Hey guys, just wanted to share with you more of a statement to ponder. Maybe you’ll agree with it, maybe you wont. Perhaps you will in part. I’m just going to throw it out there for the sake of discussion and wonderment. I have gathered this from some recent AFL sessions and have boiled it down to this, followed by… Read more →

Padraig O Tauma is an Irish poet and theologian. I’ve only just come across him through AFL and I’m captivated by his work so far, so I thought instead of trying to break down and blog about a song he wrote that Peter Rollins used for today’s content (below is a link to a youtube video. It’s super good, with… Read more →

Rollins talks about Seneca and his critique on the traditional notion of God. Seneca basically says that a child is better than God (in the traditional sense of the Religious notion of God). He says that because God can’t lose, or be defeated, or suffer, God actually lacks in a way. This is the critique: A child falls and gets… Read more →

The reading for Thursday, 22 March I found very pleasing to read. It comes from a notable post-modern theologian and philosopher, John Caputo, and his book On Religion. The excerpt is titled “Religion is for Lovers.” There’s not much really for me to review or critique in this excerpt. Just a few nice quotes I’ll share with you. The aim of… Read more →

So, most of you will know who C.S. Lewis is. He’s an author and theologian and one of the greatest Christian devotional writers of 20th century. Rollins takes one of Lewis’ later in life writings – it is actually his first and only short story, which didn’t get published until 20 years after his death – a short story called Light.… Read more →

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 →