Romans 1:18-24 sounds like an argument from [Intelligent Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design) to me: > 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 **For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made**. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and **exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things**. > > 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served **the creature rather than the Creator**, who is blessed forever! Amen. Can Romans 1:18-24 and the Theory of Evolution be reconciled? How do Christians who believe in the Theory of Evolution make sense of Paul's teleological argument? If Paul is arguing for design, isn't Paul arguing indirectly against evolution?

I'm looking for a reference book on the 7 churches of Revelation. I thought that the title of the book was "What Happened to the Seven Churches of Revelation?"; but I cannot find anything with that title. The content of the book discusses the messages to each of the churches as written in Revelation and how to interpret each of those messages. But the book also discusses what happened to each of the churches after they received the letter (for example, the church of Laodicea took the warnings to heart, revived, and lasted until the 1500s). Any help would be appreciated!

I overheard someone talk about [Shepherd's Notes](https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=77410) . They described it as Cliff's Notes for books of the Bible and will help you understand things you read in the Bible. However, to me it sounds like a commentary. If anyone has used Shepherd's Notes before, is it the same as a commentary? If it's the same as a commentary, why would someone use Shepherd's Notes? I [found them on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=shepherd%27s+notes&crid=N5I6J0TBKDTZ&sprefix=shepherd%27s+note%2Caps%2C160&ref=nb_sb_noss_2) but there wasn't any sample pages for me to skim. Also my local libraries don't seem to have them either for me to look at either.

Papias was a church father from 60-130 AD. It is often said that he represents an authentic chain of tradition back to the original apostles as he has connections to either John, or elders related to the apostles. As such, Papias often becomes a key figure when utilising arguments for the gospels as he affirms Mark as the traditional gospel author (with a Petrine background) and Matthew and so forth. However, he also makes a seemingly odd statement about what Jesus said about the end times and talking vines: > The Lord used to teach about those times and say: "The days will come when vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when one of the saints takes hold of a cluster, another cluster will cry out, "I am better, take me, bless the Lord through me." We find this odd saying nowhere by Jesus in the gospels and scholars believe it to be similar to 2 Baruch . Even Eusebius expresses doubt towards Papias’ views of the millennium and Jesus’ authentic saying. Therefore, does this odd statement from Papias **lower his reliability on the gospel tradition given the lack of attestation and unusualness of this Jesus saying?** *What implications does this bear for gospel authorship and Papias’ role in describing the textual tradition?*

Banns , prescribed by the Council of Trent session 24 ch. 1, are >Public announcements of an intended marriage. Their purpose is to discover matrimonial impediments if any exist. Unless a dispensation has been secured, three publications are required on three Sundays or holy days in the churches of the marrying parties. Anyone knowing of such impediments is bound in conscience to make the same known to the clergy concerned. Similar announcements are required for those about to receive holy orders. (Etym. Anglo-Saxon *gebann*, a proclamation.) Have there been banns or public announcements for those entering into religious life, to insure there are no impediments (1983 CIC 597 , 642–45 )?

Shortly after the beginning, Cain kills Abel. (Genesis 4:8) In light of this, God sees it fit to create a new moral rule for all of humanity. 1. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31) Many thousands of years later, a Prussian philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant realized that this is not enough. He realized that people would misinterpret this rule to mean that as long as I am not directly affecting others, I can do as I please (non-aggression principle). So in order to remove irrational, ungeneralizable behavior such as drug usage, Immanuel Kant created an addendum to God's rule. 1. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31) 2. "Treat yourself as you would have others treat themselves." Now let's suppose that some new alien technology falls from the sky that makes complete and perfect biological sex change possible: you step into the portal, and you emerge a perfect, biologically-complete version of the opposite sex. Most Christian theologians would conclude that you are forbidden from using such technology. So what's the third rule? The gender-changing alien technology doesn't violate Rule #1 (nobody is harmed, unless you consider any kind of self-change to be "harm") and it doesn't violate Rule #2 (society would be a lot more fluid, but ultimately, the human race could continue to procreate if e.g. a gay man chose to turn into a woman, so it's not self-destructive in the way ununiversalizable behavior like drug usage would be). So there must be a third hidden, unspoken rule of morality that Jesus and everybody else missed. What is that rule?

We see in Gen 22:13 how Abraham saw a ram caught by the horn in a thicket and sacrificed it in lieu of Isaac. Coming over to New Testament we see Jesus being made to wear a crown of thorns. It is believed that the thorn Jesus wore had been made from the twigs of bush. We see here a strange resemblance. Unfortunately, none of the Evangelists draw a parallel between the ram that Abraham sacrificed and Jesus who offered himself on sacrifice vis a vis the thorny twigs that held on to the heads of both. My question therefore is: Are there any teachings from the side of the Catholic Church, that establish a co-relation between Christ and the ram that Abraham sacrificed?

The following is intended to correlate to classical scholastic terminology, to whit: Nature = essence, as in "the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all have the Trinitarian 'nature' of God." Person = mode of particular operation, as in "the Son is the second "person" of the Trinity, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made..." The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all co-eternal and co-equal. ### Question If the the persons of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - are co-eternal and *co-equal*, **and** the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son... Wouldn't the Father and the Son need to proceed from the Spirit as well in order to maintain the triad of equal procession from all three? It seems as though, since the Holy Spirit doesn't have the faculty of bestowing procession upon the Father and the Son, then that gives the Holy Spirit one *less* faculty than the rest, which in turn subordinates the Holy Spirit to receive procession only. Doesn't this infringe on the Spirit's co-equality? This question derives from my study of the and drawn out debate concerning the validity of the *filioque*.

I recently found out that my grandmother was excommunicated for having a (medically necessary) hysterectomy in the 70's. She loved the Catholic Church, but she never returned, and was never the same after this happened. She passed away some time ago, but finding this out has left me with many questions. Does this affect her afterlife? Does the Catholic Church keep a record of excommunications? It bothers me to think that there's some sort of black mark next to her name. If so, can this be reversed posthumously? I feel what happened to her was terrible and unfair, and even though she's gone, I'm just wondering if there is something I can do to right this wrong.

The sacrifice system was received after Exodus and is described in Leviticus. Also in Leviticus it is described what clean and unclean animals were. 1. How could Job and Noah know that they should be doing sacrifices and in Noah’s case what clean animals are(Genesis 8:20–21)? 2. How did Job know who the real(Jewish) God is, when he was not Jewish and God has not revealed his sacrificial commandments in Leviticus, yet? It seems to me that this is good evidence that Jews invented these stories and put their current understandings in them, not realizing that the people in the stories would not have known about their current Jewish laws. Argument from silence like "well, probably God did tell them somehow" is not a good argument.

What’s special about Exodus 6:3, Psalms 83:18, Isaiah 12:2, & Isaiah 26:4? Why does the Authorized Version translate the Tetragrammaton as Jehovah in those four verses, but [replace it with LORD or GOD everywhere else](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/67403/214) ?

What does "I plead the blood of Jesus Christ" mean? Is this something Christians say? Supposedly "I plead the blood" is a legal term.

> Daniel 11:1 New American Standard Bible
In the first year of > Darius the Mede, I arose to be an encouragement and a protection for > **him**. In my own interpretation, the speaker is Jesus and the "him" is an angel named Michael. From the internet I know that the Seventh-day Adventist holds that Michael = Jesus (or vice versa, Jesus = Michael). Hence, my interpretation is wrong in the point of view of Seventh-day Adventists. I've already tried to search in the internet to find out how Seventh-day Adventists interpret Daniel 11:1... but I can't find one. I did find some articles about Daniel 11 from (I think) the point of view of Seventh-day Adventists, but it either starts from Daniel 11:2 or Daniel 11 as a whole. So I put my question here.

I read about Anglo-Catholicism and what I found is that there aren't differences between them and Catholic (in terms of doctrine). Am I wrong? If I'm not wrong, the only difference is in the Pope's authority vs the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury (or the Queen of England), so why they do not come together? I can't understand the schism.

In an article entitled, Bottoms Up! The meaning of “use a little wine…” (1 Tim 5:23) at the *Orthodox Christian Theology* website, the following comment is made: > John Calvin, though not taking this view himself, speaks of how other > interpreters thought that the passage was not inspired as it appears > irrelevant to the immediate context: > > “No longer drink water.” There are some who conjecture that this > sentence, which breaks off the train of thought, was not written by > Paul. …[I]t is possible that what had been formerly written in the > margin of the Epistle afterwards. That quote from Calvin is a bit shocking to me, as it appears that there was kind of a smorgasbord approach to the Bible during the time of the Reformation that I was not aware of. Unfortunately, the author of the article does not give a reference. However, after a bit of internet exploring, I found the original primary source for the quote here. Are there any examples of 16th & 17th century Reformation era approaches to Scripture (Protestant or Catholic) that has relied upon form criticism to dismiss troublesome passages. or even entire books of the canonical Bible, to make a theological case?

In Matthew 5:27-30 Jesus affirms very unambiguously the sinfulness of lust: > 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that **everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart**. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (ESV) However, if one asks the follow-up question *"But what's wrong with having lustful thoughts?"*, a [Divine Command Theory](https://iep.utm.edu/divine-command-theory/) advocate might say *"Well, lustful thoughts are evil because God has commanded that you shouldn't have them"*. I'm not interested in that sort of answer here. That's why I'm scoping this question to Christians who do *not* adhere to Divine Command Theory. If we assume that Divine Command Theory is false (for scoping purposes), what would be alternative ways within a Christian worldview to defend the claim that lust (of the kind that Jesus is describing in Matthew 5:27-30) is universally evil? What's wrong with lust without appealing to Divine Command Theory? EDIT: Someone in the comments rightly pointed out that the word "evil" is not literally mentioned by Jesus anywhere in the passage I quoted. Instead, the literal word used is "sin". That's a fair observation. In the way I phrased the question I'm intuitively using "wrong", "evil" and "sinful" interchangeably, but for some Christians that might not be the case. Can something be sinful without being evil and vice versa? I leave the space to answerers to answer that question as they see fit, as long as they are coming from a Christian ethical viewpoint other than DCT.

From a sermon illustration: That quote was the last words of a young man in southern USA (18th century), who was sentenced to be hung for a crime, whose family had interceded with the governor. The governor took a pardon enclosed in a Bible to the young man. But the young man refused anything religious, the Bible, and his unknown visitor.

The views that are condemned in the last part of the Nicene Creed may be divided as follows: 1. There was a time when he was not (Wikipedia ). Or probably more literally, “There was when He was not” (Earlychurchtexts ). 2. He was not before he was made. 3. He was made out of nothing. 4. He is of another substance or essence, 5. The Son of God is created, or changeable, or alterable. The first two anathemas are about WHEN He began to exist. Apart from stating that all things came to be through Him, the affirmations earlier in the creed do not say anything specific in this regard. If we assume that “all things” include time, then there was no literal “time when he was not.” The third anathema is about OUT OF WHAT He came to exist. Rather than “out of nothing,” as in the anathemas, the affirmations say that He is “begotten of the Father … that is, of the essence (ousia) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” My question relates to the fourth anathema. What is the meaning of the Greek word or phrase that is translated as “of?" Stated differently, is this condemnation: - About OUT OF WHAT substance He came to be, or is it - About the substance HE CONSISTS OF? Just reading the English, the following seems to indicate that this condemnation is about OUT OF WHAT substance He came to be: > (a) Just like the first two anathemas form a pair, it seems as if > the third and fourth anathemas also form a pair. (See above.) > > (b) The phrase “He is of another substance” seems to be the opposite > of the affirmation, He is “begotten … of the essence of the Father” > > > (c) Earlier in the creed, it is said that the Son is “God of God” > (Wikipedia). In this phrase, "God" describes WHAT the Son is and "of" > describes OUT OF WHAT He came to exist. If the word “of” has the same > meaning in the fourth anathema, then that anathema may be about OUT OF > WHAT He came to exist. Alternatively, this anathema could be an elaboration of the word homoousion in the body of the creed. In that case, it would be a statement about the substance HE CONSISTS OF. Why do I ask this question? =========================== I ask this question because I am trying to work out what exactly the main issue of the debate was at Nicaea. Given that 80% of the words of the creed are about Christ, they did not argue about the Father or about the Holy Spirit. The dispute was only about Christ. But what was the core issue in that dispute? I can think of at least three possible core issues: 1. Whether the Son always existed, 2. Out of what the Son was begotten, and 3. What the substance of the Son now is. 1. Always existed -------------- The anathemas state that He ALWAYS EXISTED, but that is not explicitly mentioned in the body of the creed. So, I assume that that was not the main point of dispute. 2. Out of what the Son was begotten -------------------------------- Most of the text about Christ in the affirmations is about HOW HE CAME TO EXIST, namely: > “Begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance > of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, > begotten not made.” These words do not seem to refer to what Christ’s substance now is. It seems to describe only the substance OUT OF WHICH He was begotten. The third anathema contains a similar statement, namely that He did not come into existence out of nothing. Given the emphasis on this point in the creed, I would assume that this was the main matter of dispute. 3. What the substance of the Son now is. ------------------------------------- The affirmations say that He is homoousion with the Father. This refers to His own substance; not to the substance out of which He was begotten. But this statement seems quite isolated. **Unless the fourth condemnation relates to the word homoousion, nothing else in the creed refers directly to His own substance.** It is for that reason that I am trying to work out what the statement, that "He is (not) of another substance or essence," means. Does it mean: - That He is begotten out of the substance of the Father, or - That he has the same substance as the Father?

From what I have read, Catholics either are or are not in a state of grace. There's no grey area in between. Anyone living in an abject state of mortal sin according to the Church incurs a "judgment" by receiving communion unworthily. At the same time, they are still obligated to attend mass every Sunday (while abstaining from communion, of course). Suppose one person dies in a state of mortal sin, having attended weekly mass and abstained from communion. A second person also dies in mortal sin. This second person hardly ever attended mass, and when they did, they profaned the Eucharist by receiving it unworthily. That said, neither one is in a state of grace, so is one better of than the other?

I am slightly confused about foreordination. What I thought I had understood was that foreordination is happening in the premortal life retro-causally because of the faith and good choices in this life. That's how I used to understand Alma 13, since it talks about how the foreordination happens due to the foreknowledge of God and their faith and good works (which I assumed means in this life due to the close proximity of mentioning foreknowledge??). This all makes sense for me considering God's foreknowledge of our mortal life and our ignorance of the premortal due to the veil. It is in line with what I think to understand from D&C, that the elect are elect because they don't harden their hearts, not that they don't harden their hearts because they are elect. However when I look up foreordination on the church website, I am lead to understood a foreordination is result of faith and good choices in premortal life. Which has me scratching my head because Alma 13:5 explicitely calls out choices that would be made. So, which is it? Maybe both?