I learned about this movie called “Risen” coming out next spring, obviously around Easter. It looks very promising, with a big name lead, Joseph Fiennes, and obviously excellent production values. From the piece at Empire:
Kevin Reynolds’ film, which he co-wrote with Paul Aiello, follows Roman military tribune Clavius (Fiennes), a firm believer in his empire’s power and someone tasked with removing resistance. But when it appears that Jesus of Nazareth has – in accordance with his followers’ beliefs – risen from the dead after his crucifixion, Pontius Pilate (Firth) assigns Clavius and his aide Lucius (Felton) the task of figuring out the mystery, to avoid an uprising in Jerusalem.
Those familiar with apologetics will instantly recognize what most people ignore: The crucified and buried body of Jesus of Nazareth disappeared. His followers claimed he was risen from the dead, claimed to have seen him, which is obviously impossible. Many of them paid with their life for this claim. The premise of the movie is no doubt true to history: Jesus’ enemies and those who convicted him and carried out the sentence, had every incentive to find the body. Do that, and this menace is crushed once and for all. Of course they never did because, well, Jesus is even now sitting at the right hand of God.
As an aside, I have to wonder if Fiennes is a Christian or at least has Christian sympathies. He stared in the 2003 movie Luther, yes the same one who started the Reformation, and he’s working on a movie coming out next year called, The Last Race, a sequel to the 1981 classicChariots of Fire, about Christian Olympic athlete Eric Liddell, who refused to run a race on the Sabbath and forfeited the event. It’s possible he’s a member in good standing of the Church of England, a good Anglican.
Mars Hill is the famous place in Athens where the Apostle Paul debated with and spoke to Greek philosophers as described in Acts 17. It is also the name of an audio journal produced by Ken Myers for more than 20 years. A couple years ago Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standardwrote a great piece about Myers that prompted me to start subscribing to Mars Hill Audio. Myers is definitely a high culture guy, so you won’t find any analysis of pop culture in the journal, but he always does thoughtful interviews that teach me things I didn’t know, and helps to expand my understanding of the world as a Christian. (more…)
As shocking as it may seem, a website dedicated to helping people find extra-marital dalliances is used almost only by men! Who could have seen that coming. The tag line for the Ashley Madison website, much in the news this past week or so, is, “Life is Short. Have an Affair.” Dubious advice to be sure, but it attracts mostly men: Duh!
Out of 5.5 million female accounts, roughly zero percent had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created. The men’s accounts tell a story of lively engagement with the site, with over 20 million men hopefully looking at their inboxes, and over 10 million of them initiating chats. The women’s accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there. … we’re left with data that suggests Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there.
[M]oral relativism implies that neither cultures (if conventionalism is in view) nor individuals (if subjectivism is in view) can improve their moral code. The only thing they can do is change it. Why? Consider any change in code from believing, say, racism is right to racism is wrong. How should we evaluate this change? All the moral relativist can say is that, from the perspective of the earlier code, the new principle is wrong, and from the perspective of the new code, the old principle is wrong. In short, there has merely been a change in perspective. No sense can be given to the idea that a new code reflects an improvement on an old code because this idea requires a vantage point outside of and above the society’s (or individual’s) code from which to make that judgment. And it is precisely such a vantage point that moral relativism disallows.
At the website of the Theopolis Institute a piece was recently posted by Mark Horne with the curious title, “If There is ‘Natural Law’ How Can People Believe in Same-Sex Marriage?” I say curious because I’m not sure why five lawyers in black robes declaring gender complimentarity irrelevant to marriage somehow makes natural law an invalid concept. Nor does a certain percentage of people believing such things can be marriage invalidate natural law. Like any law, natural laws can be broken, but the law is no less a law just because someone decides to flout or ignore it. But first what exactly is “natural law”? (more…)
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