Year: 2022

Abortion

Supreme Court Dobbs Case Overruling Roe v Wade: Should Christians be Pro-Compassion? Pro-Doctors?

08/24/2022 Bruce Strom 2

There are some really heart-breaking situations involving abortion. Should abortion be allowed if the mother’s and/or the baby’s life is in danger? Should abortion be allowed in case of rape or incest? Should abortion be permitted if it is likely the mother would otherwise commit suicide? Should abortion be permitted to reduce the number of deaths caused by botched abortions by coat hangers or Lysol? […]

Biblical Interpretation

Do Christians Need To Go To Church? Which Type of Church Should You Attend?

08/19/2022 Bruce Strom 0

St Augustine’s memorable reflection on our question appear in his Confessions, which is really one of the first testimonials. St Augustine tells us the story of Victorinus, a philosopher who studies the Gospels and the Church Fathers but declines to attend services, asking “Do the walls of the Church make you a Christian?” Victorinus was a learned man, an erudite pagan Platonic philosopher, the Word of the Lord spoke directly to him from the page, perhaps he felt intellectually superior to many simple Christians he knew.

In the words of St Augustine, in his studies Victorinus became “resolute, he was seized by the fear that Christ might deny him before the holy angels if he was too faint-hearted to acknowledge Christ before men, and he felt himself guilty of a great crime in being ashamed of the sacraments instituted by the Word of God in his lowly state.” […]

Civil Rights

Slavery By Another Name, Convict Labor in the Jim Crow Deep South

08/12/2022 Bruce Strom 0

In this blog we will reflect on the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, with the subtitle, The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. This book documents both on an individual level and historically how the convict labor system worked in the Deep South. These convict labor camps were often every bit as brutal as the Siberian gulag labor camps in Russia under Stalin, in both systems many of the prisoners died from overwork, neglect, abuse, and starvation. […]

Civil Rights

WEB Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, Essays on Alexander Crummel, Black Episcopal Priest, and Sharecropping

08/10/2022 Bruce Strom 0

How does WEB Dubois start his essay on the life of Alexander Crummell? By how he confronted the temptations and doubts that faced all talented black men in a time when whites could not comprehend that a black man could actually be a true intellectual, that he could think independently of his white overlords. WEB starts his essay, “This is the history of a human heart, the tale of a black boy who” “struggled with life that he might know the world and know himself,” fulfilling the instructions written on the Temple of Delphi so many millennia ago. […]

Philosophy

Xenophon and Plato, Socratic Dialogue, Symposium, Divine and Noble Love, Part 2

08/05/2022 Bruce Strom 0

Both of these commandments are the Divine Love that Plato describes in the Symposium. Like the country song suggests, If you don’t love your neighbor, you don’t Love God. As we learned from St John of the Cross, if our love for our neighbor or our love does not increase in us our Love of God, then it is not love at all. Which means that you cannot talk about two types of love, one mortal, one divine, as do the speakers like Agathon in the Symposium, though you could talk about love and lust, love being unselfish, and lust being selfish, caring only about yourself, not caring about the well-being of your partner or friend. […]

History

Thirty Tyrants Ruling Athens After Spartan Victory in the Peloponnesian Wars

07/29/2022 Bruce Strom 0

After the end of the Peloponnesian Wars, the victorious Spartan commander Lysander insisted that, as part of the terms of peace, the Athenians set up an aristocracy under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. Although the previous tyrants in the sixth century BC were benevolent tyrants, the Thirty were Tyrants of the worst kind, dominated by the vicious Critias, a tyranny that quickly descended into an orgy of bloodshed directed first against their enemies, and then against their fellow aristocrats so they could seize their property. This misrule preceded the reestablishment of the Radical Democracy of Athens, and the events of the Thirty Tyrants cast a long shadow over Athenian history and the Platonic dialogues. […]

Bible Stories and Parables

Elisha Cures Naaman of Leprosy, Not With Mighty Deeds, But By Simply Washing in the Jordan

07/27/2022 Bruce Strom 0

Naaman, in the story, is not asked to perform mighty deeds by Elisha, as befits an ancient warrior and hero, but rather to perform the rather simple task of washing in the shallow, muddy Jordan River.

Ancient readers living in their ancient warrior culture would pick up on this contrast immediately, but modern readers often totally miss it. Which makes this one of my favorite stories, since one of the themes of this channel is that, when interpreting the Old Testament stories, you must always remember that most ancient peoples lived in a warrior culture much like that of the Iliad, where life was uncertain, when armies could appear over the horizon, slaughter all the men of military age, and enslave the women and children. […]

Greek and Roman History

Spartan Lysander Shows Mercy on Athens, Ending the Peloponnesian Wars

07/22/2022 Bruce Strom 0

Lysander was appointed as the Spartan naval commander near the end of the war. He was both an effective military leader and an able diplomat, negotiating Persian assistance from Cyrus the Younger in building and funding the fleet of triremes that would check Alcibiades and the generals who succeeded him, eventually winning the Peloponnesian Wars. We will consult Plutarch’s Life of Lysander, and also Thucydides and Xenophon, since Thucydides’ history ends soon after the Oligarchic coup, where it is picked up by Xenophon. […]