Recent content by burleyman

I've been told by several Muslims that they think that the Christian Trinity is God, Jesus and Mary. To be fair, this makes at least as much sense as the Christian version, and in practice (at least in the Catholic church) there doesn't seem to be much difference between 'veneration' of the...

Interesting piece in the Guardian about differing Orthodox and western church views on Easter as redemption http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/apr/10/argument-about-greek-debt-echo-ancient-disputes-about-easter

Plotinus, have you read Francis Spufford's 'Unapologetic'? I've just finished it, having read it very quickly and enjoyably. More concerned with feelings about God than propositions about Him, but still interesting and very quotable. From the last page 'It would be nice if people were to...

As Marley puts it, 'Observing the hypocrites, mingle with the good people we meet'

I've just read a piece by the Rev Dr Peter Mullen. He says ' No competent theologians or philosophers - not even the atheist ones - have ever declared that God (if he exists) is an object in his own universe ... if he exists, then he is the maker of the universe and not an entity within it.' Do...

What in your view is the difference between philosophy and theology? Is it accurate to say that the methodology is the same, but theology is focused on 'the supernatural'? Is there in fact any such subject as 'the supernatural' - is it a useful category? I'm not talking about historical...

Well, yeah; there is an issue only if the robot/AI does seem self-aware. Maybe Blade Runner has something to say on this - if the robot dies mid-sentence it probably doesn't have a soul.

Ken Macleod's recent novel 'The night sessions', set in 2021 after the Faith Wars pogrom against all religions, features a Calvinist theologian who believes that intelligent, self-aware robots have souls. This appears to the remnant Presbyterian faithful to be a major theological problem! Maybe...

How do we get from 'Christ promised he would be with us always and would not leave us orphans' to the infallibility of specific propositions? Surely Christ could be with you always even if you had an imperfect understanding of exactly how the Immaculate Conception worked (and, by the way, if...

Thanks, Flying Pig, I'm well aware that the Gospels weren't written by the Apostles, and that the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Gospels are written in Greek. However, I also thought that those manuscripts date from several centuries after the Gospels were written, so that is quite weak...

Plotinus, have you covered the issue of what language the Four Gospels were originally written in? A classical scholar tells me that the consensus is that were originally written in Greek, but is this not somewhat problematic, given that there is no evidence that Jesus and his disciples spoke...

I think it’s great to be reminded by Jehoshua what truth by authority actually is. Reasonable theologians such as Plotinus (and I mean, theologians who establish, explain and defend positions solely by reasoned argument) do not determine religious ‘truth’; that is defined by bishops (the...

Contra Jehoshua, if apostolic succession gave bishops the power to remain in the true faith, is it not slightly surprising that the doctrines of the various 'apostolic' churches (including Eastern Orthodox, Syriac and Ethipian Coptic as well as Catholic) are so different from each other? In many...

Is Homer nodding here? Surely Pelagius gave Mary as an example of people who had lived sin-free lives?

Did Augustine believe that Mary was sinful? If she was born free of Original Sin, does that mean or imply that she did not sin?