Blog Search Results

Lent Day 34: Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XXIII

Day Thirty-four: St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XXIII Who: Bishop of Jerusalem and Doctor of the church, born about 315; died probably 18 March, 386. Little is known of his life, except from his younger contemporaries, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Rufinus, as well as from the fifth-century historians, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret. What: Each of the lectures deal with a different topic to teach converts the mysteries of the church, particularly: rites of the renunciation of Satan and his works, of anointing with oil, of baptism, of anointing with the holy chrism, and of partaking of the body and blood of Christ. Why: Cyril delivered to ne...

New Covenant Israel is no longer physical (nor literal)!

If you've read my previous two articles on Israel, then this will probably seem familiar. This is a combination of the previous two combined into one study, focussing more on who Israel is under the New Covenant rather than the geopolitical/war situation of the Middle East. So Who is Israel? No doubt what I'm about to say will cause some knee-jerk reactions, but to properly understand the New Covenant, we need to address the issue of who is Israel, Biblically speaking? Yes, there is a modern nation known as "Israel" now since 1948, but is that the same Israel of the Bible? The same Israel to whom God made his promises? If so, does that mean...

Patristics.info has launched!

...tics (the early church fathers). Features and functionality Much of the site is ready to go in terms of functionality and resources etc for the time being. I’m still working on adding more early church texts to the site, but this takes a lot of time as I need to transcribe them from unformatted text into a nicer format for reading, plus inserting all of the footnotes as well (I’m currently half way through 1 Clement now). While I mention the footnotes, I’ve created a feature similar to Wikipedia where if you hover on a footnote number, it will display a popup with the footnote text in it hopefully making it simpler to read the Patristic text and quickly...

Did a Roman Catholic priest perform 'invalid' baptisms for years?

...You may have seen in the news lately, a Roman Catholic priest in Arizona, USA, has apparently performed “invalid” baptism for years, well over a decade, even. Due to this, now thousands of people are stressing about whether their baptism counted or if they need to be re-baptised due to the error by Rev. Andres Arango! This has caused concern over the other sacraments these people have partaken in since their baptism, such as the Eucharist, and whether they should have even been allowed it. The Diocese of Phoenix is trying to identify people baptised by Arango so that they can track them down for re-baptism (and possibly, re-confirmation and whatever other r...

Jesus Like You've Never Seen Before - Discoveries from early Christian Art

...I recently made a video on TikTok about what Jesus looks like in religious art and icons across various cultures, showing that people see Jesus as relatable to them and their people groups, and thus often depict Jesus looking the same as their own race. There was a comment made claiming that the Christ Pantocrator icon is exactly what Jesus looked like, and thus all others are wrong. If you’re wondering about the icon name, Pantocrator (Greek: Παντοκράτωρ) literally means “ruler of all”, but usually gets translated as “Almighty” or “all-powerful”. The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator,6th-century encaustic icon fromSaint Catheri...

26 Differences Between Muhammad and Jesus

...If you’ve ever spent any time online, either in random Facebook comment threads or reading the news, I’m sure you’ve come across the claim that Islam and Christianity are basically the same and that “we all worship the same God”, getting lumped together as an “Abrahamic religion” along with Judaism. Muslims claim Islam “is the completed final version of the previous messages originally revealed to Moses and Jesus” which came to “correct the deviations of Christianity”, which had apparently become corrupt by the seventh century when Muhammad came along. But for something which is meant to come from the same God at its core, it would sugges...