Friday, August 05, 2022

Learning The Virtues

"Let us begin [the practice of] virtue, as we have opportunity: let us portion out the virtues to ourselves, as laborers do their husbandry; in this month let us master evil-speaking, injuriousness, unjust anger; and let us lay down a law for ourselves, and say, To-day let us set this right. Again, in this month let us school ourselves in forbearance, and in another, in some other virtue: And when we have got into the habit of this virtue let us go to another, just as in the things we learn at school, guarding what is already gained, and acquiring others." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews, 24:9)

Tuesday, August 02, 2022

More About The Arguments For Pauline And Petrine Papacies

The Other Paul and Geoff Robinson just produced a good response to the video by Trent Horn and Suan Sonna on a Pauline papacy.

Since Luke 22, John 21, and Jesus' singling out of Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane have been getting a lot of attention, I want to point out how unusually weak Peter is in the gospel accounts leading up to Jesus' death. While all of the disciples are referred to as being unfaithful to Jesus in that context, and Judas is obviously the worst of them, the degree to which Peter falters is often underestimated. As I said in my initial response to the video by Trent and Suan, Peter boasted louder and fell harder. Before we even get to his triple denial of Christ:

Monday, August 01, 2022

Enfield Miscellany (Part 9)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. Go to the following links for the other parts in the series: two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes. "MG" will refer to a tape from Grosse's collection. "GP" will refer to one from Playfair's. So, MG99A refers to tape 99A in Grosse's collection, and GP20B refers to tape 20B in Playfair's.)

Some Enfield Photographs

Here's a photo of David Robertson (in the lower left) and John Hasted (in the lower right) doing some of their experimentation on metal bending (in a non-Enfield context). (I originally saw the photo on the Twitter account of the Society for Psychical Research.) Hasted advised Grosse and Playfair on how to handle the Enfield case, he visited the Hodgsons' house once, and it seems that some paranormal events occurred while he was there. (Do a Ctrl F search for "entry on John Hasted" here for a discussion of what happened during his visit.) Hasted is the one who sent Robertson to help Grosse and Playfair with their investigation of Enfield, and Robertson conducted his Enfield work under the guidance of Hasted. See the post here for some comments Robertson made to me a few years ago about his Enfield work, including the (successful) experiments he did on metal bending. Here's a segment in an Enfield documentary in which Robertson discusses Janet Hodgson's ability to bend metal without touching it.