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This seems wrong to me. Dogma assumes membership in a community. No one ever supposed that Christian dogma is authoritative for atheists, except in a meta sense (i.e, Christianity is true, whether acknowledged or not). When a Presbyterian or Lutheran or Catholic church says "thus is to be...

I think dogmatism works when there is strong catechesis and/or a shared cultural connectivity. I think it works poorly without either. I'm assuming you're asking whether it's useful for preserving the faith, not whether there is any such thing as "the faith".

I think you're confusing the meaning of the word "gentleman". In Austen's England, "gentleman" was a class distinction and good gentlemen were expected to reinforce social mores and good conduct. In America, in the 21st century, gentlemen are simply guys who hold open doors and act sweetly...

I'm a guy and I adore Austen, though I've never quite understood why she's considered a "girl's" author. Austen does not write romances. She writes novels of morals and manners. Pride and Prejudice is the only one that feels at all like a modern romance (which is probably why it's the most...

"At least one of them's a lady..."

You're a talented writer. But I'd say this is a little too exposition heavy for the first chapter of a novel. I struggle with this myself because you want to reveal all the interesting bits of your characters/universe as quickly as possible. There should be a little more action/physical...

I can read Spanish fairly comfortably but I'm still working on the speaking/listening/writing.

Some that come to mind: "In the arms of the angel Fly away from here From this dark cold hotel room And the endlessness that you fear You are pulled from the wreckage Of your silent reverie You're in the arms of the angel May you find some comfort here You're in the arms of the angel May you...

No, only one of you has to be a Catholic. The marriage is not considered sacramental unless both of you are baptized Christians but the church recognizes non-sacramental marriages as, you know, marriages (but like I said, if the other person isn't baptized, you have to get a dispensation)...

You haven't been around very much. The pro-life movement, for one, is absolutely teeming with Catholics, a goodly number of them young. Head down to the March for Life in DC and poll some of the folks at the youth rally- you're likely to find they're almost evenly split between Protestants and...

I asked this question, from the other side I guess (although I'm still a Protestant and will be for awhile) a few months ago. Here are my thoughts. One, Catholics can date and even marry non-Catholics...but, in order for a Catholic to be a Catholic in good standing, he/she must marry with...

I just moved so I only have 1 tiny book-shelf set-up and it's filled pretty haphazardly (I just grabbed the best books out of the 3 or 4 boxes I've unpacked). But here it is:

Yes. I was re-watching an old favorite of mine last night, Doc Hollywood, and one of the characters said a nice quote from a fellow named John Muir: "most people live on the world, not in it". So I looked up John Muir. Turns out, he'd memorized all of The New Testament and 3/4's of the Old...

Bell doesn't even believe in Hell as penance- he simply thinks that we choose our own hells, here and in the life to come, and that not only will we always have the opportunity to make another choice, but we will, ultimately, make another choice because God wants us to and God gets what he...

So I went out and read Love Wins and re-read The Great Divorce to confirm my feeling that those conflating Bell and Lewis on salvation were wrong to do so (they are). Here are my thoughts. Bell is clearly a universalist and he, in important but sometimes subtle ways, seriously misreads the...

Well obviously you need to finish your degree...but Greek is a fairly complicated language and one which you're likely to have little incentive to learn outside of school (New Testament Greek isn't spoken obviously). If this were Spanish or something I'd say don't bother, learn it on your own...

My childhood church, which I still attended until about a year ago, was very big on Rob Bell- probably once a month we'd be shown a Nooma vid (short vid with Rob talking into the camera while doing strange things like bouncing a ball). I was of two minds about him. On the one hand, he's...

Out of high school I went to Williams College which was (and still is I think) the number 1 ranked liberal arts school in the country. Roughly on par with the bottom half of the Ivies- I ended up choosing between Williams and Dartmouth. At the end of my sophomore year, for personal reasons, I...

That is, I think, Lewis's second best piece of non-fiction after The Abolition of Man. It's remarkable partly because it isn't only to do with miracles. There's a chapter towards the middle, Horrid Red Things, which is, sometimes unconsciously, a guide-book for understanding any metaphysical...

I have thousands of books but if you're asking for, like, a desert island list, here goes: 1. The Complete Works of T.S. Eliot 2. War and Peace (Tolstoy) 3. Orthodoxy (Chesterton) 4. Middlemarch (George Eliot) 5. The Complete Works of John Donne I'm assuming, like most desert island...