Religion

"Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upwards" (Job 5:7).

What guarantees do we have that the texts from which modern translations of the Bible were made reflect the original?

No scene depicting the birth of Jesus is complete without angels.

The spontaneous generation of life on Earth is as likely as a whirlwind putting a Boeing 747 together using scattered spare parts in a junkyard.

The end of the world has been an enduring human preoccupation and, paradoxically, has existed since the dawn of civilisation.

On June 23, 1863, in France, a book was published that would become the literary sensation of the century. Few could have foreseen the impact it would make. This was not a romance novel, thriller, or self-help guide; it was Vie de Jésus (The Life of Jesus) by Ernest Renan. In less than four months, over 60,000 copies were circulating—a record-breaking success in...

On a number of occasions during his writing life, Nobel Prize winner and author Elie Wiesel tried to re-tell the story of a profound experience he’d had as a young boy in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. He wrote a play, a novel, and even a cantata to try to re-create his memory of this event, each of which remained unpublished. Finally,...

Over the centuries, strong but artificial tensions have been created between the Gospel of Paul (proclaimed especially by Augustine and many Protestants) and the "legalism" of the biblical writers James, Peter, Jude, and so on, which Catholic and Orthodox theologians have usually defended. What is at stake in these tensions is the authority of God's commandments and thus the duty or obligation to...

Why Western thought—and your own beliefs—owe a debt to one German monk.

Cremation has been part of the death rituals of various cultures since prehistoric times, but with the advent and spread of Christianity, cremation began to be used less and less. Most Christian denominations see it as a taboo. Let's discover why.

Was the Pax Romana really a time of peace?

"Even if you're imprisoned for life, that's still a short time. After that, Jesus will come back. All you have to do is try to make the best of the situation you're in' (Lindy Chamberlain). 

“They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting” (Psalm 94:4).

This question is asked by critics who want to point out the social, cultural and contextual nature of the Christian religion, and its relativism, presenting it as a product of society rather than of revelation.

I still remember it like it was yesterday: the brightness of the sun on my skin, the chill of the water, the crowds of cheering people. We had gathered that Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Jindabyne, a half-hour drive from Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain.