Philological Concerns

In the Catholic liturgy, during the Penitential Act at the start of mass, a prayer is read called the Confiteor (“I Confess”). In that prayer is the line peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere which means “I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed.” I have sinned. We are all sinners. But…this leaves a question. What is sin?…

In a departure from my set posting schedule, today, rather than a Main Project post, I’ve decided to post a Philological Concerns essay. The reason for the order switch is that I believe this essay on ancient philology will be crucial towards real engagement with this week’s Main Project topic. There are roughly 15,000 languages…

Theos (Gr.θεός) is the Greek word for God. If we are going to contend with the biblical stories it is probably a good idea to get straight exactly what we mean when we say “god” — at least to the best of our abilities. To this end, and in no particular order, I intend to…

In this week’s Main Project post we ran thought the Babylonian creation myth as it appears in the Enuma Elish. Today, in the first of several posts which will deal with that story in more detail, I want to talk about the primordial goddess, the dragon of chaos, the god of the salt water —…

“The words she spoke were living things, and to speak them was to create.” – C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943) “Chaos is dull; it is order that is interesting, because order is the signature of a mind” -G.K. Chesterton The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)     Mark Twain famously said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but…

In this week’s Main Project article, Epilogue: On Shepherds and Shepherding,  I make several references to the ancient Greek concept of the archē (Gr. Ἀρχή). It is hard to overstate the importance of understanding this concept for understanding how it is that the western philosophical tradition began, how the shift from polytheism to monotheism occurred,…