Marbaniang, Domenic

The doctrine of atonement is a stumbling block for some who feel that it not only exemplifies cruelty but also does away with human responsibility. The issue abounds with various questions and attempts to solution. Questions: 1. If God knew that man would sin and fall, why did He create man? 2. Why doesn't God, if He exists, intervene and stop evil; why just be Judge but not be Governor with proper police security system that minimises the possibility of transgression? 3. How can the death of one particular man atone for the sins of many particular men? 4. Isn't it not cruel to punish an innocent man for the sins of others so that they go free? Answers that challenge the Christian doctrine: 1. God does not require sacrifice in order to forgive, He can forgive by sovereign authority. 2. Every man must bear his own guilt so that he has a sense of responsibility and possess a genuine reason to pursue good and turn from evil. Biblical Responses: 1. God's knowledge of human Fall...

India is distinctly the birthplace of certain atheistic or agnostic religio-philosophical systems that have upheld morality without any reference to God as the Moral Governor of the universe. The systems of Samkhya, Yoga, Jainism, and Buddhism didn't find the concept of "God" as necessary for the validation of moral principles. Of course, popular religion as practiced by the masses cannot let go off the personal connection with a Deity or a Revered One, whatever be the theological explanation of the same. Yet, in polytheistic, atheistic, and monist traditions, God is not the source or ground of morality. This seems to pose a pragmatic problem for the Moral Argument which some philosophers, like Kant, have considered to be the only possible argument for the existence of God. The problem, however, only relates to the nature of morality in each system. Most of the Indian systems are karmic in nature, though differing in their cosmological and ontological theories of reality...

If the doctrine of Trinity is illogical, then by the same logic, everything else is illogical. Now, there are some who consider it to be an evidently foolish thing to believe in the reality of God as One and yet three persons. They say, 1+1+1=3 in every case, or else mathematics is absurd. But, let me show you by an ancient argument, once again, that mathematics can’t explain reality as it is. I will adapt only one argument from the many that a Greek philosopher of the 5th century BC, Zeno of Elea, used in order to defeat the then philosophers of mathematics, the Pythogoreans. The argument is commonly referred to as The Dichotomy. A .. A 6. . A 5    A 4       A 3            A 2                         A 1                                               B S...

The third important source of knowledge in Indian epistemology is Sabda (Word or Verbal Testimony); the first two are pratyaksha  (direct perception, experience) and a numana  (inference, reasoning). The role of testimony as source of knowledge is crucial since it affirms the unity of knowledge and the fact that much of what we know has come to us by means of testimonies. Historical knowledge copiously relies on written testimony. Similarly, culinary science, medicine, architecture and a host of sciences conserve and convey knowledge to us. However, not everything conveyed as information is necessarily true. However, by affirming the first two sources of knowledge to be authentic, we also affirm that testimonies of direct perception cannot be considered as unreliable sources of information; for by rejecting the reliability of testimonies, one also rejects the reliability of one’s own experience and his testimony of it. The authenticity of Christian experience is deep...

There are at least three approaches to understanding Trinity. The Rational Approach. It seeks to find in the doctrine of Trinity a rational ground for the absolute nature of Truth. Truth implies absoluteness of knowledge in a subject-object relationship, which would be groundless if God were a monad. Therefore, Trinity proves to be a solid ground for the possibility of knowledge. Similarly, personality finds its best explanation in the personal nature of God, whose existence as three persons (I-YOU-HE Sufficiency) in one Godhead is the ground of personhood. The Moral Approach. It seeks to find in the doctrine of Trinity a rational ground for the absolute nature of moral virtues, such as love, goodness, and joy. If God didn’t eternally exist in a subject-object relationship, then He would be amoral and morality would not be absolute. The doctrine of Trinity provides a rational ground for any discussion of morality with respect to its absolute nature. The Empirical Approach. Some have ...

Australopithecus deyiremeda is a proposed species of early hominin among those who lived about 3.3–3.5 million years ago in northern Ethiopia, around the same time and place as several discovered specimens of Australopithecus afarensis, including the well-known "Lucy", a juvenile specimen. (Wikipedia). Some 3 jawbones discovered on March 4, 2011 were proposed as specimens of this proposed species. While the discovery may have prompted overjoy in the evolutionist camp, it doesn't aid to quell doubts regarding the problem of  transitional fossils (missing links), considered one big problem of the theory of evolution. Of course, while now and then specimen of so-called inter-species are claimed to have been unearthed, the question of why so less of these  still lingers. Often, the missing links are either just a few pieces of fragmentary bones that are put together or only jawbones or such. One answer suggested is that the fossil record itself is meagre.  But, obviously on...

Did Jesus ever claim to be God? Did He ever use the words "I am God"? Though Jesus didn't use the exact words "I am God", that doesn't mean that He never said that He is God. One doesn't need to use the same framing of words to convey a message; the same message can be communicated in different compositions of sentences. For instance, note the following sentences which all convey the message, "I am employed." 1. I work for a Company. 2. My boss pays me well for my work. 3. I am very busy at office during the day. 4. The staff had a picnic last Saturday. 5. I would like to change my job. So, the right kind of question to ask with reference to the doctrine of Christ's divinity would not be "Did Jesus ever use the words "I am God"?" Instead, one should ask something like, "Did Jesus ever convey the message that He was divine?" To that question, the answer is a definite "Yes." In fact, the "Yes"...

The Problem of Evil is not a problem at all unless “Good” and “Evil” are properly defined and meaningfully understood; or else, the problem cannot be raised. Given that meaning is usage, let’s look at what we usually do not absolutely consider to be the meaning of Good. Good is not painlessness . For, in our daily usage, it is commonly accepted that Good usually involves pain (e.g. in exercise, study, work).  Good is not absence of grief or sorrow. For, if that was the case, the sense of a loss of Good would not exist; which would in turn imply that the sense of Good itself doesn’t exist. It is possible for Good to exist along with grief (for instance, when someone in a world X which is free of a particular Evil, say starvation, is sad about people in a world Y, where people are starving). In this sense, sympathy, grief, and compassion are virtues; i.e. they are good. So if Good is not the absence of pain or sorrow, then what is Good? Before we answer that question, let’s submit t...

Let us call the method of trying to decode the writing system in order to seek proofs for faith as "Graphological Theology". Sacred Gematria The works of Ivan Panin that discover numeric patterns in the Bible are examples of Textual Gematria. Check the following excerpt from his letter to the New York Sun: The first 17 verses of the New Testament contain the genealogy of the Christ. It consists of two main parts: Verses 1-11 cover the period from Abraham, the father of the chosen people, to the Captivity, when they ceased as an independent people. Verses 12-17 cover the period from the Captivity to the promised Deliverer, the Christ. Let us examine the first part of this genealogy. Its vocabulary has 49 words, or 7 x 7. This number is itself seven (Feature 1) sevens (Feature 2), and the sum of its factors is 2 sevens (Feature 3). Of these 49 words 28, or 4 sevens, begin with a vowel; and 21, or 3 sevens, begin with a consonant (Feature 4). Again: these 49 words of the vocabu...

There are two ways of getting known by the world; get famous or get infamous. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln already had some fame; however, as Dale Carnegie tells us in his Lincoln the Unknown , it was his desire for more popularity that drove him to kill the most famous man in America. Somehow, the assassin believes assassination as being a short-cut to popularity-control. You kill the king and usurp his throne. Of course, John Wilkes Booth was shot dead sooner; he didn't become the President of United States; but, he did became infamous. There are a number of provocative titles that drop into the market and create enough ripples, waves, and commotion. Some of them become know for their audacity against common faith. Some may be offensive tools (not apologetical but crusader like, negative jihadist attacks, meant to conquer the centrality of the opponent's faith). These people are serious about what they say. They are willing to die for what they contend f...

Excerpts from unfinished rough draft of a writing project at Seminary, 2000 Thanatology (the study or science of death) is a vast subject; its literature incorporating a motley of massive corpus with a time span of above five thousand years. In Christian theology, it is treated under the division of Eschatology (the study or science of Last Things). Though, evidently, a significant subject, thanatology is, ironically, one of the least non-debatable subjects of the world. This is understandable, knowing that it is also one of the least verifiable disciplines of all disciplines. And yet, it is a significant one. It is significant because of the psychological problems it addresses like the shock of bereavement or loss of a beloved one, the instinct of survival, the curiosity concerning the future, or the unknown, etc. It is also significant because of the philosophical 1 and theological problems it addresses like ,“Why is there the phenomenon of death,” “Why is there such a morbid fear o...