Rogue Bibles The Wicked Bible 1631 Thou shalt commit adultery [Exodus 20:14] The Fool’s Bible 1634? The fool hath said in his heart there is a God [Psalm 14:1] The Unrighteous Bible 1653 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall … Continue reading
Feed the World When I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint; but when I ask why people are poor, they call me a communist. Dom Hélder Câmara (1909-1999), Archbishop of Recife, Brazil
The Current Scientific Understanding of the Creation of the World In the beginning was nothing at all; which then exploded. Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies, 1992
Not understanding the past Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination. That’s a harder thing to do than [many] seem to … Continue reading
A Good Emperor? Edward Gibbon on the emperor Septimius Severus: “He promised only to betray, he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him … Continue reading
The Failings of Secularism The remedy for the shortcomings and sins of Christian peoples is surely not to substitute secularism for godliness, human vagaries for divine truth, man-made expedients for a God-given standard of right and wrong. This is God’s … Continue reading
The Worshipping Assembly The worshipping assembly is neither a machine nor a species of plant. It is a human society suffused with the unpredictable presence of One who is not content with remaining a first principle, a ground of being, … Continue reading
Muddled Disagreement The Daily Telegraph found one priest in the diocese of Newcastle, the Rev George Curry, to condemn the idea: “You cannot have the Church endorsing immorality particularly in a marriage ceremony which in the eyes of God is … Continue reading
How to treat false prophets 2 I read in one of Montaigne’s essays an account of what the Scythians used to do to makers of false predictions. They bound them, he says, hand and foot, laid them in an ox-drawn … Continue reading
How to treat false prophets 1 Divination is a gift of God, and therefore to abuse it, ought to be a punishable imposture. Among the Scythians, where their diviners failed in the promised effect, they were laid, bound hand and … Continue reading