LEGATO...

What, exactly, did Socrates teach? Well, among other things, he fervently believed that everyone should be serious about the question as to what sort of life a person should live. Plato recorded the teachings of Socrates in his DIALOGUES. At the very end of GORGIAS, one of these dialogues, Socrates said, "You may let anyone despise you as a fool and do you outrage, if he wishes, yes, and you may cheerfully let him strike you with that humiliating blow, for you will suffer no harm thereby if you really are a good man and an honorable, and pursue virtue. . . . This is the best way of life--to live and die in the pursuit of righteousness and all other virtues. Let us follow this, I say, inviting others to join us." Socrates lived these truths and he did so even unto death, thereby causing the truths which he taught to make an indelible impression upon his society, and upon all future societies that would be influenced by Hellenistic culture. The story of th...

Yale theology professors, Kenneth P. Minkema and Harry S. Stout, provide their impressions of how Edward's famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" would work in today's church environment. Pay special attention to Minkema's virtual ridicule of hell, judgment, and God's wrath, and Stout's view that should "hell" be preached today it should not be as a real place, for such would only trivialize the idea. Rather, hell ought to preached in an existentialist fashion: as alienation from our "ground of being." These two professors only further confirm my long-held view that my old Alma Mater is getting more and more away from Christ and his gospel.

Recently, I had a discussion with some of my Italian study friends over why representatives of the Roman Catholic Church were unhappy not only with representatives of the Reformation but also with some of the men of letters of the Italian Renaissance. The reason has to do with the fact that Renaissance scholars had a way of exposing as fraudulent many of Rome's documents, some of which were said to establish the church's claim to large land holdings. A prime example is as follows... Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457) was the author of the standard Renaissance text on Latin philology. The text was titled: Elegences of the Latin Language. He was primarily active as a secretary to the King of Naples.Although a good Catholic, Valla became a hero to later Protestants. His popularity among Protestants stemmed from his defense of predestination against the advocates of free will and especially from his expose of the Donation of Constantine, a fraudulent document written in the eighth c...

In their attempt to explain the widespread horrors of the Black Death, medieval Christian communities looked for scapegoats. As at the time of the crusades, the Jews were blamed for poisoning wells and hence spreading the plague. This selection by a contemporary chronicler, written in 1349, gives an account of how Christians in the town of Strasbourg in the Holy Roman Empire dealt with their Jewish community. It is apparent that financial gain was also an important factor in killing the Jews. The following is from Jacob von Konigshofen, "The Cremation of the Strasbourg Jews." In the year 1349 there occurred the greatest epidemic that ever happened. Death went from one end of the earth to the other.... And from what this epidemic came, all wise teachers and physicians could only say that it was God's will.... This epidemic also came to Strasbourg in the summer of the above mentioned year, and it is estimated that about sixteen thousand people died. In the matter of th...