. president who died at age 100 two days before the end of 2024. Impossible? By no means does Sawyer imply that either Carter or Pope Francis are “catastrophically stupid.” His point is that, in case you haven’t noticed, American politics is far from alignment with genuine Christian values. Personally, I believe that it would be impossible for a genuinely committed Christian to win an American presidential election today. “(Carter) is prob...

Google Image (Part of this blog includes material from Skeptical Faith blogs from 2014 and 2024.) According to an old maxim, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” As you may recall, much of World War I and some of World War II was fought in foxholes – holes dug by soldiers to protect themselves from incoming fire. The idea of the maxim is that, when in a situation so horrifying like that of a soldier in a foxhole, non-believers are so overcome with fear they may lose or suspend doubt in the desperate hope that God exits and will save them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer commented on this idea in his Letters from Prison , a book I highly recommend. A Lutheran minister and theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945, he lamented the quality of conversions among his fellow prisoners who feared punishment and execution. Bonhoeffer worried that those kinds of conversions lacked the conviction and sincerity necessary to sustain faith. Cheap Grace Bonhoeffer also wrote a book called The Cost of Disc...