Resurrection: Beyond Ghosts and Ghouls

MORE THAN A fact or doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth embodies personal and historical hope. While reading a variety of viewpoints on the resurrection, I have been alternatively confused, comforted, restored and unexpectedly devastated by this theme. Internally and subjectively the resurrection is an encounter with the epicenter of meaning and significance. Without a living encounter and reliance on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, spirituality amounts to little more than armchair speculation. This strikes at the root of my fears because my intellect hesitates to believe that a person whose bodily functions had ceased, whose tether to

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A Stranger To Justice

Everybody loves to see justice done on somebody else. Justice has become an off-putting term for me. I associate it with political correctness and link it to individual rights. Justice seems to me merely ideological, an excuse for group or self interest. I know this attitude of mine must be prejudiced since every moral perspective, including Aristotle and the Bible, place justice close to the starting point of its ethics. It's time that I take a more objective look at the virtue starting with the reasons for my bias against it.

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An Interview with Richard Geldard

My approach to Emerson has always been to take him seriously, to ask myself, "What if he is actually serious? What if he actually means what he says?" Too often, Emerson is read as metaphor and not as reality. In this case, he is asking why it is that we who are alive today must depend upon the past for our revelations [read spiritual truth]? The "past" in this case is embodied in institutionalized religion. Why do we have to assume that God spoke to human beings once (the burning bush, etc.) but then became silent? Why don't we

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Introduction to Origen

Last class we studied Origen, a guy who was dedicated to understanding the Christian message at its depths and contributed the first systemic theology of Christian thought. Origen lived from 185-251 in Alexandria, a city rich in learning. The wealth of his family allowed him to study, and the martyrdom of his father for his Christian faith must have encouraged his own devotion to the message. Up until this time no one had really sat down and made sense of Christian thought so one of the responses to Christianity was a mocking disdain of it as a folk religion. Origen's

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