Skepticism within Religion: A Prescription for Epistemological Humility

We tend to separate religion from skepticism, and we associate science with evidence even though of religion and science, only science is open to revision. Kierkegaard remarked that there is something absurd about religious belief, and yet a religionist should believe, and even without any evidence to back up the absurd. In fact, in the early-modern period in the West, religious belief was often assumed to have a higher epistemological status than philosophy and science even though the latter two are supported by the strictures of reason and the support of empirical evidence, respectively. I submit that it is precisely to the extent that religious beliefs are held to be certain that we should be modest about them in terms of what we can know. According to Peter Adamson, religions were once very open to skepticism, whereas the Aristotelian philosophers were certain of their epistemological certainty. Considering that varied assumptions have been applied by philosophers to their craft, they should be weary of their own claims of having achieved epistemological certainty. I contend that religionists should get back to being more tolerant of, and even invite skepticism, even within their own minds. Being humbly aware of falling short, both as an individual and as a species, of grasping true religious knowledge as it is, undeluded by our own limitations (e.g., opinions), is rarely the case as religionists make declarations as if with epistemological certainty.

In a talk, Peter Adamson asked, why does God allow us to be so ignorant? Why does God make us subject to error? It must be for some reason, Descartes thought. The problem of ignorance is akin to the problem of evil. Is the former just a sub-case of the latter? They may be the same problem. I submit that even if the two problems are related or relatable as being similar, the hatred that is endemic to evil is absent from ignorance. Stated on a more secular basis, ignorance does not necessarily come with, or spring from a bad attitude.

Nevertheless, Adamson viewed ignorance in religious terms. To Augustine, ignorance is due to free-will amid original sin. Also, the limited nature of creation is why knowledge is limited, hence ignorance exists. A religious basis exists for ignorance in terms of people tending to latch on to just some knowledge. Augustine’s Free Choice of the Will does not insist on grace because Augustine had not yet encountered Palagianism. In the text, Augustine is in dialogue with Evodius, a convert to Christianity. Adam and Eve were created in a state “between wisdom and foolishness.” In our fallen state, we are “born into ignorance, difficulty, and mortality.” “Evil is turning away eternal things, . . . and instead pursuing temporal things, which are perceived by means of the body.” Also, when desires rule over the mind, “the mind is dragged by inordinate desire into ruin and poverty . . .” This characterizes infants, according to Augustine. In short, ignorance, which is synonymous with foolishness, exists due to free-will in the state of original sin. But why then are Adam and Eve ignorant? To Augustine, this is like complaining about the world because it is not as good as heaven. Descartes wrote, “it is in the nature of a finite intellect to lack understanding of many things, and it is in the nature of a created intellect to be finite.” God certainly is not obligated to do more, and we are able to obtain knowledge. According to Adamson, Stoics and neo-Platonists, including Plotinus, have contended that individual evils are part of a good whole. According to Leibniz, the best of all possible worlds reflects this philosophy. The upshot is that human ignorance is just part of the best of all possible worlds that God could create, so we should not blame God for our own ignorance. I contend that it is important even when looking at scripture in a revealed religion to keep in mind that human ignorance is not exempted on our end. Therefore, humility in making religious claims, as if declarations, could greatly reduce the typical impious air of infallibility on our end. Even if revelation does in fact come from an intelligent being that transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion, such news must travel through our fallible atmosphere before we can make sense of the distinctively religious truth.

It follows that religious accounting for human ignorance is not exhausted by one religion, or at least that in humility human epistemology should be open to alternative accounts. Even if one religion holds a monopoly on truth, the truth of this truth is not contained within our purview. Accordingly, in his talk, Peter Adamson discussed the religious account of Jainism, which is native to South Asia, with respect to ignorance. Umasvati (4^th to 5^th century), for example, author of the Tattvartha Sutra, was a Jain, so he was not a Brahmanic thinker. On the topic of the human self, Jain thought is that the Brahmanic and Buddhist philosophies are in part right and in part wrong. The Jains claim that there is an eternal, changing self. Liberation means freedom from the cycle of samsara and comes through “enlightened worldview, knowledge, and conduct,” so one is not trapped in a one-sided view. Being non-violent, Jains didn’t want to disagree too strenuously with others, but this explanation doesn’t fit with the polemics in some Jain texts. Also, the Jains criticize a person having one-sided knowledge. In addition to assertability, there is the notion of unassertability. Omniscience refers to knowledge of all substances in all their modes, past present, and future.” The path to knowledge is about elimination of karmic bondage. Growth in knowledge involves the steady falling away of one-sided thinking. Seeing the world from every perspective rather than from only one is thus to be sought.  Delusion is at the root of ignorance, and is associated with having a one-sided view; both are associated with karmic bondage, which keeps a person from liberation.

So rather than original sin from a Fall, which itself is premised on Creation, Adamson’s account of Jainism is that delusion is part of the unenlightened human condition, wherein we may tend to have one-sided views. Our knowledge and perspectives tend to be one-sided, and we are susceptible to being in bondage to them—even to being deluded that they are wholistic rather than partial. Both Augustine and Umasvati were skeptical concerning the pretensions of human knowledge. In his talk, Adamson added in Francis Bacon’s view, which is that Adam has perfectly functional cognitive faculties, whereas we, the fallen, do not. True knowledge is the province of divinity. I submit that religionists would greatly enhance their own credibility as purveyors of truth that is inherently sourced beyond our reach by humbly keeping in mind their own fallibility even and especially with regard to what is actually religious belief rather than knowledge, for if the content of religion were known, what place would faith have when the human mind enters into the religious domain?

Educating Scholarly Priests: The Cult at Yale

Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline). To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics), and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people, but also by the scholars themselves.  

The full essay is at "Educating Scholarly Priests."

Conservatism in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

The Quorum is a high-level governing body in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Quorum “helps set church policy while overseeing the many business interests of what is known widely as the Mormon Church.”[1] On December 27, 2025, Jeffrey R. Holland, “a high-ranking official . . . who was next in line to become the faith’s president,” died.[2] He was 85. To be at that age and yet next in line to lead a major Christian denomination is a sign of just how tilted toward the elderly the leadership of that Church was at the time. Almost exactly three months earlier, Russell M. Nelson, the then-sitting president of the denomination, died at the age of 101. Dallin H. Oaks, at the age of 93, became the next president. These ages make 75, the mandatory retirement age for Roman Catholic bishops, look young, though Pope John Paul II died at 84 and Pope Francis died at 88—both men while in office. Especially in Christianity, whose Gospels depict Jesus and his disciples as much younger men, the question of whether an aged leadership unduly foists conservatism on what in the Gospels is characterized as a radical religious movement.

In 2020, a group of researchers put the old adage that people tend to become more conservative as they age to the test. Contrary to the folk adage, the study found that political attitudes tend to be stable over time; however, when attitudes do change, “liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even though it overstates the degree of change.”[3] Regarding religion, research indicates people tend to become more religious as they age, but this doesn’t answer the question of whether a person’s religious beliefs become more conventional or orthodox within a religious institution as the person ages. Simply put, are older people in a congregation more likely to “upset the apple cart.” To the extent that living through decades has a thickening effect on the idealism of the youth because the inertia of status quo, whether of an organization or a society, is difficult to move, even with a faith that can move mountains.

As a complication, the influx of social ideology (e.g., social issues) into the religious domain can make orthodox religious believers seem more or less conservative. I have argued elsewhere that the overreaching of social ideology onto the religious domain minimizes or ignores the sui generis nature of both domains. Based on the study on political ideology changing over time as a person ages, it seems reasonable to posit that a person’s social ideology is most likely to stay constant, but when it changes, it is more likely to get more conservative. It is important not to omit the possibility, however, that very old people can surprise us and actually shake things up a bit in leading a religious organization.

Russell Nelson “was revered as a prophet” even though he was “the oldest serving head of the church” when he died at 101.[4] If the label of prophet resembles the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, the implication is that Nelson spoke truth to power. It may be going too far to say that his time at the helm of the denomination “will forever be remembered as one of . . . profound change” because he emphasized global ministry and increased temple construction.[5] The need to temper the magnitude of the change reflects the empirical results of the study on changes in political attitudes discussed above. For instance, in 2019, when Nelson was in his mid-90s, “the church made a surprise move . . . by pledging to roll back a series of anti-LGBT policies introduced in 2015 that had reportedly led to 1,500 people leaving the [denomination] in protest.”[6] That the motivation to roll back the anti-gay policies may have had something to do with the loss of membership, and thus money, tempers the magnitude of the shift in the social ideology in the Church’s leadership. Attention to finances can itself be construed as conservative. Furthermore, reversing the ban on children of same-sex parents being baptized and the expulsion of gay members who are married are not as surprising as the announcement that the denomination would perform gay-marriage ceremonies would have been.

That rolling back two policies does not count as profound change is also supported by the fact that just two years later, Holland gave a speech “in which he called on church members to take up metaphorical muskets in defense of the faith’s teaching against same-sex marriage.”[7] That the speech “became required reading for BYU freshmen in 2024” is itself an indication that the social ideology in the Church’s governing body and leadership had not changed.

That both Nelson and Holland opposed homosexuality even as two policies were rolled back does not mean that those men had become more conservative, and that were younger men in charge, the Church’s stance on the social issue would have been more progressive in 2019. Therefore, this case study should not be used to argue that because Jesus and his disciples are characterized as middle-aged in the Gospels, Christian denominations should be led by young or middle-aged people or else the radicalism of the movement in the Gospels can be expected to be hampered by old men at the helm. In fact, that Nelson did so much—albeit not necessarily of profound change—in the last decade of his life in leading his denomination qualifies the typical assumption that people over 85 should be put out to pasture because they cannot possibly make a difference, whether to an organization or a society.

Nevertheless, the finding that when political attitudes do change as a person ages, most often this results in a more conservative ideology, means that young and middle-aged people can be included at the highest level of an organization so to counteract or balance out the admittedly mitigated tendency. In other words, the elderly can make contributions as organizational leaders and are not necessarily more conservative than they were, so the need to balance out excessive conservativism, due to age, with younger leaders, is less though it does exist to some extent. The tendency of the elderly to resist giving up some power to younger members is thus something to watch out for in church governance, but the elders need not be replaced altogether as a prerequisite for religious organizations to be able to adapt to a changed environment at least to some extent so to be able to survive. It is not as though a denomination must adopt a progressive social ideology, which I submit is extrinsic through related to religion anyway, in order to survive; rather, the mitigated, or muted, tendency of people to become more conservative with age should itself be countered institutionally in terms of there being ways of including young and middle-aged members at the highest organizational level of leadership and governance. Generally speaking, the tyranny of the status quo should be countered so both change and constancy can have a chance at swaying the day.

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1. CBS News, “Jeffrey R. Holland, Next in Line to Lead Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Dies at 85,” CBSnews.com, December 27, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Johnathan Peterson, Kevin Smith, and John R. Hibbing, “Do People Really Become More Conservative as They Age?” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 82, No. 2 (April, 2020), pp. 600-11.
4. Nadine Yousif, “Russell M. Nelson, Head of Church of Latter-day Saints, Dies Aged 101,” BBC.com, 29 September, 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

The Scarlet and the Black

In the film, The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer face off as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and Col. Herbert Kapper at the end of the film when the Nazi head of police in Rome abruptly changes his tune in challenging the Catholic priest no longer by threats, but by appealing to the priest’s faith of humble compassion applied even to one’s enemies so O’Flaherty will extend mercy to Kapper’s wife and children, who would otherwise fall into the hands of the Allied troops advancing into Rome. Before that dialogue, O’Flaherty and Pope Pius XII subtly debate whether the pope had been right in compromising with Hitler in order to keep the Catholic Church intact in Nazi Germany. The film can thus be viewed in light of the potential of the medium of film to convey and even thrash out contending theological ideas.

The full essay is at "The Scarlet and the Black."

Pope Leo’s First Christmas Message: On International Relations

That severe, systematic inflictions of suffering on whole peoples were going on in the world even on Christmas Day in 2025 did not require a papal announcement for people the world over to be informed of those atrocities. Russia’s military incursion in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza had been going on with international impunity for years. The suffering in Yemen and Sudan was less well-known, but substantial nonetheless. Speaking out against the sordid state-aggressors on the first Christmas of his pontificate, the pope provided an alternative basis for international relations that is so antithetical to military invasion and genocide that the message could seem utopian and thus practically of no use whatsoever. Because “might makes right” had made such unimpeded “progress” even in becoming the default and status-quo, the principle of humble compassion to the humanity to one’s detractors and even outright enemies could seem like a fairy tale. 

Nevertheless, even though the principle was so utterly eclipsed in practice on the world’s stage at the time, a person can have faith that even enunciating the alternative has value. At the very least, making it explicit shows powerful people such as Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu in an especially dark light. Ironically, were either of those men to come to terms with themselves and change their ways, the principle would call the rest of us to forgive them. Even absent such a change-of-heart, or a dawning of heart in those two men, the principle mandates that the rest of us respond in humane compassion even to those two men on an interpersonal level should either of them need help. Such is the depth of power of the principle that it can be reckoned as inculcating what can be called divine nature even if the principle is not anthropomorphized in human form; the principle has validity, and thus value, in itself. So even if it seems utterly unrealistic for it to become the default in international relations (and even interpersonal relations), there is value in the pope’s inclusion of the principle in his first Christmas message.

In his Christmas Day homily, Pope Leo “remembered the people of Gaza, ‘exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold’ and the fragility of ‘defenseless populations, tried by so many wars,’ and of ‘young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them, and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.’”[1] The infliction of genocide, and even such suffering as to qualify as a holocaust, on a defenseless civilian population that had been subjugated for many decades, render Israel’s Netanyahu government and its supports equivalent to the Nazis in Europe almost a century earlier. The very language used by the pope, as in “the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths” could definitely be applied to Hitler and Netanyahu.

The sheer depravity of such powerful men who have allowed their respective hatreds to manifest in atrocities without any internal restraint is antipodal to a person who “would truly enter into the suffering of others and stand in solidarity with the weak and the oppressed.”[2] It is paradoxical that such outwardly powerful, militaristic government officials are actually so weak internally, whereas people who are willing to defer “before the humanity of others”—even and especially detractors and even enemies—may have no worldly force yet are very strong internally.[3] 

Therefore, it is of value for anyone, especially a pope with a microphone, to set the stubborn savagery of men like Putin and Netanyahu relative to a principle that, if internalized and acted on by enough people, would change the world even though the likelihood of such a drastic, fundamental change is only possible rather than probable. Being possible is itself astonishing, given the fixity of human nature. Worldwide, peoples and their respective government officials in 2023 failed to retain the lesson that had presumably been learned when the Nazi holocaust was exposed in 1945. Standing by rather than going in to rid Gaza of the Israelis and even Ukraine of the Russian army can be reckoned as instantiating the banality of evil, which is two degrees of separation from the principle of humble compassion for the humanity of others, especially one’s enemies. The world, and humanity itself—our species—can thus be condemned for standing by instead of stopping at least the holocaustic genocide that had been going on for years as of Christmas, 2025.

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1. Silvia Stellacci and Colleen Barry, “Pope Leo XIV Urges the Faithful on Christmas to Shed Indifference in the Face of Suffering,” APnews.com, December 25, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Divine Presence in Liturgy and Compassion

The medium of film can treat organizational, societal, and global ethical problems either from one standpoint, which is appropriate if the assignment of blame for immoral conduct is clear (e.g., the Nazis), or by presenting both sides of an argument so to prompt the viewers to think about the ethically complex problem. This second approach is useful if it is not clear whether a character or a given conduct is unethical. When it is obvious which characters or actions are unethical, a film can still stimulate ethical reasoning and judgment by drawing attention to unethical systems as distinct from individuals and their respective conduct in the film. The film, Spotlight (2015), which is a true story, takes the position that Roman Catholic priests who molested and raped children in the Boston Archdiocese in Massachusetts behaved ethically. The dramatic tension in the film is set up when the chief editor of the Boston Globe, Liev Schreiber, tells the paper’s investigative “spotlight” managers that the story will not go to press until the system that enabled Cardinal Law and others to cover up many child-rapist priests by transferring them to other parishes is investigated. “We’re going after the system,” Liev says in keeping the story under wraps until the entire informal system that has enabled the rapists to continue to lead parishes.  

The full essay is at "Spotlight."

The Apocalypse

In the film, The Apocalypse (2002), the Apostle John is a prisoner at an island-prison because he is a Christian. He is having visions of heaven in the last of days and Valerio, another prisoner is dutifully writing what John dictates so various church congregations can know of John’s revelations. He is esteemed so much by other Christians that he feels pressure to steer them to God’s truth. Too much esteem, I submit, is being directed to John, as he is, as he admits, only a human being, though he does get caught up in his own direct access to God, as in being able to know the will of God. This is a temptation for any religionist, especially religious leaders. Although subtly, the film conveys John’s over-reaches though without having another character explicitly refer to them as such.

The full essay is at "The Apocalypse."

Renunciation vs. Dutiful Action in Hinduism

Hegel looked at human history as developing through dialectics resolved at a more advanced point in a trajectory of expanding human freedom. It may be in the history of religion that less superstition evinces an evolution of a different sort. The monotheism of the Abrahamic religions came out of a polytheistic context, but it is a more difficult matter to claim that monotheism represents a development of human religion historically because polytheism has continued. Even though some contemporary interpreters of Hinduism’s main text, the Bhagavad-Gita, claim erroneously that the god Krishna being the supreme deity in that text means that it is monotheist even though in that text, Krishna himself acknowledges that people pray to other gods and goddesses that exist. Rather than maintain that monotheism is an advancement on polytheism, I submit that conceptual contradictions between contending religious claims in any religion can be surmounted, as transcended, though with the caveat that in polytheism, contradictions have a firmer grounding even though they too are to be transcended if religion itself is permitted to evolve.

In chapter 5 of the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that dispassionate action is superior to renunciation: “the Karma-Yoga is better than (mere) renunciation of action.”[1] In the next chapter, Krishna essentially redefines renunciation as the action of a person “who performs the action to be done, regardless of action’s fruit.” Such a person is “a renouncer and a yogin.” In contrast, a person who “is inactive” is not a renouncer.[2] In short, action (which is not motivated by its consequences) rather than inaction is renunciation. This flips the concept on its head. In the Gita, Lord Krishna wants Arjuna to fight rather than to renounce fighting relatives in the civil war, so the deity simply redefines renunciation to hinge on motive or intention rather than conduct (or lack thereof). In the Christian Gospels, Jesus says something similar regarding lusting itself rather than only actually having sex outside of marriage. Such an interiorization of religion may be a step in the evolution of that domain such that intention, not only what a person does, matters.

Lord Krishna’s conceptualization of renunciation conflicts with the conception of the word in Advaita philosophy, in which renunciation means abstaining from as much action as possible; meditation, rather than performing dutiful action even in battle is Shankara’s preference. To that famous Advaitan philosopher and theologian, Brahman, which is infinite being, is more ultimate than is any deity, including Krishna in the Gita. So, Shankara advocates meditating on Brahman rather than bhukti devotionalism to Krishna. Both regarding the different conceptions of renunciation and whether ultimacy is infinite being or a Supreme Person (e.g., Krishna in the Gita), compromise is elusive and perhaps impossible. That different strains of thought and even conflicting claims exist in a religion is difficult for us to accept even if the history of a given religion shows us how the differences arose. If Brahman is one, as both Shankara and Schopenhauer affirm in their respective writings, and if the existence of several deities in a polytheistic religion is possible rather than self-contradictory, then would it not be appropriate for religious leaders to gather to select one among conflicting claims?  In Christianity, this occurred in the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.

On the other hand, the insistence on consistency may be premised on the exclusive existence of only one deity, which applies to the Abrahamic monotheist religions but not to a polytheistic religion such as Hinduism. Different perspectives, and even contradictory claims, may be consistent with the existence of several deities, even if one of them is supreme over all of the others. In the Gita, for instance, Krishna claims to be the supreme deity, which, by the way, is different than stating that among gods and goddesses that are worshipped, only Krishna exists. In the Gita, Krishna does not make this claim, even where he claims to deliver the goods when people petition other Hindu deities. In ancient Greco-Roman polytheistic religion, deities fought with each other, so even contradictory beliefs among the faithful would make sense. In polytheistic Hinduism, however, Advaitan adherents who follow Shankara’s theology, Brahman as the ultimate one over even Krishna in the Gita means that contradictions are illusionary rather than real. Even the deities are not real, according to Shankara.

Even in the Gita, Brahman itself, including the consciousness (i.e., general awareness) that being itself has (or is), transcends pairs of opposites. After Krishna asserts that a person “who does not hate or hanker after (anything) is to be known as a perpetual renouncer,” that deity states, “For, without (the influence of) the pairs-of-opposites, [such a person] is easily released from bondage.”[3] By implication, Brahman transcends pairs-of-opposites too. Indeed, yogins whose “defilements have dwindled, (whose) dualities are destroyed, (whose) selves are controlled, (and who) delight in the good of all beings” reach “extinction in the world-ground.”[4] Transcending dualities in the world ultimate results in one’s very self (atman) no longer being a distinct entity in Brahman. Therefore, contradictions even in scripture are surmountable. Moreover, as the example of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna illustrates, scripture itself can be transcended by genuine religious experience even in ritual, such as in devotion intensely directed to a deity. If so, not only cognitive contradictions, but much more could be transcended if religion on the human side develops further.

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1. Gita 5.2 in Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 149.
2. Gita 6.1. in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 157.
3. Gita 5.3 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 149. I have changed Feuerstein’s use of brackets to parentheses because in quoting Feuerstein’s text, I use brackets to add words to those which Feuerstein has written. This is consistent with Feuerstein having used brackets to add words to the text he was translating. I submit that this is a legitimate exception to the general rule that that which is quoted should be quoted as is, including the punctuation marks in the text.
4. Gita 5.25 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 155. Italics added to certain English words.

The Count of Monte Cristo: On Vengeance and Forgiveness

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” is a Biblical saying that is perhaps as well known as it is typically ignored in the midst of passion. Even the advice that revenge is better served up as a cold dish rather than immediately when the grill is still hot is difficult to heed. The 1975 film, The Count of Monte-Cristo, can be likened to a “how-to” recipe book on how to exact revenge against multiple people, one after the other until the sense dawns on the avenger that one’s one life has been utterly consumed by the desire and then feels empty once the deserved suffering has been sufficiently inflicted. It is admittedly very difficult to walk away from a grievous injustice if the agent of the harm is allowed to evade suffering that is deserved. In the film, however, Abbé Faria, a Christian priest who has been unjustly held in an island prison for fifteen years, nonetheless urges Edmond Dantes, whose prison cell is connected to Faria’s tunnel, to resist the temptation to ruin the lives of the four men who had unjustly imprisoned Edmund, including De Villefort, Danglars, and General Fernand Mondego. In the end, Dantes, as the Count of Monte-Crisco, pays dearly for having gone down the road of vengeance. Even if the suffering inflicted on the unjust is deserved ethically, distinctly religious implications should be considered lest avengers are left existentially empty rather than as one might expect, finally at peace. The Christian notion of the Kingdom of God is prominent in this distinctly religious regard.

The full essay is at "The Count of Monte Cristo." 

The Physician: Medical Science and God

In the 11^th century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain. Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them, category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of further work. The film could have done more in this regard.

The full essay is at "The Physician." 

Hope Gap: A Critique of Institutional Religion

Organized or institutional religion as the Roman Catholic Church is in the background in the 2019 European film, Hope Gap. Even with such names as Grace and Angela, religious connotations are present. In fact, the film can be interpreted, at least in part, as a critique on religion in general and Catholicism in particular. The medium of film can indeed play a vital role in critiquing sacred cows from the vantagepoint of an oblique angle or a safe distance.

The full essay is at "Hope Gap."

The Master: A Religious Cult

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.

The full essay is at "The Master."

Pope Leo on the Cinema: A Distinctively Religious Role?

As “part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world,” Pope Leo spoke with actors and directors on November 15, 2025 about the ability of film “to inspire and unite.”[1] He spoke to the filmmakers about film itself as an art, and what it can do socially. What it can do in a distinctively religious sense was oddly left out. I submit that leaving out how film can contribute to spirituality wherein a transcendent is explicitly included, while instead discussing the social functions of film not only limits the potential of film, but also ironically marginalizes a significant potential of film ironically in the pope’s own field.

Speaking generically about the medium of film, Pope Leo stated that it “articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we didn’t know we needed to shed.”[2] There is nothing distinctively religious or spiritual about these features of movies. Two of the pope’s favorite movies, “Ordinary People” (1980), which was filmed in the pope’s hometown, Chicago, and “Life is Beautiful” (1997) are known for their psychological aspects: a family dealing with one son’s suicide and another family dealing with the Nazis in Europe. In fact, neither film includes anything religious or spiritual. Admittedly, since the works of Sigmund Freud were published, it has been tempting in Western culture to reduce religion to psychology, or to conflate the two distinct domains if they were the same. The increasing secularizing of North America and Europe in the twentieth century no doubt played a role in reconfiguring religion as it were isomorphic with another domain. Had the faculty and librarians at Harvard, including Larry Summers and Ben Friedman (both economists), not been so rude and even brazenly passive aggressive toward me while I was conducting research there on the category mistake by pulling the weeds out of the religious garden to find what lies underneath as the native fauna distinct to religion, I might have written a treatise on religion sui generis. At a certain age, however, a person can simply ask oneself, do I really want to contribute to the American academic academy? But I digress.

In his talk, the pope went so far as to make a political or cultural statement regarding the ability of film to not merely console, but also challenge people by including marginal voices. In its “noblest sense,” he said, the “popular art” of motion pictures is “intended for and accessible to all.”[3] Rather than urging theater-owners to charge poor people less, the pope was advocating that different points of view, presumably on social, economic, and even political matters, be included in screenplays. To be sure, such a function of film—to widen popular debates to include more perspectives—would be of great value to a society, given the phenomenon of “group-think,” which George Orwell discusses in his book, “1984,” and the self-interested strategies of business and political elites to artificially narrow what is debated to keep truly challenging perspectives from being aired.

Nevertheless, a religious leader overreaches in putting such an emphasis on secular, ideological concerns, including “affirming the social and cultural value” of people watching movies together in a movie theater without mentioning that high ticket prices keep out the poor and so they should instead be watching movies alone, assuming they have laptops and wifi. That the advent of computer technology has made an expensive ticket at a movie theater optional suggests that the pope’s nostalgia in addressing filmmakers in 2025 was partial, as is the case with any ideology. That he inadvertently put unneeded pressure on poor and even lower middle-class people to pay steep ticket-prices so they can be included in “uniting” with other people merely in being in a dark room together reacting similarly to scenes in a movie, supports my point that he should have stayed with his knitting, which is a saying in the book, In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman, whose main point is that companies should stick to what they are good at, rather than wander off in a Zhuangzian fashion into other lines of business to get more in profits as a Mohist would.  

The pope’s focus on matters that were not directly in his forte not only rendered him subject to correction, but also came with an opportunity cost in terms of the foregone benefit that a talk on the potential of film in theology or spirituality would have had instead. Even in saying that “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) and “The Sound of Music” (1964) were two of his other favorite films, the pope did not mention films among his favorites that are centered on religion, and even more surprisingly absent, on the Gospels in particular, such as “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), “Jesus” (1999), “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), “King of Kings” (1961), and even “The Nativity Story” (2006), "Mary" (2024), and “Ben-Hur” (1959). “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977), albeit a television mini-series though with an astounding cast, was undoubtedly formative for the pope, as he was a college student when the show first aired. I remember well watching that limited series as a boy. As a college student then, the pope would not have missed such a series.  I remember what the very religious college students in the years soon after the pope had graduated; they were very focused on their religious faith. One Baptist student curiously in ROTC used to come (uninvited) sometimes into my dorm room while I was studying at night to pray for me because my roommate was an evangelical Christian. This was nothing compared to the Calvinist cult I would encounter at Yale’s divinity school and then the “woke” cult at Harvard’s divinity school. But I digress (again).

I contend that Pope Leo missed an opportunity in 2025 to address filmmakers about how film can address theology, as well as related though distinct things like metaphysics, the supernatural, science, and morality. For example, theology in terms of two different interpretations of the Kingdom of God is salient in the film, “Mary Magdalene” (2018), especially when Mary and Peter debate two very different yet valid interpretations of what the Kingdom of God is. The question of the woman’s place among the disciples is an element of the film, but as Mary and Jesus are not romantically or sexually but only spiritually close, the feminist angle between Mary and the rest of the disciples is kept secondary. For the pope to have highlighted that angle, his take on contemporary culture could have eclipsed distinctly theological questions regarding the Kingdom of God. Even the Catholic Church’s stance against women becoming priests is not theological, and the closeness of Mary to Jesus in the film, plus The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, can inform that Church’s stance on that issue. But I digress (again).

Besides theology in and through film, how a character’s experience of distinctly religious (or spiritual) transcendence can be acted and depicted in a film visually would have been an excellent topic for the pope’s talk. That films have effectively portrayed two different realms, even simultaneously as in the film, “The Others" (2001), in a secular, otherworldly context, means that the medium of film could do a lot more when it comes to visually and verbally hinting at a distinctively religious or spiritual transcendent, which can be grasped (to a point) as something that is inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perspective, and emotion.[4] Ironically, religious leaders may be most useful in speaking to a secular audience by highlighting how the domain of religion is distinct, rather than in trying to be influential in secular, ideological terms. Pope Leo should have stuck to his knitting, for the potential of the art and medium of film in depicting spiritual and institutionally-religious matters is great, and on this point I most certainly do not digress.

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1. Nicole Winfield, “Pope Leo XIV Celebrates Cinema with Hollywood Stars and Urges Inclusion of Marginal Voices,” APNews.com, November 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. I am drawing here on the work of Pseudo-Dionysus, a late 6^th century Christian theologian who stressed the ineffability of God.

My Name is Bernadette

The film, My Name is Bernadette (2011), focuses, almost as an obsession, on the question of whether the girl “actually” saw the Virgin Mary in a series of visions at Lourdes. All too often, miracles are treated as ends in themselves, rather than as pointers to something deeper. Even the girl in the visual and auditory (albeit only to Bernadette) apparition identified itself only in terms of a supernatural miracle, the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception. I contend that Bernadette’s awe-inspiring spirituality visually conveyed on screen, and Monsignor Forcade’s spiritually-insightful advice to Bernadette as to her functions in her upcoming life as a nun is more important than the miracles, even from the standpoint of religion. In other words, the story-world of the film, which is based on the true story of Bernadette at Lourdes, is a good illustration of a what happens when everyone in a large group of people reduces religion to science and even metaphysics and misses the sui generis (i.e., unique) and core elements of religion. Such is the power of group-think that conflation of different, albeit related, domains of human experience can remain hidden in a societal blind-spot. Not even the film makes this blind-spot transparent.

The full essay is at "My Name Is Bernadette."

The Omen

Released in 1976, The Omen reflects the pessimism in America in the wake of the OPEC gas shortage and President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, both of which having occurred within easy memory of the two notable assassinations in 1968. Additionally, the drug culture had come out in the open in the anti-Vietnam War hippie sub-culture, and the sexual revolution, which arguably set the stage for the spread of AIDS beginning in the next decade, was well underway, both of which undoubtedly gave evangelical, socially-conservative Christians the sense that it would not be long until everything literally goes to hell. The film provides prophesy-fulfillment of a birth-narrative (i.e., myth) and a supernatural personality known biblically as the anti-Christ, who as an adult will set man against man until our species is zerstört. It is as if matter (the Christ) and anti-matter (the anti-Christ) finally cancel each other out at the end of time. Economically during the 1970s, inflation and unemployment were giving at least some consumers and laborers the sense of being in a jet trapped in a vertical, free-fall dive of stagflation that not even fiscal and/or monetary policy could divert. The pessimistic mood was captured in another way in another film, Earthquake (1974), in which a natural disaster plays off the mood of utter futility throughout the decade. It is no wonder that Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” resonated so much as a presidential-campaign slogan in 1979 as Jimmy Carter was mired in micro-management inside the White House.  The optimism of a resurgence in political energy overcame the decade’s sense of pessimism. That Damien, the anti-Christ in The Omen, survives the attempt on his life by Robert Thorn, his adoptive father resonates with that pessimism. Satan’s plan is still “game on” as the film ends, and this ending fits the mood in America during the decade. With this historical context contemporaneous with the film laid out, a very practical, manifestation of evil subtly depicted in the film and yet easily recognized by customers frustrated with corrupt and inept management of incompetent employees will be described in the context of pessimism from utter frustration. Such frustration survived the squalid decade of the 1970s at least decades into the next century.

The full essay is at "The Omen."

The Seventh Sign

Carl Schultz’s film, The Seventh Sign (1988), centers on the theological motif of the Second Coming, the end of the world when God’s divine Son, Jesus, returns to judge the living and even the dead. In the movie, Jesus returns as the wrath of the Father, which has already judged humanity as having been too sinful to escape God’s wrath. David Bannon, who is the returned Jesus in the film, is there to break the seven seals of the signs leading up to the end of the world, and to witness the end of humanity. Abby Quinn, the pregnant wife of Russell Quinn, asks David (an interesting name-choice, given that Jesus is of the House of David in the Gospel narratives) whether the chain (of signs) can be broken. How this question plays out in the film’s denouement is interesting from a theological standpoint. Less explicit, but no less theologically interesting, is what role humans can and should have in implementing God’s law. The film both heroizes and castigates our species.

The full essay is at "The Seventh Sign."

The Crow

Considering the amount of screentime devoted to raw violence, it may come as a surprise that The Crow (1994) is actually about love. Not that the film is about an abusive romantic relationship, for the respect that is necessary for love is instantly expunged as soon as violence enters into the equation. The infliction of violence is a manifestation of self-love in the sordid sense of self-idolatry, rather than of love that is directed to other people. So, it may be difficult to fathom how violence can serve love, and even be a manifestation of love, as The Crow illustrates.

The full essay is at "The Crow."

On Arjuna's Vision of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita

In chapter 11 of the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna reveals his real form to Arjuna. The chapter seems like a departure from the surrounding chapters, which focus on bhukti (i.e., devotion to Krishna). For example, in chapter 9, Krishna gives Arjuna the following imperative: “Always think of Me and become my devotee.” Unlike seeing the deity as he really is, sincere devotion to that which is based beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion is possible without being given “divine eyes.” The metaphysically, ontologically real is an attention-getter in the text, but it is the devotion, or bhukti, that is more important from a practical standpoint. Even theologically, the experience of transcendence, of which the human brain is capable, can be said to be more important than “seeing” divinity as it really is because the latter, unlike the former, lies beyond our grasp. In fact, seeing Krishna as he really exists is not necessary, for in chapter 10, Krishna says, “Here are some ways you can recognize and think of Me in the things around you [in the world].” This is yet another reason why the devotion rather than seeing Krishna as he really is, ontologically, should be the attention-getter in the Gita.

A movie focusing on chapter 11 would highlight special effects, and indeed at least one does this to gaudy excess, whereas a movie based on the compassion of Krishna and devotion of Arjuna would be a melodrama, at least if Ramakrishna, a Hindu mystic who lived in the nineteenth century, is any indication. His devotion was so intense that a guru allowed Ramakrishna to perform ritual as he intuited. I contend that this, rather than hoping to see the divine as it really is, ought to be the goal of a religious person.

Benkata Bhatta, speaking at a Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025, asked why, given that Krishna tells Arjuna when he is seeing Krishna as the deity really is, “Now see for yourself how everything in creation is within Me,” why does Arjuna request to see Krishna as the deity really is? Bhatta’s answer was that we are visual creatures. Hence, Jesus says in the Gospels, blessed are those who do not see me yet believe. Yet even in the case of Jesus, the incarnated Logos, he is not seen by even his disciples as the Word itself, by which God created the world. In contrast, Krishna is giving Arjuna a way of accessing something that is already there in front of us, only Arjuna needs divine eyes to see Krishna as the deity really is. Just before revealing Himself, Krishna tells Arjuna, “but you cannot see Me with our present eyes. Therefore, I give you divine eyes.” Although Jesus’s disciples do not see Jesus as the Logos, they do not need divine eyes to see Jesus ascending to heaven as resurrected. The resurrected body is itself at least how the incarnated Logos really is, even if it does not show the Logos as it is before being incarnated by God’s self-emptying, or lowering, of itself. Paul’s vision of Jesus, as well as that of the disciples when they see Jesus next to Elijah and Moses, can also be said to be transcendent and thus as Jesus really is, as incarnated. Nevertheless, it can be argued that seeing the Logos as it really is, sans being incarnated, requires “divine eyes.”

In his talk, Bhatta said that vision defies enumeration, and is brighter than “hundreds of thousands of suns.” All living being. No beginning, middle or end; without limit or boundaries. How can this be encapsulated in the vision?  A person would need divine eyes, which Krishna gives to Arjuna to see Krishna as that Supreme Person is. Simultaneous unity and unending multiplicity. Innumerable arms, faces, mouths, bellies, and many terrible teeth. This is, I submit, intentionally overwhelming, and this can be treated as an indication that being provided such a vision goes too far for us mere mortals.

 In The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto’s descriptors of terrifying, fancinating, mysterious pertaining to the human experience of the holy aptly describe Arjuna’s reaction to seeing Krishna. For instance, Arjuna says, “Oh great one, seeing this wondrous and terrible form. . . . Your many terrible teeth; and as they are disturbed, so am I. . . . my mind is perturbed by fear. I can no longer maintain my steadiness or equilibrium of mind.” Arjuna sees the soldiers on both sides, their heads smashed by Krishna’s teeth. He is bewildered, terrified, and humbled. “What are you?” Arjuna asks. Krishna answers, “Time (or death) I am, the great destroyer of all worlds.” This ontological basis of Krishna is the metaphysical basis of the Gita’s main ethical teaching for Arjuna, who is in a confused state ethically on whether to fight against some of his relatives on the battlefield in a civil war: death is already fated, so an instrument. Don’t worry about the ethics of killing your former teachers and even some of your relatives. Yet even as destiny exists, there is still space for free will. Arjuna can decide to walk away from the battlefield.

Arjuna calls Krishna the god of gods. Arjuna begs forgiveness for having been so informally friendly with the supreme deity. “You are my dear friend, but simultaneously you are so much greater than I am,” Arjuna now realizes. Krishna forgives Arjuna, and thus treats the latter as a friend. Arjuna says, “I am gladdened, but at the same time my mind is disturbed with fear . . .” According to Bhatta, Arjuna is grateful for being shown the divine vision, but is also afraid—too much so, in fact. The fear is making it difficult for Arjuna to love Krishna. So, Arjuna asks to see the four-armed Narayana form of Krishna. The four-arms reminds him that Krishna is the Supreme Person and yet is less terrifying. Krishna grants this wish. To encourage Arjuna, Krishna further withdraws to a two-armed human-like form. This is divinity seen as human-like, just as Jesus is the Logos in human form. Just as seeing the Logos as it is may be too terrifying for mere mortls, Arjuna tells Krishna, “Seeing this beautiful human-like form, now I am myself . . .” Krishna sympathizes with the confused warrior, saying during the vision, “this form of Mine you are now seeing is very difficult to behold. The form you are seeing you’re your transcendental eyes cannot be understood simply by studying the Vedas, or by undergoing serious penances, nor by charity, nor by worship.” Lest this line be construed as privileging the ontological vision over bhukti, Krishna goes on to say, “only by undivided devotional service can I be understood as I am, standing before you, and thus be seen directly. Only in this way can you enter into the mysteries of My understanding . . .”  Krishna appears to be saying that only by bhukti can He not only be understood as he is, but also seen, thus in a way that does not require divine eyes. To be sure, Arjuna is able to see Krishna in human form (i.e., with only two arms) differently after having seen the deity as He really is, but, according to Bhatta, the source of divine power is coming down to a loving relationship with Arjuna. Even though there is admittedly a power to having a healthy kind of fear if it facilitates a fuller, personal, intimate relationship, for otherwise such a relationship may be taken for granted, seeing Krishna as He really exists is not necessary to be even intensely devoted to the deity and even understanding and seeing the deity as it really is.

Therefore, reading the Gita as if the vision in chapter 11 is the most important part may be a mistake borne in part from the sensationalism of how the vision is described in the text. The descriptors theorized by Otto, especially that of tremendum, can and should be tempered, and this can be done by focusing on loving devotion instead of a vision of a deity as it really is. It is not as if we have divine eyes, whereas devotion to a transcendent entity or object is within our purview.

On the Ethics of Dispensational Pre-Millennialism

The Christian “belief in the ‘rapture’ of believers at the time of Jesus’ return to Earth is rooted in a particular form of biblical interpretation that emerged in the 19^th century. Known as dispensational pre-millennialism, it is especially popular among American evangelicals.”[1] This biblical interpretation is based on the following from one of Paul’s letters to a church:

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”[2]

Presumably the “trump of God” in the King James version of the Bible is distinct from Trump as God, for that eventuality would raise a myriad of questions and difficulties, and at least two difficulties pertain to the verse and, moreover, to dispensational pre-millennialism as a Christian doctrine. That it was constructed only recently by Christian standards raises the question of why the idea did not dawn on Christians closer to Paul’s time. That Paul does not represent himself in his letters as having met Jesus prior to the Resurrection and Paul’s use of mythological/Revelations language, such as “with the voice of the archangel,” also provide support for not taking the passage literally. After his resurrection in the Gospels, Jesus does not have the voice of an archangel. With Paul’s passage viewed figuratively or symbolically, rather than empirically and literally, the underlying religious meaning would of course remain unperturbed: keeping the faith is of value and thus in holding on to one’s distinctly religious (and Christian) faith, this strength will be vindicated even if no signs of this emerge during a person’s life. In other words, faith in vindication is part of having a religious faith, which is not limited our experience. The Resurrection itself can be construed as vindication with a capital V, regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead empirically and thus as a historical event. In fact, a historical account or claim is extrinsic to religious narrative even though the sui generis genre can legitimately make selective use of, and even alter, historical reports to make theological points. The writers of the Gospels would have considered this perfectly legitimate, given that they were writing faith narratives and not history books. Making this distinction is vital, I submit, to obviating the risk that one’s theological interpretations lead to supporting unethical state-actors on the world stage, such as Israel, which as of 2025 was serially committing genocidal and perhaps even holocaust crimes against humanity in Gaza. In short, the theological belief that supporting Israel will result in the Second Coming happening sooner than otherwise can be understood to be an unethical stance based on a category mistake. American Evangelical Christians may have been unwittingly enabling another Hitler for the sake of the salvation of Christians, while the Vatican stood by merely making statements rather than acting to help the innocent Palestinians, whether with food and medicine, or in actually going to Gaza’s southern border (or joining the flotilla) to protest as Gandhi would have done.

One problem with dispensational pre-millennialism itself is that predictors keep getting the date wrong, and this may be because a category mistake has been commonly committed between the faith-narrative genre and those of history and empirical science. Joshua Mhlakela, an African, whose dream in 2018 predicted that Jesus would return on September 23^rd or 24, 2025, obviously did not pan out, for I write this essay on September 25, 2025 and the Christians are still with us here below. That the Second Coming presumably comes at the end of time means that today should not exist, which would mean that I am not writing this essay (and you are not reading it). Lest we have slipped into a supercomputer’s Matrix, named after the famous solipsistic movie, other people had predicted the Second Coming, also without success. William Miller, a Baptist pastor, had read the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation and concluded that “Jesus would return sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When this date passed, he recalculated the date several times and finally landed on Oct. 22, 1844.”[3] Similarly, “Ellen G. White, a founder of the Seventh-day Adventist movement” and “Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted Jesus’ return in 1914. Over time, many others have attempted to predict Jesus’ Second Coming. Harold Camping’s 12 failed predictions being the most famous.”[4] Interestingly, all of these Christians had forgotten “Jesus’ own warning that no one knows the timing of this event (Matthew 24:36).”[5]

Moreover, I contend that applying calculation of empirical events from mythic language involves making a category mistake regarding qualitatively different domains. A person would not try to predict next year’s gross domestic product from calculations based on passages in Revelations, for example. Sometimes it’s easier to recognize category mistakes when they are made from the other direction.

Furthermore, Jesus not only says that no one but the Father (i.e., not even Jesus himself) knows when the last judgment will occur—and notice that Jesus is thus not omniscient by his own admission—but also that “this generation will not pass away” until the Son of Man will come “in the clouds with power and great glory.”[6] It is interesting that Jesus would make any prediction, since he is aware that only the Father knows, but, in any case, even this prediction is wrong. Such an uncomfortable conclusion points back to a conflation of history and myth, two distinct genres and domains, each with its own type of valid meaning that cannot be touched by the other domain even in overreaching.

Besides those problems, dispensational pre-millennialism can lead to rather unethical political and ethical stances. Many Christians “influenced by dispensationalism believe that the re-establishment of Israel and the return of the Jews to Palestine, especially since the 1920s, is a sign that the end is near. The centering of the re-establishment of Israel has important political implications, including unquestioned support for Israeli actions by many evangelicals.”[7] Conflating myth, such as is evinced by the Book of Revelations, and empirical, historical events can give rise to giving even a genocidal regime a blank slate and lots of military hardware. Both politically and ethically, even supporting Israel politically in 2025, when God was supposed to take humanity out of its self-imposed misery even in acting as bystanders, had become deeply problematic—especially ethically. In the Gospels, Jesus would obviously not encourage his disciples to support a genocidal regime even though he does not support the zealots acting against the Romans in the Gospel narratives. Giving what is Caesar’s (i.e., Roman coins) to the Romans does not mean actively supporting Rome. Were the imperator Romanorum to decide in the story to kill every Jew in Judea so to build Roman luxury resorts in and around the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus would likely urge turning the other cheek and loving the enemies rather than either helping them to kill Jews or fighting the Romans as they do so.

To respond to the humanity of those whom a person dislikes (or is disliked by), according to Samuel Hopkins, who was Jonathan Edwards protégé, is the essence of the Kingdom of God available here and now, rather than after a final judgment. In fact, choosing to value and incorporate in practice such a kingdom as Hopkins sketches survives any Jansenist, strict Augustinian, view of free-will as profoundly wounded by the Fall. Looking the other way, not to mention supporting politically, ideologically, or ethically a heinous regime that is starving and killing millions intentionally out of sheer hatred, even relegating the other as subhuman, whether Jews in Nazi Germany or Palestinians in Gaza nearly a century later, reflects how deplorable a human’s use of one’s free-will can be, post-lapsarian (i.e., due to original sin). Even given the mythic fall of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis, we are all responsible for how we use our free-will, even though it is tainted.

It may even be said that there is a special place in hell for Christians who look the other way on Israel’s extermination of the Gazans, as if all of them were culpable for Hama’s day of attack in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and a few hundred taken hostage by a subjugated people occupied by an apartheid regime. The doctrine of collective justice, which Yahweh, not human beings, apply to Israel in the Hebrew Bible, is in human hands nothing but a weaponized fallacy. To give this a blank slate because Israel’s existence empirically is requisite to the Second Coming even raises the question of whether the human brain is inherently compromised cognitively and ethically in relating the domains of ethics to religion/theology. It used to be asked whether atheists could be ethical. Perhaps the question has become whether pre-millennialist theists (i.e., evangelical Christians) can be ethical and politically responsible.

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1. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen,” MSNBC.com, September 25, 2025.
2. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (KJV)
3. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen."
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. This prediction is in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.
7. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen."

Mary

The film, Mary (2024), is pregnant with intimations of the theological implications of her unborn and then newly born son, Jesus. That story is of course well-known grace á the Gospels, and the theology of agape love associated with that faith narrative is at least available through the writings of Paul and many later Christian theologians. What we know of Mary is much less, given that her role in the Gospels is not central even though the heavy title, Mother of God, has been applied to her without of course implying that she is the source of God. The film, like the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has done, endeavors to “evolve the myth” by adding to Mary’s story even though the additions are not meant to be taken as seriously as, for example, the Catholic doctrine that Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The movie comes closest to the magisterium in suggesting that Mary’s birth is miraculous; the magisterium holds that Mary is born without sin, and that Jesus inherited this because of the Incarnation (i.e. God, rather than Joseph, impregnates Mary). Suffice it to say that the perception of myth as static is the exception rather than rule; it is natural for the human mind to work with myths such that they can evolve rather than take them as given in a final form or extent. This is not to say that we should focus on the faith narratives as if they were ends in themselves and thus unalterable; rather, as the film demonstrates, religious transcendence is of greater value.

The full essay is at "Mary."

On Presumptuous Pride: Netanyahu Castigates Europe

While conducting a genocide and even a holocaust in Gaza from 2023 through at least the summer of 2025, the Israeli government was in no position to launch diplomatic threats against either the E.U. or any of its states for recognizing a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state.[1] At the time, the warrants issued by the ICC for the arrest of Netanyahu and a former defense minister were still outstanding, and no doubt more warrants would be issued for other culprits in the Israeli government and military. I applaud Jews around the world, and especially in Israel, who have had the guts to protest publicly on behalf of human rights in Gaza and against Israel's savage militaristic incursion into Gaza and the related death of tens of thousands and starvation of millions. The human urge of self-preservation is astonishing in that as of August, 2025, so many residents of Gaza were still alive. So, for Netanyahu to charge government officials in the E.U. with being antisemitic is not only incorrect and unfair, but highly presumptuous given the severity of the atrocities unleashed by Netanyahu and his governmental cadre. Regarding both the Israeli protesters and the Netanyahu government, distinguishing the ethical from the theological domains, which are admittedly very much related, is helpful.

Any religion that would applaud the behavior of Israel since that country started bombing civilians (and their homes and even entire cities) in Gaza does not deserve the appellation of religion, much less faith. In the Torah, we can find examples where Yahweh punishes Israel for disobeying the covenant, which includes the Ten Commandments, which in turn include the prohibition against murder, especially of an entire population as if every resident were culpable.

Nietzsche castigates the line, "Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord," because it contradicts omnibenevolence, which is a divine attribute. Even so, Israel might want to heed the line, for even though collective justice does not apply outside of Israel, the Torah applies it to Israel. That Israel includes even the Israelis who have protested the genocide and holocaust in Gaza confirms the vital point that divine decrees in a scripture do not always subscribe to our notions of what is ethical, for otherwise Yahweh’s omnipotence would be constrained by our moral principles. Of course, this point does not give us an “out” for behaving unethically in harming other people, especially innocents, especially if in God’s name, and this is precisely the fallacy into which Netanyahu and his cadre as well as supporters have fallen, even if implicitly rather than consciously.

Put another way, in the Book of Exodus, not even the Hebrews who have not been worshipping the Golden Calf in the desert while Moses is on the mountain can enter the promised land for 40 years; all of Israel is being punished. Similarly, a divine decree against Israel for having broken the commandment against murder so severely would include even the Israelis who have publicly protested Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza (as well as his enabling of attacks by Israeli “settlers” against Palestinians in the occupied territories). That more Israelis could have stopped working and protested such that the Netanyahu governing coalition might change course or even collapse is not the point. Rather, my point here is that collective justice is unethical even when issued by a divine decree, so Israel’s collective punishment of all of the residents of Gaza cannot be justified, either in ethical terms or as if Netanyahu could issue divine decrees that transcend the ethical realm.

Furthermore, the Final Act in terms of Yahweh’s judgment is beyond Israel’s control, given that atrocities have already been committed, and the Christian unqualified (in both senses of this word!) enablers of Israel might remember this too. To presume that a Last Judgment goes your way, or does not apply to oneself, is impious and presumptuous, and in line with the pre-eminence of self-love rather than faith in caritas seu benevolentia universalis. It is ironic that any Christian would forget this very practical faith, and even enable people who violate it so severely. Similarly, it is interesting that the governing coalition of Israel would dismiss Hillel’s teaching not to treat others as you would not want to be treated. Take out the two nots, and Jesus’s Second Commandment is revealed. 

In other words, the means of supporting Israel’s teleological-theological role in salvation history should not violate divine decrees, or else the Final Judgement may come as a surprise because means are arguably just as important as goals. In fact, the choice of means, rather than the ends being sought (e.g., the triumph of Israel for theological purposes), may be what Yahweh looks at in judging human creatures. 

Even though the theological and ethical dimensions of means are important, and may even be more important to the ends being sought, a distinctly theological point does not reduce to one of ethics, for otherwise Yahweh would be subject to our ethical ideas, rather than vice versa. Even though it has been quipped that there is nothing like gods on Earth than Generals on a battlefield, not even their commander-in-chief is capable of issuing divine decrees, and thus should be held ethically and legally accountable; this is two degrees of separation from such a person as Netanyahu lashing out hate-speech slurs against government officials in Europe because they object to what is arguably a genocide and even a holocaust in Gaza and want to help the residents thereof.  

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1. Tal Shalev et al, “Israel Launches Diplomatic Attacks on Its Western Allies Ahead of Palestinian Statehood Recognition,” CNN.com, August 20, 2025.