Recently, Tom Scholl, who identified himself as a pastor of churches in Ohio and New York, as well as holding positions in several ecumenical organizations, wrote a 3-part article for my local newspaper, The Macon Telegraph, entitled "What the Koran says about Christianity." I thought it would be an interesting series to read.
It could have been an apologia about the goodness of Islam, using selective passages from...
The Sale of Indulgences
A few words are in order regarding the Sale of Indulgences that Martin Luther so much decried. The clergy were authorized by the Catholic Church to absolve penitents from the guilt of his sins and from punishment in the hellish inferno of the hereafter, but it did not absolve them from doing penance on earth. We must remember that the substitution of monetary fines for punishment of a crime was a well established practice in secular European...
I apologize in advance to those here who have already assiduously learned these Medieval history lessons and find them redundant in their intellectual ordnance. If you already know about the Inquisition, the Crusades — and their historic relationship to Western civilization, please skip this post!
Here is a brief Random Note almost parenthetic note on the much talked about and maligned, but little understood Spanish Inquisition. Let us just say, the Spanish Inquisition (right) was, in...
Recently, as if on cue, I have noticed liberal jabs at religion of a peculiar nature. It is as if, from the coldness of his tomb, Karl Marx (photo, below) was inciting these little jabs by his latter day disciples to prop up yet another aspect of his failing communist (socialist) philosophy, a philosophy that refuses to die. In his Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx wrote, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” Lenin expounded, "Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression...
