"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
While there was radio silence at the end of last year, Joe from Shameless Popery was busy at work. Not only did he give his blog a nice face-lift, he also produced an excellent series of posts, giving ten reasons to reject the Protestant Reformation:
Reason #1: The canon of Scripture
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For my final month in San Diego, my Bible Study Group is going to be going through the epistles of St. John (1 John, 2 John, 3 John). However, this last week we reviewed our study of Ephesians. Here are the review questions the group came up with:
68. When was Ephesians written?
This letter is one of the “captivity epistles” and therefore was probably written during Paul’s Roman captivity in the early 60s.
69. What is significant about the destination of this epistle?
Mention of Ephesus in verse 1 is not found in the earliest manuscripts. It is therefore possible that this was a circular letter written to a number of congregations, one of which was Ephesus.
70. What was Paul’s relationship with Ephesian Church?
Christianity was present in Ephesus prior to Paul’s arrival. Paul used Ephesus as his base of operations for several years.
71. What does Paul write about in Ephesians?
Paul devotes most of the document to putting forth a vision of God’s redemptive work, brought about through Christ and manifested in the Church.
The Ephesians were mostly newly baptized Pagans and, because of this, some have referred to Ephesians as mystagogical catechesis.
Paul spends quite some time talking about “mystery”. This relates to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross which draws man, both Jew and Gentile, back into relationship with God. This relationship is communicated through the Church, which has Christ as her head.
1-16 | 17-27 | 27-42 | 43-52 | 53-57 | 58-67 | 68-71 | 72-81
All Questions
It’s tragic to see that there’s no thought involved here…
This is one of the many reasons I love Pope Francis. A while ago, back when the Pope was visiting Rio de Janiero, the public saw the pope wearing something around his right wrist.
This series of beads is known as “chotki” or “komboskini”. It is a prayer rope, much like a rosary, whose invention is typically attributed to St. Pachomius in the fourth century and is still used today by eastern Christians, both Eastern Orthodox and Catholic.
One prays by the chotki by reciting “The Jesus Prayer” on each bead/knot:
“Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”
Although typically 100 beads, they can vary. There are also sometimes additional beads with invocations of Mary (“The Theotokos“).
One of the first things I noted reading Pope Francis’ bio upon being a elected Pope was that he had strong connections to Eastern Christianity. It’s great to see him exposing the West to more of what the East has to offer 🙂
A long time favourite of this blog, Msgr. Pope, recently published an article looking at morality from an atheistic perspective. The list of questions at the end of the article are particularly good material to chew over.
I also recently saw this video on the same subject:
Today I wanted to talk about an apologetic strategy I use a lot: asking questions. You see, regardless of the topic, be it abortion, Christianity or Catholicism, there is always the temptation to spend most of your time telling someone what they should believe. People are rarely very receptive to being told. When I’m in that mode, it becomes very easy for me to become pompous and prideful. Questions help prevent this.
Rather than telling someone what they should believe, I find it is generally much more effective to ask the person what they believe and why. This communicates to the other person that you care what they think and you want to know more. Even though you are talking less, you have guiding control over the conversation through the questions that you ask. Not only that, but if you ask questions, it will probably encourage your friend to open up and ask you questions about what you believe. This allows you to follow the advise a wise priest once told me: “It’s best to start giving answers only once they’ve started asking you questions”
I would suggest that the goal is to ask questions which reveal the flaws in that person’s worldview. Once these are revealed, you can then present your own perspective, thereby giving you an opportunity to demonstrate the cohesiveness of your own world view.
“He who asks questions has control”
– Socrates (387 BC)
A while ago, Aggie Catholics put together a great list of questions to ask when you’re evangelizing…