Yesterday I looked at the worth of human life, especially as relative to that of animal life.

Today I want to refine the discussion about the value of human life, by making a fine terminological distinction. It’s become commonplace for theologians to speak of the “infinite value” of human life. Here are some examples from representatives of major traditions within Christianity. Rod Benson, director of the Centre for Christian Ethics at the Baptist-affiliated Morling College in Australia, contends that “every person is of infinite intrinsic value.”

Read more on On Infinite Value…

Jaroslav Pelikan

Jaroslav Pelikan, the great historian of the Christian Tradition, died May 13 at his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 82 years old and had been battling lung cancer.

Pelikan wrote more than 30 books and over a dozen reference works covering the entire history of Christianity. Perhaps his best known work is the five-volume “The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.” In 2003, he published “Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition.” He was Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University.

Pelikan, raised a Lutheran, was received into the Orthodox Church in 1998. His obituary on the home page of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary notes that Pelikan “often quoted a line from Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ which says, ‘What you have as heritage take now as task, and thus you will make it your own.’ Unlike most church historians, who focus on one period or one aspect, Dr Pelikan ranked as one of the only authorities in the entire field of Christian history. His books and articles included subjects as diverse as the New Testament, the Reformation, Saint Augustine, Kierkegaard and medieval philosophy, and he is credited with broadening Western church scholarship to include the Eastern Orthodox tradition.” In 2005, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press also published “Orthodoxy and Western Culture,” a collection of essays honoring Pelikan on his 80th birthday.

Read more on Jaroslav Pelikan 1923-2006…

“Extreme Humility”

Over at OrthodoxyToday.org, Fr. Theodore Stylianpoulos demolishes the media driven speculation that the so-called Gospel of Judas might somehow turn traditional Christianity on its head.

The Gospel of Judas is but another small window to Gnosticism, a hodgepodge of religious speculations that exploded on the scene during the second century. At that time, individual intellectuals or small and elitist groups around them, bothered by the basic story of the Bible, especially the violent God of the Old Testament and the scandalous death and resurrection of Jesus, generated their own religious philosophy. They combined Jewish, Christian and pagan elements to construct literally fantastic systems of speculation including astrology and magic. The core theme, found in the Gospel of Judas, is secret knowledge (gnosis) that leads to salvation.

This is Holy Week in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Daily observances mark Christ’s passion and culminate in Great and Holy Friday and Saturday and, the Feast of Feasts, Pascha (Easter Sunday). In these services, one is struck by the unequivocal condemnation — both in the Gospel readings and in the hymns — of Judas’ deceit and betrayal and greed. Not a lot of nuance or reinterpretation of the Gnostic view here. This would only surprise someone completely unfamiliar with Church history and, in particular, the Ecumenical Councils. Fr. Stylianopoulos, the Archbishop Iakovos Professor of Orthodox Theology and Professor of New Testament at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, exposes the logical flaw behind a Gnostic interpretation of Judas’ suicide:

Read more on The ‘Gospel’ of Judas…

Henry Stob, the longtime professor of philosophical and moral theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, authored a compendium of articles on various aspects of theological ethics in his 1978 book titled, Ethical Reflections: Essays on Moral Themes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). The book is now out of print, but I ran across an excellent section that excellently captures the intent of the work of the Acton Institute.

Read more on Ethics and Economics…

I take on the current upswing in public support for euthanasia laws, especially among certain sectors of Christianity in a BreakPoint commentary today, “Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death.” I note especially the stance taken by a Baylor university professor of ethics and the student newspaper in favor of legalizing euthanasia.

Read more on The Right to Die, The Duty to Live…

In a recent post on the evangelical outpost, Joe Carter makes the case for discarding, or at least severely restricting, the use of the descriptive term supernatural by Christians. He notes that in using the term to refer, for example, to angels and demons, “we are implying that they belong on the same plane or realm of existence as God.”

Read more on Spurning the ‘Supernatural’…

One of the religion beat’s favorite canards is to implicitly equate what it calls American Christian “fundamentalism” with what it calls Muslim or Islamic “fundamentalism.” After all, both are simply species of the genus. For more on this, check out GetReligion (here and here) and the reference to a piece by Philip Jenkins, which notes,

Read more on Fumbling with Fundamentalism…

Earlier this month, we marked the 100th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birth on February 4, in what is now Wroclaw, Poland. In a message before the International Bonhoeffer Conference on February 3, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said,

Read more on Bonhoeffer’s Legacy…

PBS stations across the country will be airing Bonhoeffer, “an acclaimed dramatic documentary about theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The documentary “tells the story of the young German pastor who offered one of the first clear voices of resistance to Adolf Hitler and the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party.”

Read more on Celebrating Bonhoeffer…

First item in this month’s Christianity Today Bookmarks.

Conclusion: “Disconcertingly, Stark argues without qualification, nuance, and the balancing of perspectives that academics love so much. Nonetheless, he may be right.”