The Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian Faith. Here are 12 things to know and share . . .
The Church teaches that the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian Faith.
But how much do you know about this mystery?
What is its history?
What does it mean?
And how can it be proved?
Here are 12 things to know and share . . .
1. Where does the word “Trinity” come from?
It comes from the Latin word trinitas, which means “three” or “triad.” The Greek equivalent is triados.
2. When was it first used?
The first surviving use of the term (there may have been earlier uses that are now lost) was around A.D. 170 by Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote:
In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity [Τριάδος], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man [To Autolycus 2:15].
3. What is the Trinity?
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way:
The Church expresses her trinitarian faith by professing a belief in the oneness of God in whom there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The three divine Persons are only one God because each of them equally possesses the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature.
They are really distinct from each other by reason of the relations which place them in correspondence to each other.
The Father generates the Son; the Son is generated by the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son [CCCC 48].
4. Is the Trinity the central mystery of the Christian Faith?
Yes. The Compendium explains:
The central mystery of Christian faith and life is the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity.
Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [CCCC 44].
Did Pope Francis recently say that atheists can get to heaven by "good works"? Or was he talking about something else entirely?
Color me annoyed.
The press has been going nuts about remarks concerning atheists that Pope Francis made at one of his daily homilies.
As usual, the press is hyping the remarks as if they are earthshaking, unprecedented, and in contrast to mean ol’ Pope Emeritus Benedict.
I know this will come as a shock, but . . . they’re getting the story wrong.
Here’s the story . . .
Daily Homilies
Let’s start with the context in which Pope Francis made the remarks: One of his homilies at daily Mass, celebrated in St. Martha’s House (where he lives).
Pope Francis is in the habit of saying daily Mass for the people at St. Martha’s House and invited guests, and when he does so he gives an off-the-cuff homily (rather than reading from a prepared text).
This is actually something new.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not do this. They did not celebrate daily Mass as publicly as Pope Francis, and they did not have daily homilies published in this way. Instead, they occasionally delivered prepared homilies at public Masses on special occasions, and only these were published. As a result, if you look at the Vatican web site, there are surprisingly few homilies listed in their sections!
As a result, the Vatican web people aren’t scaled up for this volume of homilies, and–MADDENINGLY–you can’t find complete texts of Pope Francis’s daily ones on the site.
They, apparently, aren’t running these homilies through “the usual process,” which involves transcribing what the pope says in off-the-cuff remarks, showing him the transcript so that he can revise it if needed, and then translating and publishing them.
As a result, we’re not getting complete transcripts of these homilies, only partial ones, such as those carried by Vatican Radio.
And that, right there, is a problem. It drives me nuts, because these homilies contain interesting information, but I hesitate to comment on anything for which I don’t have a complete text.
As they say, a text without a context is a pretext. Without seeing the full text, we run the risk of misunderstanding.
The Homily in Question
On Wednesday, Pope Francis gave a homily based on the Gospel reading of the day (Mark 9:38-40), in which the disciples have told a man to stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name because he doesn’t follow along with them.
The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.”
“This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.”
Pope Francis first applies this principle to non-Catholics in general, engaging in dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor:
“‘But, Father, this [person] is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. . . .
“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:
“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!
So far so good: Christ redeemed all of us, making it possible for every human to be saved.
What About Atheists?
Now we get to the subject of atheists, as the imaginary interlocutor asks:
“‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good.”
Here is where “the usual process” might be helpful in clarifying the pope’s thought. Everyone, when speaking off-the-cuff, encounters occasions where things could be further clarified, and this may be one of them.
We can be called children of God in several senses. One of them is merely be being created as rational beings made in God’s image. Another is by becoming Christian. Another sense (used in the Old Testament) is connected with righteous behavior. And there can be other senses as well.
Here Pope Francis may be envisioning a sense in which we can be called children of God because Christ redeemed us, even apart from embracing that redemption by becoming Christian.
This, however, was not what caught the press’s eye.
Pope Francis continued:
“And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.”
Nothing particularly controversial here.
But then comes this, as the imaginary interlocutor says:
“‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Where Is “There”?
The press latched onto this, taking the phrase “we will meet one another there” as a reference to heaven.
They then inferred that the pope was saying that if atheists merely “do good” then they will go to heaven.
This, in turn, alarmed some in the Protestant community, who thought that the pope was saying that atheists can get to heaven by “good works.”
We can deal with the possibility of salvation for atheists in another post, but first we need to ask a question . . .
Was Pope Francis Even Talking About Heaven?
If so, you wouldn’t know it from the transcript of what he said.
Let’s back up a bit. Remember, Pope Francis was just talking about the duty to do good:
“And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace.”
So if everyone does good, we have a path toward peace. That’s the goal.
“If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.
Note the parallelism between the phrases. Pope Francis is talking about a path “toward peace” and wants us to “meet there” by doing our part and doing good so that we build “that culture of encounter” and “meet one another doing good.”
He’s not talking about heaven at all.
He’s talking about earth.
It’s in that context that he has the imaginary interlocutor say:
‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’
And he replies:
“But do good: we will meet one another there.”
What he’s saying is that even atheists need to do good on earth to build their part of the culture of encounter that promotes peace and allows people to “meet together” in harmony.
At least that’s what appears from a careful reading of the text.
Another translation, found in The Guardian (of all places), better conveys the idea:
“Even them, everyone,” the pope answered, according to Vatican Radio. “We all have the duty to do good,” he said.
“Just do good, and we’ll find a meeting point,” the pope said in a hypothetical reply to the hypothetical comment: “But I don’t believe. I’m an atheist.”
Text Without Context
Remember that saying I mentioned earlier, that a text without a context is a pretext for misunderstanding?
This is why.
This is exactly why.
And it is why I am so annoyed that we aren’t getting the full text of Pope Francis’s daily homilies.
Of course, even with the context we had at hand, which clearly suggests that Pope Francis wasn’t talking about meeting atheists in heaven but meeting with them in fraternity and peace here on earth, that didn’t stop the press from getting it wrong.
Wouldn’t it be great if scientists invented a device that would let us look into the past and see it with our own eyes? Guess what! They have!
Wouldn’t it be great if scientists invented a device that enabled us to have a clear window into the past–so that we wouldn’t just have to read about the past in books?
Instead, with the new device–let’s call it a Time Window–we could actually see events occurring in the past in real time, with our own eyes.
That would be wicked awesome, wouldn’t it!?
The exciting news is that scientists have invented this device!
That’s right! The Time Window is real!
What’s more, they invented it just over 400 years ago, so they’ve had the chance to mature the technology to the point that now it’s really, really good.
For comparison, imagine how good an iPhone would be today if Steve Jobs had invented the first one 400 years ago.
The only problem is that they missed a great marketing opportunity.
Instead of calling it the Time Window ™ they gave it a much more boring name . . . the telescope.
How the Time Window Works
The reason that the Time Window–er, telescope–lets us look into the past and see it with our own eyes is that it takes time for light to reach our eyes. The speed of light is not infinite.
Technically, this means that any time you see anything, you are technically witnessing something that happened in the past.
Since light travels so fast, however, if you see someone across the room pick up an iPhone, that happened only the tiniest fraction of a second ago. In fact, you started seeing it while it was still happening. That’s not long enough ago to make it an exciting glimpse into history.
But things get more interesting when you take a telescope and point it at something really distant.
By Jove!
For example, back in 1609, Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the planet Jove–er, Jupiter–and discovered that by it there were several moons.
Now the thing is, depending on where Earth and Jupiter are in their orbits, Jupiter is between 33 and 54 light minutes away from Earth.
Let’s just say it’s an average of 44 light minutes away for the sake of simplicity.
That means, it takes 44 minutes for the light from Jupiter to reach an astronomer on Earth.
So when Galileo looked at Jupiter through his telescopes and saw its moons, he was seeing where those moons were 44 minutes ago.
He was viewing actual history that occurred 44 minutes in the past!
Woo-hoo!
Party Like It’s 1879!
The same thing keeps happening when you look further out.
Back in 2008, scientists used one of their spiffy modern telescopes to capture the light in this image . . .
This is an image of the solar system HR 8799.
It’s got a single star in the middle, and we can see that it has at least three planets orbiting it.
What’s more, it’s 129 light years away from Earth.
This is an image of where those planets were in the year that the apparition at Knock, Ireland took place, that the California Constitution was ratified, and that Thomas Edison unveiled incandescent light to the public.
It’s an image of things happening in that year.
Now let’s look really far into the past . . .
An Earth-Shattering Ka-Boom
Also in 2008, astronomers captured an image of a supernova known as SN 2008D.
Here’s a time-lapse image of the supernova happening, both in x-rays and visible light. Take a moment and watch it:
Hoo-eee! It blowed up real good! (Particularly in x-rays.)
Now here’s the thing: SD 2008D is in the galaxy NGC 2770, which is in the constellation Lynx.
It’s also 88,000,000 (88 million) light years away.
That means that when you’re watching the supernova explode in the images above, You Are Watching an Event That Took Place 88 Million Years in the Past.
That’s right. Dinosaurs were roaming the earth when this event took place. It was the middle of the Cretaceous Era.
So What’s This Have to Do with God?
Historically, many people have thought that the universe was only a few thousand years old, based on the most common understanding of Genesis.
Modern science has suggested that it is much, much older.
If the above picture reveals an event that took place 88,000,000 years ago, then the view that the universe is only a few thousand years old can’t be right.
So what alternatives does we have in resolving this situation?
Here are three . . .
Option 1: We’re Really, Really Wrong
One option would be to say that we are really–desperately–wrong in our understanding of science today.
Either light doesn’t travel at the speed we think it does or SN 2008D isn’t as far away as we think it is–or something.
This cannot be ruled out on theoretical grounds. The best scientific thought of the day has turned out to be really, really wrong before.
But how likely is this?
At this point we seem to have very, very good evidence about the age and dimensions of the cosmos, about how fast light travels and how far away things like supernovas are.
Option 2: God Is Showing Us Fictions
Another option would be to say that, when the world began a few thousand years ago, God created light already en route from what appeared to be more distant galaxies.
If that’s the case, then any event we see that appears to be happening more than a few thousand light years away is a fiction.
Beyond a certain point, we’re watching God’s Imaginary Astronomy Show.
Mixed in with God’s Real Astronomy Show that’s taking place closer to home.
Hmmm.
That doesn’t seem consistent with God’s Truthfulness.
At a minimum, an advocate of this view would need to provide an explanation for why God would do this, why it wouldn’t be inconsistent with his Truthfulness.
Some have tried to mount such an explanation by saying that God created the world with an “appearance of age,” the same way that he created Adam and Eve as full-grown adults rather than babies.
That is the way Genesis seems to depict the creation of our first parents, since they are both apparently created on Day 6 of the creation week in Genesis 1, and since they are married as soon as Eve is created in the second creation narrative in Genesis 2.
If you think that God used evolution to make the bodies of the first humans (of course, he made their souls directly and immediately) then this issue doesn’t arise–at least not in the same way.
But what if you think that God literally created an adult Adam out of earth and an adult Eve out of Adam’s side? Does that provide much support for the “appearance of age” explanation of distant astronomical events?
I have never thought so.
It’s always seemed to me that, if God were to directly create the first humans as adults, there would be a very good reason for that–namely: Babies Cannot Take Care of Themselves.
Without the presence of other humans–or near-humans–to take care of our first parents, they would need to be adults (or at least teens). Either that, or God would have to run his own, direct daycare service, and Genesis doesn’t suggest that he did.
So I can see a reason why God would make the first humans as adults. That’s because of the incapacity to care for themselves that human infants have.
But that doesn’t give us any reason why God would need to plant false dinosaur bones in the ground or false astronomical images in the sky, let alone mix them up with real ones.
He could have just let God’s Real Astronomy Show play in the sky each night.
The sky wouldn’t have had quite as much stuff in it each night, but it would all have been true stuff.
Option 3: God’s Word in the Heavens and in the Bible Is True
The best approach would seem to be the classic one of saying that God’s word in nature and God’s word in the Bible are both true.
They have to be understood in harmony with each other.
Thus if we have good evidence from God’s word in nature that the universe is quite old then that helps shed light on the meaning of God’s word in the Scriptures.
This is the approach taken by the Catholic Church.
Concerning the creation narrative in Genesis 1, John Paul II stated:
Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest [General Audience, Jan. 29, 1986].
And the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man.
These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers.
With Solomon they can say: “It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.
And:
337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day.
On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”
Having said that, I’m looking forward to seeing more events from distant history–with my own eyes–through the amazing Time Window! (Er, telescope.)
Since it was proposed by Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Big Bang has been common in discussions of the existence of God.
The reasons are obvious. The Big Bang looks like a plausible beginning for the physical universe. Things that begin need causes. The beginning of the physical universe would need a cause, which would seem to lie outside the physical universe. This coheres well with the Christian claim that God is a non-physical being who created the physical universe.
The argument has been elaborated various ways, but that’s the basic idea.
It’s basically a version of the Kalaam cosmological argument that uses evidence from modern cosmology to support the premise that the universe had a beginning.
It even resonates with the “Let there be light” moment in Genesis.
I think that there is a proper role for the Big Bang in discussions of God’s existence, but it has to be used with some caution.
Here’s why . . .
“Let There Be Light”?
One temptation is to identify the Big Bang not just as the moment of creation but specifically as the creation of light in Genesis 1. That’s problematic because Genesis does not portray the creation of light as the moment the world came into existence. Let’s look at the text:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
In the text, the earth already exists in a formless and empty state, with a deep of waters that has a surface, which the Spirit of God hovers over. Then light gets created.
So Genesis depicts the creation of light happening when the heavens and the earth and its waters already exist. At least that is how the text depicts it. You can argue that this isn’t to be taken literally, but that only makes the same point another way: We shouldn’t be too quick to identify the Big Bang with the creation of light in Genesis. We have to be careful about mapping Genesis onto modern cosmology.
In fact, Pope John Paul II warned specifically against trying to draw scientific conclusions from the creation account in Genesis 1:
Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest [General Audience, Jan. 29, 1986].
The Moment of Creation?
There is another thing we need to be careful about, which is identifying the Big Bang as the moment of the physical universe came into existence.
It may well have been. I would love for us to find a way to prove that scientifically.
But we’re not there at present.
We just don’t understand it. The evidence shows that it happened, but not why it happened. We have very little clue about that scientifically—and there may well be no scientific answer. It may be that God just did it, and did it in a way not susceptible to scientific study.
But that’s not the only option. There are others that cannot presently be ruled out on scientific grounds. For example, the visible universe we see today may have budded off of a larger universe that we cannot see, and the moment it budded off may have been the Big Bang. There are other options, too.
Implications
If we one day get solid evidence of something physical existing before the Big Bang, what would the implications be?
From the viewpoint of the Christian faith, if there was a physical universe before the Big Bang then it would mean that God created the universe—from nothing—even farther back in time than we can currently see.
From the viewpoint of discussions of God’s existence, it would mean that one of the premises in the Kalaam cosmological argument would lose its scientific support–unless, of course, new science pointed to a beginning even further back. (And there are those who have argued on scientific grounds that the universe cannot extend back infinitely far in time.)
Losing scientific support from the Big Bang would not disprove the existence of God. It wouldn’t even disprove the Kalaam cosmological argument. It would just mean that the premise in question would have to be supported some other way.
If it were to turn out that the Big Bang was not the beginning of the physical universe then this argument in apologetics would have to be revised.
That’s nothing to be ashamed of, though. Apologetics, like the physical sciences, is subject to revision based on the evidence available at the time.
Plans are afoot, though, for a new set of scientific projects that may let us discern something about the state of the universe before the Big Bang (if there was one). More info here.
It will be interesting to see what the results of these are.
For now, though, the Big Bang still looks like the beginning of the physical universe, and it has a legitimate place in discussions of God’s existence.
It just should not be presented as if we had absolute proof of creation in time, because we don’t.
That’s something that Pius XII pointed out in his 1951 speech.
While hailing the discovery of the Big Bang, he also cautioned that “the facts established up to the present time are not an absolute proof of creation in time, as are the proofs drawn from metaphysics and revelation.”
So, while the idea of the Big Bang is consistent with the idea that the universe was created a finite time ago, and while the Big Bang may be that moment of creation, we should not present this as if it were definitively established.
The divinity of the Holy Spirit was infallibly defined at the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, but not everyone accepts the fact that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person–one of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the Holy Spirit is merely God’s “energy” or “active force.”
In this video, Jimmy Akin shows a simple and surprising way that you can use the Bible to show both that the Holy Spirit is a Person and that he is a divine Person, alongside the Father and the Son.
Where did the feast of Pentecost come from, what happened on it, and what does it mean for us today? Here are 8 things to know and share . . .
The original day of Pentecost saw dramatic events that are important to the life of the Church.
But where did the feast of Pentecost come from?
How can we understand what happened on it?
And what does it mean for us today?
Here are 8 things to know and share about it . . .
1. What does the name “Pentecost” mean?
It comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth” (pentecoste). The reason is that Pentecost is the fiftieth day (Greek, pentecoste hemera) after Easter Sunday (on the Christian calendar).
This name came into use in the late Old Testament period and was inherited by the authors of the New Testament.
2. What else is this feast known as?
In the Old Testament, it is referred to by several names:
The feast of weeks
The feast of harvest
The day of first-fruits
Today in Jewish circles it is known as Shavu`ot (Hebrew, “weeks”).
It goes by various names in different languages.
In England (and English), it has also been known as “Whitsunday” (white Sunday). This name is presumably derived from the white baptismal garments of those recently baptized.
3. What kind of feast was Pentecost in the Old Testament?
In World War II, some people lied to protect Jewish individuals and save their lives. Was this right? Here's some information you might want to be aware of.
Back during World War II, some people lied to save Jewish lives.
More recently, Lila Rose has used undercover tactics to expose Planned Parenthood.
At issue is the question of whether it is every okay to lie, particularly when you’re trying to save lives.
We live in a violent world, and the issue keeps coming up in human history.
Here is some information you might want to be aware of involving Pope Francis.
On the One Hand
Before we get to the Pope Francis material, we should note that there is a strong view in the history of Catholic thought that says lying of any kind, for any reason, is always wrong.
This view has been endorsed by some of the biggest names in Catholic theology, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
There have been other views proposed as well, though they have not been the majority view, and it does not appear that the Magisterium has infallibly settled the question.
Indeed, the original edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church contained a definition of lying that seemed to endorse a proposal made some decades ago that restricted what countes as a lie to telling a falsehood with the intent to deceive a person who had the right to know the truth.
If this was lying in the technical sense, then it would imply that some cases of lying in the broader, everyday sense (telling a falsehood with the intent to deceive, without specifying whether the deceived person has a right the truth) would not be morally wrong. Some such acts could, potentially, be justified if the person to whom the (broad-sense) lie was told had no right to the truth.
The fact that the original edition of the Catechism included this statement is a notable indicator that the matter has not been infallibly settled, and advocates of the lying-is-always-wrong view should bear in mind that the history of the question is not uniform and does not appear to be infallibly settled.
On the Other Hand
Although the original edition of the Catechism seemed to endorse the restricted view of what counted as lying, they changed it.
Now the relevant passage defines lying this way:
To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error [CCC 2483].
(Remember the “or act” part. It’s going to be important.)
When the Holy See released the changes to the original edition of the Catechism, they did so without commentary, and so Catholic moral theologians have tried to discern the significance of this change.
Was the Holy See endorsing the historical majority view? Or was it simply not wanting to endorse restricted view and defaulting to a more general formulation of the kind one would expect in a catechetical text, leaving the technical questions to the experts to hash out over time, under the guidance of the Magisterium?
Whichever was the case, the publication of this new wording would not constitute an infallible determination of the issue any more than the publication of the original wording of the Catechism did.
Indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger was at pains to explain that the treatment of a subject in the Catechism does not change the weight the Magisterium assigns to a particular teaching.
Whatever weight it had before the publication of the Catechism, that it is the weight it had afterwards.
However, advocates of the lying-is-sometimes-not-wrong view should bear in mind that the historical majority position andat least the wording in the current edition of the Catechism is against them.
Part of the Problem
Part of the problem here is that we are torn between two powerful intuitions.
On the one hand, we have a powerful intuition–planted in human nature by God himself–that lying is wrong.
That’s a human universal. It appears in every culture. Indeed, cultures could not even form among people who didn’t have the level of mutual trust that the anti-lying ethic is meant to foster.
On the other hand, we also have an intuition that in some cases deceiving another person is not wrong, particularly when that person is an aggressor and the stakes are high.
Thus police officers adopt ruses when trying to catch criminals. Spies do it to serve their nations. Military forces do it to achieve victory on the battlefield.
How precisely these two intuitions–the need to tell the truth and the need to save lives–are to be squared is something too complex to go into here.
I will not be proposing any solutions to this question, and I await further guidance from the Magisterium.
However, I would like to call the reader’s attention to some material that has recently become available in English.
What do baby names tell us about the reliability of the Gospels?
Suppose, one day, you’re reading a historical account of life in Alaska in the 1920s and one of the main characters in the account is named Sting.
“That’s surprising,” you think.
Suppose that Sting is portrayed as married to a woman named Oprah.
“That’s improbable,” you recognize.
Then you read that Sting has a brother named Spock.
You say to yourself: “Okay. Something is wrong here.”
What is it? And what does all this have to do with the gospels?
You might be surprised, but the names of the figures mentioned in the gospels actually provide evidence that they’re true.
Here’s the story . . .
The basic problem
Fundamentally, the problem in our starting example is that the names “Sting,” “Oprah,” and “Spock” do not sound like they come from Alaska in the 1920s.
They sound like the names of pop culture figures from the second half of the 20th century (the 1960s and after, certainly).
There is no way that these names would be plausible in an account of what life was like in Alaska between 1920 and 1929.
Your recognition of this fact shows that you know something about the names that were common at this time–and that you can spot false reports of them.
So what about the gospels?
Linguists have devoted a lot of study to the question of how parents choose the names of their babies.
It’s a regular feature of textbooks on linguistics.
There are definite–but usually unnoticed–patterns to how babies are named.
But the actual ways they are named reveal what is on their parents’ minds–or at least what’s going on in their subconsciouses.
Now here’s the thing: Recently scholars have been looking at the frequencies with which names occurred in ancient Jewish sources, both inside and outside of Palestine, in the centuries before and after Christ.
The "Third Secret" of Fatima is the most famous private revelation of the 20th century. Here are 9 things to know and share with friends about it . . .
The apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima are famous for the three-part “secret” they conveyed.
Of these, the “third secret” is the most famous, because it was kept confidential at the Vatican for many years.
Only a few popes and a select few others read it–until the year 2000, when Pope John Paul II published it for the whole world to read.
Here are 9 things to know and share with friends about it . . .
NOTE: We’ve already looked at the apparitions at Fatima in general and at the first two parts of the secret. For information on that, you should click here.
1) What is the third part of the secret or “third secret”?
Here is what Sr. Lucia wrote:
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’
And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the holy father’.
Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.
Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God [The Message of Fatima[MF], “Third Part of the ‘Secret'”].
2) What does the secret refer to?
In a letter to John Paul II date May 12, 1982, Sr. Lucia wrote:
“The third part of the secret refers to Our Lady’s words [in the second part of the secret]: ‘If not, [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated’ (13-VII-1917)” (MF, Introduction).
In general terms, then, the third part of the secret refers to the twentieth-century conflict between the Church and Communist Russia.
3) What does the angel with the flaming sword symbolize?
On May 13, 1917, the three "little shepherds" received a powerful revelation from Our Lady of Fatima. Here are 9 things to know and share with friends . . .
May 13 is the optional memorial of Our Lady of Fatima.
Fatima is the most prominent approved apparition of the 20th century.
It became famous the world over, particular for its three “secrets.”
The third and final secret was kept in the Vatican for many years, but in 2000, it was released to the world by John Paul II.
Here are 9 things to know and share with friends . . .
1) What happened at Fatima, Portugal?
A young shepherd girl, Lucia dos Santos, said that she experienced supernatural visitations as early as 1915, two years before the famous appearances of the Virgin Mary.
In 1917, she and two of her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, were working as shepherds tending their families’ flocks. On May 13, 1917, the three children saw an apparition of Our Lady. She told them, among other things, that she would return once a month for six months.
At Our Lady’s third appearance, on July 13, Lucia was shown the secret of Fatima. She reportedly turned pale and cried out with fear, calling Our Lady by name. There was a thunderclap, and the vision ended.
The children again saw the Virgin on September 13. In the sixth and final appearance, on October 13, a dramatic outward sign was given to those gathered to witness the event. After the clouds of a rainstorm parted, numerous witnesses—some as far as 40 miles away—reported seeing the sun dance, spin, and send out colored rays of light.
2) What happened after the main apparitions?
As World War I raged across Europe, an epidemic of Spanish flu swept the globe. It erupted in America and was spread by soldiers being sent to distant lands. This epidemic killed an estimated twenty million people.
Among them were Franciso and Jacinta, who contracted the illness in 1918 and died in 1919 and 1920, respectively. Lucia entered the convent.
On June 13, 1929, at the convent chapel in Tuy, Spain, Lucia had another mystical experience in which she saw the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin. Mary told her:
“The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father in union with all the bishops of the world to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means” (S. Zimdars-Schwartz, Encountering Mary, 197).
On October 13, 1930, the bishop of Leiria (now Leiria-Fatima) proclaimed the apparitions at Fatima authentic and worthy of assent.
