We know very little about the the Jesus of history, but we know much about the Christ of faith from the Gospels and other Christian traditions. The former is elusive while the latter is illusive because we cannot prove historically that the Christ of faith/myth is identical to the Jesus of history. However, there emerges from the Gospels and Christian traditions a Jesus of literature. The Gospels, being literary works, are full of allusions as to some of the details in his life. This book is an attempt to make sense of some of the allusions in the New Testament that lead us to postulate that...

Pope Francis' now-famous statement, "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" emphasizes once again that gay people should not be harshly judged and marginalized by society. The substance of this essay is that the Bible also teaches indirectly this same message. The philosophy undergirding the Pope's views is firmly embedded in the principles of intentionality and the fairly universally recognized principle of probabilism. Offered here is a scholastic discourse in the tradition of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Abelard, and the Jesuits.

The sum and substance of this short study is simply that letter kills, meaning that we do not need to hold on tenaciously to the literal meaning of a text but that it is spirit or the intended meaning of words that makes a text or narrated event meaningful; that is, narrative truth of the text is not necessarily one and the same as the literal meaning of the text or historical truth. St. Paul puts it brilliantly as follows: "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).