Arc Two – Completing the Reversal
Friday we looked at how Thecla began her journey from the standard Roman passive feminity on through standard Roman active masculinity toward the early Christian ideal of nongendered activity. Today, we will look at the second arc of the Acts of Thecla and see how she completes her journey.
The second arc begins in much the [...]
Arc One – Critiquing Roman Gender Roles
Wednesday, we looked at the an overview of the rhetorical effect of the Acts of Thecla to better understand how it functioned in the early Christian mind. Today, we will examine the first arc of gender criticism in detail in the Acts of Thecla.
The narrative structure of the Acts of Thecla consists of two four-part [...]
A Formal Definition of Postmodernism
Currently, I am reading more of Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. In part 4 of his book, Plantinga considers possible defeaters to basic Christian beliefs, including historical criticism, postmodernism, pluarism, and atheological arguments concerning suffering and evil. (The formal definition of a defeater is rather abstruse, but a rough-and-ready definition for a defeater [...]
Question of the Day: Christians and Government
If we accept, which I do, Tom’s rejection of the soteriology of the State, how should Christians interact with the government? I don’t see a scriptural imperative, as the situation of a participatory government as we Americans have currently did not exist during the writing of our set of sacred texts. Given that [...]