Nancy Evans Bush seems to be the leading researcher today in the field of negative near-death experiences (NDEs). She's had a negative experience herself. She recently started a blog on the subject of negative NDEs. I don't agree with all of her analysis, but she's highly knowledgeable about the topic, and she makes a lot of significant points. Here are some of her comments in a book published a couple of years ago:
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Rapture blues
I must say I’m pretty bummed out that the rapture didn’t happen on Saturday, as scheduled. Here I was hoping to be left behind. I figured the rapture would free up some high-end real estate. All those instantaneously deserted seaside villas. I was packed and ready to move into the Breakers. Not to mention vintage muscle cars collecting dust in abandoned garages. All free for the taking. Sigh!
For he must reign
Dan 7:9-14
9"As I looked,
thrones were placed,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat;
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames;
its wheels were burning fire.
10 A stream of fire issued
and came out from before him;
a thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;
the court sat in judgment,
and the books were opened.
11"I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. 12As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.
13"I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
14 And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
Mt 21:33-39
33 "Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. 34When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. 35 And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. 37Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 38But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.' 39And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Mt 25:31-33
31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
1 Cor 15:24-28
24Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "all things are put in subjection," it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
Anti-Trinitarians are fond of quoting 1 Cor 15:24-28 to disprove the deity of Christ. But one problem with this appeal is their failure to appreciate the way in which 1 Cor 15:24-28 is part of a stock narrative.
We can see this more clearly if we step back from 1 Cor 15:24-28 and compare it to similar passages in Scripture. What we have here is a conventional type-scene.
For more on this category, cf. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (Basic Books, 2011, revised and updated), chap. 3.
This involves the archetypal character (or character type) of a king, who’s the father of the crown prince. It also involves a conventional plot motif in which the royal son, acting on his father’s behalf father, in his father’s stead, comes in the name and authority of his father to restore his father’s rightful claim to the kingdom. By implication, if the son is successful in his quest, the kingdom will revert to his father’s dominion, in whose interests the son was acting. Of course, as heir apparent, the son also has a stake in restoring the kingdom to its rightful claimant. That’s the natural narrative cycle for this particular type-scene.
The characters stand for God the Father and God the Son, but this is depicted in picturesque, anthropomorphic terms. A warrior-king who defeats usurpers on the field of battle.
Because 1 Cor 15:24-28 belongs to a different genre, it omits some of the narrative imagery we find in similar passages, but it belongs to the same type-scene, with the implicit literary tropes. Because it’s so conventional, not every occurrence or allusion to the type-scene will reproduce the full details. For the audience is already familiar with the back-story.
Anti-Trinitarians who appeal to 1 Cor 15:24-28 fail to make due allowance for the stylized storytelling formulae (e.g. father/son, king/prince; narrative arc). That's the way this kind of story is supposed to end.
But we should bring to 1 Cor 15:24-28 the same sensitivity to theological models and metaphors that we bring to Dan 7:9-14 and Mt 21:33-39. Don’t fuse the parabolic level with the literal counterparts. In addition, this type-scene must be supplemented by other eschatological type-scenes in Scripture to see the complete picture.
Historical Criticism, Act I: Jesus and the New Testament
In 1787, the year that the first states ratified the U.S. Constitution, Johan Philipp Gabler (1753-1826) “made a most far reaching contribution” to the development of the discipline of “historical criticism” of the Bible, in a lecture at the University of Altdorf, when he provided a definition that separated the text of Scripture from its divine teaching. Gabler noted, “Biblical theology possesses a historical character, transmitting what the sacred writers thought about divine matters; dogmatic theology, on the contrary, possesses a didactic character, teaching what a particular theologian philosophizes about divine matters in accordance to his ability, time, age, place, sect or school, and other similar things” (Gerhard Hasel, “New Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate,” Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, © 1978, pgs. 22-23). According to Gabler, here, divine inspiration of the texts was to be separated from the text itself.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Good-bye to God
I don’t watch Supernatural very often. It was never great drama. For the most part pure entertainment. But it started going downhill after Eric Kripke decided to introduce the war-in-heaven plotline.
The show’s theology embodies finite godism. There’s not much difference between angels and demons. “Heaven” is a cross between a broken, blended family and a cutthroat firm where job promotion involves ambitious, backstabbing executives who betray one another to please the boss. Imagine Gregory Boyd as a screenwriter, and you get the general idea.
It soon became so campy that I only tune in now and then to sample the latest downturn. But it does unintentionally illustrate a neglected truth.
In Supernatural, there is no Christian God. There’s no assurance that in the long run the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose.
As a result, everyone is insecure. You don’t know who you can trust. Since no one is safe, even your best friend might turn on you at any moment to get ahead or save his skin. Loyalties are fickle. The players keep changing sides.
So you have Castiel, an angel who wants to do the right thing, but he’s thwarted by hopeless moral dilemmas. He has to compromise. Has to be ruthless. Has to cut a deal with the devil.
And when you think about it, this is, unwittingly, a parable of atheism. A godless world is a friendless world. A Machiavellian world. A world where everyone is always at risk. A world where everyone is dangerous to everyone else.
In a risky random world, where everyone is threatened, where there’s no certainly–or even probability–that virtue will be rewarded or vice be punished, that’s a fundamentally friendless world. In a ruthless world, only the ruthless survive or prosper.
That’s why our pagan forebears practiced witchcraft and divination. It wasn’t superstition. It was fear. Anxiety.
And secular science tells the same story–the story of a pitiless world, indifferent to human existence. Where a stray asteroid may suddenly extinguish life as we know it.
Like movies in which the villain arranges for friends to be in a situation where there’s not enough to go around. Not enough food, or water. No enough room in the boat. In that situation, friends turn on one another.
Like totalitarian regimes where wives spy on husbands while husbands spy on wives. Where, at any time, or any place, the authorities may seize you for unspecified crimes, due to the anonymous tip of your coworker. Where everyone is on the take. Where every man has his price, or has a price on his head. Like banana republics where nepotism, assassination, and bribery are the common currency.
2060
Okay. Looks like we dodged a bullet today. It was a close call. But don’t let this near miss make you too complacent. For Judgment Day is just around the corner:
http://www.isaac-newton.org/update.html
Voodoo dolls
Steve has replied to my previous post (here; apparently I’m now only “siding with the enemy” instead of “sleeping with the enemy” – phew!), and a number of interesting things come to light, though I’m not sure why Steve doesn’t just state them himself. That is, he doesn’t seem to be saying what he really wants to say: that (1) it was an unwise decision for me to be asked to blog at AOmin.org, and (2) that RealApologetics.org should be shut down until I meet up to Steve’s standards of apologetic ministry. Certainly that is his position – and if not, he is obviously free to publicly deny the above and explain what he really believes is the case. Until then, I think everyone should be wondering, for a well-known blogger who gives advice on how to do apologetics, why didn’t he just say so?
I’m afraid that Jamin suffers from acute Armstrong-syndrome. Patients with this malady place themselves squarely at the center of each and every issue. It’s all about them, all the time.
Jamin evidently needs to have his persecution-complex validated on a regularly basis. He tries to bait critics into feeding his persecution-complex, the better to justify his overwrought feelings of cosmic persecution. Nothing is sadder than a neglected persecution-complex
Enough sowing seeds of doubt against another fellow Christian…
Back to Jamin’s double standard.
...and making assertions with unstated conclusions. Just be honest and say what you believe (and saying my citation of a book “ought to alert one to his presuppositions” is anything but helpful for readers, as it hardly begins to explain why that is the case, or what “presuppositions” they are, or why they are wrong, why any of these things are significant, etc.).
i) I trust that most readers of Triablogue are capable of drawing their own conclusions. I’m sorry that Jamin can’t give his own readers that much credit.
ii) Is it really so hard to follow the trail of breadcrumbs?
If Burge is ordained in the PC-USA, that tells you something about his theological sympathies, or tolerance for liberal theology. If Burge is a regular contributor to Sojourners, that tells you something about his (leftwing) political sympathies. Those are presuppositions that he brings to his analysis of the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Indeed, publicly calling on the people of God to be on the “alert” for the presuppositions of a certain Christian apologist is a serious charge, and whether anyone likes it or not, it cannot just be brushed aside (though I’d sometimes like to!).
What I actually said was:
The fact that Burge is a PC-USA minister, along with the further fact that he’s a contributor to Jim Wallis’s leftwing rag Sojourners, ought to alert one to his presuppositions.
What accounts for the fact that Jamin takes a statement about Burge, and instantly transfers it to himself? Is Jamin a PC-USA minister? Is Jamin a contributor to Sojourners?
Does Jamin have such a man-crush on Burge that he treats any attack on Burge as an attack on Jamin? Is Jamin to Burge what Chris Crocker is to Britney Spears?
In addition to his persecution complex, Jamin apparently suffers from a guilt-complex. If I say something negative about Gary Burge, Jamin takes it personally. What is this? Sympathetic magic? Like stabbing a voodoo doll?
But let’s get into the substantive issues that have at least some bearing on Christian theology, since that’s where I would really want to go (and hopefully Steve is as well…).
If that’s where he really wanted to go all along, why not skip the melodrama cut straight to the substantive issues?
Now I am really confused. Is Steve actually saying that these historical events just didn’t happen?
i) I didn’t take a position on that one way or the other. Rather, as I specified, the question is whether he should be getting his information from a guy like Burge.
What about the allegation?
…Israel is guilty of committing countless war atrocities that qualify and surpass the covenant obligations in Scripture. Mass murder. Torturing men ages 14-60s. Unjust use of water supply and the abusive treatment of aliens and foreigners. The creation of millions of refugees. And so on and so forth.
ii) Jamin is asking me whether I think “and so on and so forth” just didn’t happen. But I’m afraid it’s hard for me to evaluate the historicity of “so on and so forth.” Seems a wee bit vague, if you ask me.
Just for starters, how do I differentiate between “so on” historical events and “so forth” historical events?
iii) “Mass murder”? What does that refer to? You mean, like the fake Jennie massacre?
iv) “Torture?” Of course, that word is bandied about by far left opponents of counterterrorism. For some, playing “I Love You by Barney the Purple Dinosaur” constitutes torture:
I love you, you love me - we're a happy family. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you. Won't you say you love me too?
Yep. If that’s not a war crime, I don’t know what is.
v) “Millions” of refugees? Shouldn’t we be suspicious of a rubbery statistic like that? Does that refer to the dislocation triggered by the 1948 war? If so, were there “millions” of “Palestinians” living on the West Bank in 1948?
Isn’t a hyperbolic figure like that clearly anachronistic? Taking current population levels, then backdating that figure to 1948?
Was Yasser Arafat a “refugee”? Wasn’t he born in Egypt?
vii) “Unjust use of water supply”? Isn’t the Jordan River the main source of fresh water in the region? If anyone could manipulate the water supply, wouldn’t that be Arab nations (i.e. Lebanon, Jordan, Syria) upstream from Israel?
viii) Due to international pressure, Israel has to exercise absurd self-restraint in dealing with her enemies. The only thing that keeps Israel from facing economic sanctions is an American veto on the UN Security Council. Even so, Israel still faces the threat of divestment campaigns. Indeed, Burge’s denomination is a case in point.
Ironically, this invites cloak-n-dagger tactics in a way that all-out war would avoid.
I don’t believe any human being (or nation for that matter) should support – either by word or deed – any secular nation regardless of what it has done, is doing, and intends to do.
You’re entitled to your Pollyannaish blather, but the US has a prefect right to support nations that support us in a military alliance against a common enemy. The president of the US has a sworn duty to defend the homeland.
It’s also simplistic to describe Israel as a “secular nation.” Aside from the sizable number of observant Jews in Israel, let’s not demean the leavening presence of Messianic Jews in Israel.
I think it would be a good idea for James White to do another show with Michael Brown, only this time he can ask Dr. Brown to discuss the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Turning back the clock
Reuters
Meanwhile, Illinois Indians broke into Obama’s private Kenwood residence, as they began to retake Chicago from the foreign occupation force.
On the heels of Pres. Obama’s demand that Israel return to 1967 borders, members of the Nacotchtank tribe stormed the White House today, ousting the President, First Lady, and other squatters on their homeland.
Siding with the enemy
Steve Hays at Triablogue doesn’t seem to like me. I don’t know why, and I wish that wasn’t the case. But that’s just the way things are.
For some odd reason, Jamin labors under the illusion that criticism is a one-way street. He imagines that he should be free to publicly criticize other positions and named opponents, but be immune to return fire.
But if you can’t take blowback, don’t be a Christian apologist. Blowback comes with the territory.
It seems to have begun when I started blogging a lot at AOMin.org. But things were especially tense after a misunderstanding between Paul Manata and a post I wrote on logic (see here). Manata had wrote a rather absurd satire piece in response (here), ridiculing me as “agent 00777 of the Christian Insularity Agency (CIA),” and so forth. Steve Hays linked to it (here) with no issue (and what seems to be excitement, saying “Click here for the juicy details!”).
As I recall, Manata did a satirical post. If Jamin is that hypersensitive about satire, he’s in the wrong profession. Apologetics is not for hemophiliacs. If you bleed on contact, consider a career change.
In fact, he even commented on it himself, furthering skepticism about my character
Based on what I’ve been told about his conduct from trusted, firsthand sources.
But now Steve stoops to a new low in trying to solidify his “pattern” theory. Today he wrote an entire blog post called “Sleeping with the Enemy” (here) for (what appears) no other reason than to make me look bad through association.
Let’s differentiate culpable from inculpable associations:
i) If I have a kid brother who’s a skinhead, that doesn’t make me a racist. To say I’m a racist merely because my kid brother is skinhead would be fallacious guilt-by-association.
If, on the other hand, I belong to the KKK, then my association is culpable. It’s not just an adventitious association. Rather, my affiliation carries with it the presumption that I share the outlook of the KKK.
ii) Jamin isn’t merely “associated” with Burge, in some purely incidental way, because he happened to reference a book of his.
No, Jamin agrees with Burge. For instance:
…Israel is guilty of committing countless war atrocities that qualify and surpass the covenant obligations in Scripture. Mass murder. Torturing men ages 14-60s. Unjust use of water supply and the abusive treatment of aliens and foreigners. The creation of millions of refugees. And so on and so forth.[14]
[14] See chapter 2-3 of Burge, Whose Land, Whose Promise?
Notice how he defaults to Burge as an unquestioned authority, to validate Jamin’s incendiary allegations.
Links are then given, and that’s it for the post. One is simply left wondering: why was this written, and why now?
Why was it written? Didn’t I already give my reasons? “The fact that Burge is a PC-USA minister, along with the further fact that he’s a contributor to Jim Wallis’s leftwing rag Sojourners, ought to alert one to his presuppositions. From what I’ve read by him and about him, Burge is basically a shill for Hamas. Here are some reviews of his book which give the other side of the argument.”
Isn’t that self-explanatory?
I have three questions that might help bring clarity. Steve, could you please answer for your readers and mine, and everyone else who may want to know:
Who is the one “sleeping with the enemy” and who is the “enemy” in the title of your blog post, and why did you see those terms as fitting?
i) Burge is the immediate target, but to the degree that Jamin is rubberstamping Burge, then he’s complicit, too.
ii) Because we’re in a counteroffensive against global jihad and creeping dhimmitude. In a conflict of that nature, it’s crucial to know the difference between your allies and your enemies. Burge is siding with the enemy.
How were you hoping your readers would respond to your particular post, in thought and/or action?
By considering Burge’s affiliations and reading the reviews, to alert them to Burge’s agenda.
Did you read Gary Burge’s book Whose Land, Whose Promise? prior to when you wrote your post essentially criticizing the book, and if not, are you willing to read it and discuss the arguments he raises? (I certainly am.)
i) Jamin is recasting the point of the post. That’s a red herring. As I pointed out, the question at issue are the political (contributor to Sojourners) and theological (PC-USA minister) presuppositions which Burge brings to his book. And you don’t have to read his book to know that, for his book is not the only thing he’s written on the subject. For instance:
ii) And I don’t need to read Burge to know about the nature of the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Colbert Bumps Into “Free Political Speech” Laws
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703421204576329642637361406.html
“Campaign-finance laws are so complicated that few can navigate them successfully and speak during elections—which is what the First Amendment is supposed to protect. As the Supreme Court noted in Citizens United, federal laws have created "71 distinct entities" that "are subject to different rules for 33 different types of political speech." The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations and thousands of pages of explanations and opinions on what the laws mean. "Legalese" doesn't begin to describe this mess.”
“Campaign-finance laws are so complicated that few can navigate them successfully and speak during elections—which is what the First Amendment is supposed to protect. As the Supreme Court noted in Citizens United, federal laws have created "71 distinct entities" that "are subject to different rules for 33 different types of political speech." The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations and thousands of pages of explanations and opinions on what the laws mean. "Legalese" doesn't begin to describe this mess.”
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Sleeping with the enemy
Last June, Jamin Hubner, who’s a contributor to Alpha and Omega Ministries, did a post on his own blog (“A Brief History of Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology”) in which, among other things, I see him plugging Gary Burge’s tendentiously entitled Whose Land? Whose Promise?: What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians.
But the fact that Burge is a PC-USA minister, along with the further fact that he’s a contributor to Jim Wallis’s leftwing rag Sojourners, ought to alert one to his presuppositions. From what I’ve read by him and about him, Burge is basically a shill for Hamas.
Here are some reviews of his book which give the other side of the argument:
Thor review
Caesar Worship and Christian Art
After Augustus Caesar (Emperor from 31 B.C. to 14 A. D.), Tiberius, his step-son, reigned from A.D.14 37, and then Gaius Caligula (A.D. 37 41) was the grandson of Tiberius’s brother Drusus. Everett Ferguson “Backgrounds of Early Christianity,” Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, © 1987, 1993, 2003) says, “he foolishly depleted the treasury and became convinced of his divinity, demanding divine honors.”
Ferguson elsewhere goes on to note theories for the beginnings of “Christian art”:
Henry Chadwick provides an account of Epiphanius’s resistance to this practice:
His reign was marked by conflict with the Jews. When his friend Agrippa I was returning from Rome to take possession of the kingdom assigned to him in northeast Palestine, he stopped in Alexandria. This became the occasion of an anti-Jewish riot in the city: an idiot was parated through the city in royal robes to mock Agrippa, statues of Gaius were set up in the synagogues, and there was burning and pillaging in the Jewish sections of the city. . . . Gaius was a personal friend of Agrippa’s, but he had no appreciation for Jewish religion and customs. When the Jews in Jamnia tore down an altar erected to him in A.D. 40, he ordered a statue of himself set up in the temple in Jerusalem (pg. 32).This event is reported by three ancient historians, (Josephus, Philo, and Tacitus.) The statue was never actually placed there. Ferguson reports that “Petronius, the legate in Syria, knew what this would mean to Jewish sensibilities and successfully stalled on the order.” But the order had been given; such was the emperor’s desire to show his own divinity.
Ferguson elsewhere goes on to note theories for the beginnings of “Christian art”:
Certainly in style and technique, Christian art borrowed from both classical and non-classical influences on late antique art. As a specific context for the beginnings of Christian art, since pagans decorated their tombs, Christians did too. And, in fact, our earliest identifiable examples of Christian art come from the catacombs, the underground burial chambers, around Rome. The catacombs were not hiding places in times of persecution (the authorities knew of their existence), nor were they normally places of assembly, although funerary meals in memory of the deceased were held there. The rooms (cubicula and their entrances were sometimes decorated with small paintings, and the stone slabs covering the burial niches (loculi) in the galleries were sometimes chiseled with inscriptions or simple pictures. The paintings were often decorative scenes of plants and birds, but many depicted events from the Old or New Testaments. Most popular from the Old Testament was the story of Jonah; from the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus. Symbolic representations were even more common, and the symbolic nature of early Christian art is often noted.Given the urge of the Roman emperors to enshrine themselves in statues, and also the developing Christian use of art (especially in funerary situations), Ferguson goes on to note some connections:
Particularly frequent in Christian art as a whole, as well as in the catacombs, were the pictures of the Good Shepherd (besides its biblical precedents, it was an image associated with philanthropy) and a figure in the posture of prayer with arms extended and hands uplifted (orans—a symbol of piety). Occasionally Christian ceremonies are depicted, such as baptism and meal scenes, of which the feeding miracles of the Gospels, the Last Supper, the eucharist, the agape [meal], the funerary meals are now indistinguishable. Because of the difficulty of working underground with limited light from small lamps or torches, the pictures for the most part employ a limited range of colors and a minimum of detail, more alluding to the scene than describing it.
From the latter half of the third century there began to appear among Christians evidence of a more expensive form of burial, sarcophagi (stone coffins for depositing the bodies of the deceased) with sculptured scenes. The same repertoire of biblical and symbolic subjects continued to be employed, the selection and forms of which was often governed by the existence of an image available from Greco-Roman art. Free standing, three-dimensional sculpture is rather rare in Christian art for many centuries, but from the third century there do survive small images of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd and as a teacher, as well as images from the Jonah cycle (“Church History, Volume One, From Christ to Pre-Reformation,” Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 169 171).
Christian art had arisen by the beginning of the third century. This was nearly simultaneous with the first evidence of Jewish pictorial art, so the theory that Christianity inherited a tradition of religious iconography from the Hellenized synagogues lacks evidence.It should be noted that this notion that “honor” given to images passes through to the person or reality behind them was later picked up by John of Damascus, the Council of Nicea II (A.D. 787) and also Aquinas. But here you have the source for it.
The earliest distinctive Christian art represented scenes from the Bible. It was decorative, but some have claimed that it helped to teach. The funerary art may further have served to enhance the sacred character of the monuments.
Marks of devotion to pictures seemingly evolved from the marks of respect paid to official portraits of reigning emperors during the late empire. These portraits were considered a substitute for the emperor’s presence, so the same signs of respect due the emperor were shown to his pictures: draperies to set them off, prostration before them, burning of incense and lighting of candles beside them, carrying them in solemn processions. The first Christian images known to have ben surrounded with these marks of cult were portraits of persons venerated as holy while they were still alive. A cult of images is first attested during the fifth century and became suddenly popular during the last half of the sixth and seventh century. The reserve that church leaders such as Epiphanius and Augustine had shown toward the first images at the end of the fourth century had now disappeared (pgs. 336-337).
Henry Chadwick provides an account of Epiphanius’s resistance to this practice:
Epiphanius of Salamis (315 403) … was horrified to find in Palestine a curtain in a church porch with a picture of Christ or some saint. He tore it down and lodged a vehement protest with the bishop of Jerusalem. Though Epiphanius did all he could to prevent the introduction of pictures of churches, he was fighting a losing battle (The Early Church, first published in Pelican Books, ©1967, Reprinted in London: Penguin Books, LTD., revised edition ©1993, pg. 281).
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Top Growth, Declining Industries, Next Five Years
For any of you currently considering job or career possibilities:http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/03/28/top-10-dying-industries/
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/05/16/top-10-thriving-industries/
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