CADRE Comments

Because some guy with a highly over-convenient interpretive scheme thinks the Rapture will occur in the next 24 hours. Surely, none of us will be left behind, right...? {wry g} All kidding aside: if we are not looking for the fulfillment of justice in the world, especially against ourselves where we deserve it, then we're doing something wrong. We're rejecting justice at all, or we're putting our own selves up as being the final standard of justice, in mere competition with other persons. So, whether we're Christian or not, whether we believe Harold Camping's prediction or not (and obviously I don't), let us take this opportunity as a reminder to be penitent of our sins, whether those we have already renounced and left behind, or those we are still being freed from, and cry for justice--to the farthest extents we can see and beyond! Because, after all, whether or not the world begins to end tomorrow, I can predict with 100% certainty that, barring an outright m...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 50, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 51.] If God is going to maintain all the various balances in His creation, while still working to His utmost to help effect our salvation from our own sins and the sins of our predecessors, then He will have to go about it within our history--not merely within the stories we tell ourselves (although He will do some work along those lines, too), but within the real natural reality we inhabit as synthetic creatures. This means He will act within a historical context, and it will be a context of His choosing: designed and guided, even 'tweaked' by Him to fit His plans; but also incorporating the choices of the people, the families, the nations, who will be a part of this particular story of history. But those people will not be sock-puppets. They will be real people; they will be fallible, even though God works with them to the best of ...

The Universe and Our Bodies No, this is not a Discovery Channel special. In my series of “Is Richard Carrier Wrong ....” posts I have focused on his arguments in support of the theory that Paul believed in a two-body “resurrection” of Jesus -- and by implication, Christians. Although this post is somewhat tangential, it fits the series. The subject is the end of the world, or rather how Paul envisioned the end times. This is relevant to his views on the resurrection because in Romans 8 Paul compares what happens to the universe to what happens to our bodies. In verses 19-21, Paul discusses the universes' desire to be free of corruption and its liberation from bondage: The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the ...