Archive for 2009
From Babylon to Bethlehem – Return from Exile
The Jewish canon ends the Hebrew Scriptures after the return from the Babylonian Exile. While the canon continues for Christians, there is not much Scripture for the 500 years between the return from Babylon and the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. There are many events that occurred in this time, and placing them into a…
Read MoreWonder’s Role in Faith
This was recorded at the 2009 Rochester Chesterton Society Conference. It is very easy to allow ourselves to experience wonder on a purely intellectual basis, which misses the point, since wonder is too powerful to be experienced merely through the intellect. We should wonder at some of the amazing things written in the Scriptures and…
Read MoreTom Howard on Wonder
This was recorded at the 2009 Rochester Chesterton Society Conference. As we grow older, we lose our grasp on a sense of wonder in the world. Wonder is modulated by time and repetition, but there are three cases unaffected by time: youth, art and eternity, and it is by studying these three cases where we…
Read MoreLife on the Rock
St. Irenaeus Ministries was invited to be a guest on the Life on the Rock program on EWTN on September 4, 2008. This is a recording of that portion of the program. St. Irenaeus Ministries is a Rochester, NY based apostolate promoting orthodox Catholic faith named after St. Irenaeus, an early Christian bishop and writer…
Read MoreChristian Apocalyptic – The Modern Age
In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus tells us that there will be wars and rumors of wars that many will wrongly think to be the coming of the end. This suggests that the end will be many years from the time of the Discourse, and thus it is appropriate to focus our attention on how the…
Read MoreChristian Apocalyptic – The Early Church
The early Church viewed the apocalyptic writings as vital to the faith. Early Christians saw the end times as imminent, though not necessarily coming soon, as suggested by the exhortation to preach the Gospel to all the nations. In the same way, faulty wiring might pose an imminent danger, but it might not actually cause…
Read MoreChristian Apocalyptic – Examples
Continuing the discussion of Christian Apocalyptic literature, we read excerpts from Daniel, who prophesies the coming of the Christ, the pseudepigraphal Enoch, which expands on the Sons of God mentioned in the book of Genesis. The Olivet Discourse is another example, where Jesus expounds on the last days, as a capstone to a series of…
Read MoreChristian Apocalyptic – Understanding Apocalyptic Literature
This is a direct continuation of the series on 2 Peter and Jude. Apocalyptic literature refers to writings that reveal the hidden things of God. It is a new term, not one that apocalyptic writers applied to themselves, and there is some debate as to which works are apocalyptic and which are merely prophetic. It…
Read MoreJude – Lusts, Errors, and Shared Themes
In verses 6 and 7, Jude identifies the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as unnatural lust, and not just in-hospitality. Although the ancient world had no real equivalent to the modern conception of sexual preference, it cannot be said that the Bible has no preference regarding sexuality. Throughout the passage here and later on in…
Read MoreJude – Introduction, False Teachers
This short lesson on Jude and the one that follows it are a direct continuation of the series on 2nd Peter. The epistle of Jude is very short, but Jude does not shy away from controversy. Jude is the English translation of the Greek name Judas, which ultimately derives from the Hebrew word Judah. We…
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