Despite the prayer of Jesus that “all may be one” Christians are divided. One such division, that between Catholics and Protestants, goes back to the sixteenth century. Martin Luther started a new religious movement by focusing on “faith alone” which he saw as the standard raised by St. Paul.  It was not through the law… Read More »

My favorite book is Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. The title characters are a brother and sister and they remember at one point Franny, the sister, decided she didn’t like Jesus because he said, “You are worth more than many sparrows.” How come, she wanted to know, were human beings more valuable than other creatures?… Read More »

The statement of St. Paul, For we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law, was hard even for his contemporaries to understand. For example, St. James in his epistle wrote: Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works (James 2:18). These are not dueling banjos right… Read More »

Probably the most famous sermon ever delivered in America was “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God” by the puritan scholar, Jonathan Edwards, delivered in 1741. God’s anger, or wrath as it is usually translated, is certainly a biblical theme. St. Paul writes, You are storing up wrath for yourself for the day of… Read More »

St. Paul opens his theological exposition in the Epistle to the Romans by arguing that even those without the Bible, with Revelation, can come to faith since they can have knowledge of God. God is evident to them… His invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in… Read More »

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an Apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God… Through him we have received the grace of apostleship, for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles. Paul’s letter to the church at Rome differs from his others. He is writing to a community… Read More »

At the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan the now elderly Private Ryan visits the cemetery where those who died saving his life fifty years earlier are buried. He wonders if he lived a life worthy of the sacrifice they made for him. He turns to his wife and says, “Tell me I’m a… Read More »

“Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” Jesus replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” This exchange between Jesus and an unnamed woman contradicts Freud’s assertion that “biology is destiny.” It was not biology, Mary’s physical motherhood, that is the source… Read More »

The prophet Joel, living in desperate times, started looking for divine intervention. Let all who dwell in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. In the Christian tradition we too wait for the second coming of Christ to heal all wounds. However, Jesus warns us in the gospel that even if God… Read More »

The prophet Malachi preached during the time after the exile. The restoration to Israel was not coming up roses and the people complained. “It is vain to serve God and what do we profit by keeping his command.” “What do we get out of it” seems to be a perennial human complaint. In the gospels… Read More »