the Historical Jesus disproved!

Italian atheist sues a priest for teaching that Jesus existed.

Check it out here.

I'm all about problematizing assumptions of the quest for the historical Jesus, but this takes the cake!

Marion & Aquinas

For anyone who may be reading this and interested, here is a paper I've recently written on Aquinas and contemporary French philosopher-theologian Jean Luc Marion.

It is basically a short review of a few key sections of Marion's God Without Being, which then responds to Marion from a perspective that is at least somewhat sympathetic with Thomas' confidence in naming God as "Being." I didn't really think the paper was anything special when I wrote it - it certainly does not address all the relevant issues or present a position definitely worth committing oneself to - but my professor liked it, and as a read of a few important thinkers, it perhaps highlights some of the problems to be grappled with in the debate on God and Being.

"Being" as the Name of God? God Without Being as a Helpful (Mis)Reading of Aquinas

For what it's worth, I'm going to try and make this site a sort of home page for whatever intellectual / artistic projects I may be engaged in. When I figure out the best way to do it, I will put some of my (very amateur) photographs on the site; but I don't really need an excuse to be on the internet more, so I'm not planning on spending a lot of time here.

If you want to read the paper, I welcome any criticisms, comments, or points of discussion.
If you want a better waste of time, go listen to Sigur Ros.

Beginning with Hopkins

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.