Tuesday’s reading come from another popular theologian in Christian Academia, Paul Tillich, in which he touches on the place and importance of doubt in one’s faith. He critiques mysticism a bit saying, “Mysticism does not take seriously the concrete  and the doubt concerning the concrete. It plunges directly into the ground of being and meaning, and leaves the concrete, the… Read more →

Monday’s reflection comes from some excerpts offered by the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer – one of most influential and meaningful protestant theologians of the 20th century. If you don’t know Bonhoeffer, he was a German Lutheran minister who lived during WWII and was one of the strongest opponents of the Nazi party, and one of the strongest critics of the church… Read more →

Today’s AFL content was a whole chapter from Sigmund Freud’s book, The Future of an Illusion in which he describes religion as an illusion that acts to answer all of life’s hardest questions.  Here’s Peter Rollins’ write up about Freud: Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud remains as one of the giants of… Read more →

It’s commonly held, or taught that Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most famous atheists of all time; the man who coined the phrase “God is dead.” Nietzsche is responsible for that phrase, yes, and he was very influential in Western philosophy, but his quote, “God is dead” is often taken out context and misconstrued. He used the phrase as… Read more →

This week we look at one of the most famous critiques on religion in general from Karl Marx, who is famously quoted calling religion the opiate of the masses, or the opium of the people. While I have some thoughts on that – and we’ll get there – I want to engage with some other stuff he says first. He says… Read more →

Who is this Ludwig Feuerbach? He was a philosopher who lived 1804-1872 and influenced some other dudes you may have heard of; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles. He wrote a book called The Essence of Christianity in which he asserts that God is just something people have projected to be real. He says, “Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his… Read more →

Today’s ponderings come from a very famous Christian theologian, writer, and priest, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328). it’s a short reflection so I’m just going to share the whole thing with you. God is above all understanding by Meister Eckhart   God is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him. If I say, God is good, it… Read more →

So, again we have excerpt from a famous Christian mystic, this time a woman,  Marguerite Porete (1248/1250 – 1310), who was eventually deemed a heretic and was burned at the stake for not changing her views and for not removing her book from circulation. The excerpt comes from this book and, well it doesn’t seem all that heretical to me, but of… Read more →

So, Wed’s article was pretty hard to digest, I’m not gonna lie. But not because I disagreed with any of, but because it was really wordy and it very confusingly goes off in a round about way in an attempt to PROVE God’s existence. It’s a snippet of an essay from the great Anslem of Canterbury (1033-1109) and all I… Read more →

Hey guys this my reflection on the AFL content for Tuesday, Feb 27th.   This week seems to be quite interesting. So far what he’s offering is a lot of the same stuff I learned and studied at Laidlaw in History. Today Rollins just offers a handful of quotes from some famous mystics early church, and of, what are referred… Read more →