Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’). The name of the festival, historically kept by the Gaels and Celts in the British Isles, is derived from Old Irish and means roughly “summer’s end”. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United [...]
Continue Reading...Craig Blomberg is a distinguished professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. In addition to writing numerous articles in professional journals, multi-author works and dictionaries or encyclopedias, he has authored or edited 15 books, including The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. He is also one of the 15 translators responsible for the NIV translation of [...]
Continue Reading...I’m currently educating myself regarding the intriguing Christian contemplative tradition. Often associated by many protestants as a “Catholic thing” or the realm of cloistered mystics, this article by a protestant pastor discusses why the contemplative tradition is completely compatible with all Christian denominational traditions and answers some common concerns raised by protestants. Well worth a [...]
Continue Reading...Christian Today newspaper is an operating division of Christian Today Limited. This new multimedia company comprises of a digital publication (au.christiantoday.com) and a web portal, search engine and directories all rolled into one (au.crossmap.com). Founded in 2002, Christian Today Australia gains affiliation to the Christian Today network based in the U.K. Operating autonomously from [...]
Continue Reading...From the Centre for Public Christianity. Lynn H. Cohick is associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. She is a specialist on the Origins of Christianity in the Graeco-Roman and Jewish worlds. Her latest book is Women in the World of the Earliest Christians and she came into CPX to speak with John Dickson [...]
Continue Reading...When Dawkin’s claims, in a clearly unqualified way, that ‘religion is harmful’, this assumes we have identified what is and is not a religion. It assumes we can know when religion is a cause, and when an effect of social phenomena. It takes as read that, with minimal dialogue with religious believers, we are in [...]
Continue Reading...“COGNITIVE DISSONANCE” (noun, psychology) “Anxiety and existential discomfort that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs.” “An uncomfortable mental state resulting from conflicting cognitions; usually resolved by changing or justifying some of the cognitions.” Dictionary.com Cognitive dissonance is the tense feeling that occurs when we hold two equally valid, conflicting points [...]
Continue Reading...Living the Zen Arts: Meditation*Martial Arts*Calligraphy*Flower-Arranging*The Art of Tea by Andy Baggott My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very interesting and informative look into the background of Zen and the Zen arts. View all my reviews
Continue Reading...Christian Today newspaper is an operating division of Christian Today Limited. This new multimedia company comprises of a digital publication (au.christiantoday.com) and a web portal, search engine and directories all rolled into one (au.crossmap.com). Founded in 2002, Christian Today Australia gains affiliation to the Christian Today network based in the U.K. Operating autonomously from [...]
Continue Reading...Whatever its stigma, “intuition” is a term that we simply cannot do without, because it denotes the most basic constituent of our faculty of understanding. While this is true in matters of ethics, it is no less true in science. When we can break our knowledge of a thing down no further, the irreducible leap [...]
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