Category: Columns

On
Kevin Wondrash

Why Jesus is God: Debunking skeptics

It’s Easter time, and that means that the mainstream media and publishing houses can be counted upon to issue debunking attacks on orthodox Christianity.

The best-publicized of these is Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God. Once a devout Bible-believing evangelical Christian, trained at Wheaton College, the alma mater of Billy Graham, Ehrman “saw the light” and became an agnostic scholar and is on a mission to undermine the fundamental assumptions of Christianity.

Jesus just an ‘itinerant preacher’

In this most recent tome, Ehrman lays out what is actually a very old thesis, going back at least to the 18th century and repeated ad nauseam in skeptical circles ever since, namely, that Jesus was a simple itinerant preacher who never claimed to be divine and whose “resurrection” was in fact an invention of his disciples who experienced hallucinations of their master after his death.

Ehrman, like so many of his skeptical colleagues across the centuries, presents this thesis as though he has made a brilliant discovery. But basically, it’s the same old story.

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Jean Mueller

Visiting agency services

Q I am the only family member involved in my mother’s care.

She lives in an apartment and has a service agency visiting daily to help her get up, prepare meals, and to be there for companionship.

Since my mother is not receiving much of a monthly income, I pay for this service. I have repeatedly asked this agency to keep me informed of their activities. It seems all they are interested in is sending me the monthly bill.

I hear about things second hand or well after the event has occurred. I am talking about missed visits as well as observations the staff has about my mother and her overall health and well being. Since I pay for her care, shouldn’t I be able to get all the details? (A concerned son in Columbus).

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Sr. Ruth Battaglia, CSA

The Pascal Mystery: Death evolving into life

Sr. Ruth Battaglia, CSA

After successful treatment for breast cancer 16 years ago, it returned with a vengeance — 15 small brain tumors and a lung tumor. This time it was stage four cancer.

The diagnosis stunned everyone. The news of Patty Kelbel’s condition spread quickly, especially among the Christian Experience Weekend (CEW) community. CEW is an intense retreat experience, directed mostly by laity, that has been a joint venture between the parishes of St. Ann in Stoughton and Holy Mother of Consolation (HMC) in Oregon for a number of years.

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George Weigel

Easter with Flannery O’Connor

This coming August 3 will mark the golden anniversary of Flannery O’Connor’s “Passover,” to adopt the biblical image John Paul II used to describe the Christian journey through death to eternal life.

In the 50 years since lupus erythematosus claimed her at age 39, O’Connor’s literary genius has been widely celebrated.

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Sr. Margie Lavonis

Living the paschal mystery with hope

Cutting Edge by Sr. Margie Lavonis

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ and is the most important feast of the Church.

At Easter we renew our faith and welcome new members into the Church.

It is the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil) that is the high point of the Church year.

Paschal mystery

Easter is the fulfillment of the paschal mystery — the suffering, death, and rising of Jesus. This mystery is not a one-time historical event. As members of the body of Christ, we live this mystery throughout our lives.

We entered the paschal mystery at baptism. We were baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. This means that we share in Christ’s suffering, death, and rising throughout our lives.

The paschal mystery assures us that the “pain and dying” we experience in our daily lives ultimately leads to resurrection.

It is our Christian belief that God can and does bring good out of evil and suffering.

Jesus’ life is the greatest example of this. God did not leave Jesus in his pain. God raised him from the dead. Death had no power over him.

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Fr. Robert Barron

The ‘zealot’ versus the real Jesus

When I saw that Reza Aslan’s portrait of Jesus, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, had risen to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, I must confess, I was both disappointed and puzzled.

For the reductionistic and debunking approach that Aslan employs has been tried by dozens of commentators for at least the past 300 years, and the debunkers have been themselves debunked over and over again by serious scholars of the historical Jesus.

Aslan’s portrayal of the ‘zealot’

The Jesus that Aslan wants to present is the “zealot,” the Jewish insurrectionist intent upon challenging the Temple establishment in Jerusalem and the Roman military power that dominated Israel.

His principle justification for this reading is that religiously motivated revolutionaries were indeed thick on the ground in the Palestine of Jesus’ time; that Jesus claimed to be ushering in a new Kingdom of God; and that he ended up dying the death typically meted out to rabble-rousers who posed a threat to Roman authority.

 

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Kevin Wondrash

Seeing Easter through children’s eyes

Seeing Easter through children’s eyes can open windows of wonder and love that we busy adults sometimes keep closed.

A mother experienced this when she overheard Danny, her five-year-old son, talk with his friend Jeremy whose father recently died.

“Where did your dad go when he died?” asked Danny.

“My mom said that he went to Heaven,” replied Jeremy.

“What’s Heaven?” asked Danny.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Noah: A post-modern midrash

Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic re-telling of the story of Noah has certainly stirred people up.

While quite a few reviewers, both religious and non-religious, have given the film high marks, many Christians, both Evangelical and Catholic, have registered a far less than enthusiastic reaction.

One prominent Catholic blogger and movie reviewer opined that Noah is “embarrassingly awful” and “the stupidest film in years.” Most of the religious critics have complained that the film plays fast and loose with the Genesis account, adding all sorts of distracting and fantastic elements to the well-known story. In the midst of all of this — and no doubt in part because of it — Noah took in $44 million on its opening weekend.

Modern cinematic midrash

Noah is best interpreted, I think, as a modern cinematic midrash on the Biblical tale. The midrashim — extremely popular in ancient Israel — were imaginative elaborations of the often spare Scriptural narratives. They typically explored the psychological motivations of the major players in the stories and added creative plot lines, new characters, etc.

 

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