Musings of a Snickerdoodle

The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization is an interesting look at how the Bible ‘made’ as it were, the ‘world’ we live in. Mr. Mangalwadi goes back in time to show how the Bible influenced our ancestors’ ideals, their mindset.  He takes a look at several countries and shows how belief or non-belief in the Bible impacted whether or not a society ‘advanced’ and prospered. Some things in this book I found fascinating.  For instance, in his chapter on Science(Science: What Is Its Source?),  Mangalwadi’s point that, “Science was born after the Church started reading the Bible literally, not allegorically” struck me.  He wrote about how the ‘Church’s' use of Allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures influenced its own, and society’s outlook on nature as well.  They studied nature ‘allegorically’…what characteristics about this creature does God want us to learn from?  Or, what might this creation symboli...

INTRODUCTION Theological distinctions are fine but not thin. In all the mess of modern thoughtlessness, that still calls itself modern thought, there is perhaps nothing so stupendously stupid as the common saying, 'Religion can never depend on minute disputes about doctrine." It is like saying that life can never depend on minute disputes about medicine. [1] " One may ask, ‘why even attempt to study Eschatology since so many people disagree over it?’  L. S. Chafer has an excellent response to this question: The plea that the prophetic portions of the Bible present problems over which men disagree is not a worthy release from its claims.  There are no more problems in Eschatology than in soteriology.  It happens that, owing to the central place accorded Soteriology by the Reformers and in subsequent theological writings, that it has had a measure of consideration not given to prophetic truth.  Disagreements as divergent as Calvinism and Arminianism have never been u...