Category: Religion

  • Saint Patrick in his own words

    Today is Saint Patrick’s day. And yet for a long time, all I had associated with this saint was his holiday, drunken green-clad revellers, the Irish, leprechauns, and a story about snakes. He was more of a cartoon figure than a man, a cheesy one-dimensional character not really much more credible than Santa Claus. But…

  • Is Amphiaraus a god?

    It’s not every day that you hear of a legal dispute about whether a certain divinity is or isn’t a god. This may be because our states – at least, Australia, the UK and the US – have no formal obligations towards gods, and will generally refuse to comment on the true divinity of a…

  • When Classics and Theology were the same subject

    Classicists are usually vaguely aware that the study of ancient literature is a very, very old field of research, and that it used to be merged with the study and exposition of Christian theology. It is rare, however, for a Classicist to actually come up against past scholarship and see firsthand what kind of work…

  • Ancient Atheism

    Ancient Atheism

    We take atheism for granted today; the ancients took theism for granted. Of course, that’s a sweeping generalisation. But the first part holds true for most university students today, and it has often led students to assume that the greatest ancient philosophers, politicians and authors were atheists at heart too. That is, until they find…

  • To be deep in history

    To be deep in history

    “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” Sometimes, I just feel like a wayward Protestant sticking her nose a little too much into the ancient, way-more-Catholic-than-Protestant, world. Why would a Protestant even read history prior to the sixteenth century? Wasn’t that a time of “Great Apostacy”?