The Christian Vanguard

Just about all Protestants believe that the Eucharist is just a symbol, meaning, it has no real or literal significance. A flag may symbolize a country, but it is not the country itself. In the same way, Protestants believe that the Eucharist is a symbol of Christ's body, but is not Christ's body itself. It is not the real body of Christ, or it is not the literal body of Christ. If this is what Protestants want to claim, then they can have absolutely no support from the Church Fathers, nor could they in principle. The reason is because this view of the Eucharist is anachronistic, that is to say, it assumes a metaphysical view of symbols, namely nominalism, that didn't exist at the time and wasn't commonplace until the 16th and 17th century.  The Church Fathers tended to be Platonists, which is a kind of realism. Nominalism is an anti-realism. Platonism is not only a kind of realism, but on the more extreme part of the realism spectrum, which is why Platonism is som...

Just finished watching this dcoumentary on Netflix. I recommend it.  I have positive things to say about it, and some critical things to say about it.  I agree with the general premise, that life's meaning doesn't come from certain goods or consuming certain goods, and that there is a culture out there that does kind of push us into there. The movie wants to call it "consumerism" but I think that's too cliche and doesn't really capture the nuances they themselves put forth later throughout the movie. I would just call debauchery. There is a culture of debauchery that does need to be resisted. I also like that they do explain that there isn't anything wrong with consumption per se (they make a great point that consumerism is anti-materialist because it devalues material goods by making them so dispensable), and so avoids a lot of the left leaning anti-capitalist messages out there that try to pontificate the same point. It does flirt with that me...

I had a friend complain about the electoral college, and I responded. It's long, and I want to share it with my readers here. My friend says, "[The electoral college] was only put in there because education was limited and they didn't want backwoods people to pick a psycho for President (too late). Now that everyone can read and has access to education it should be removed. What's the point of an election if your vote doesn't matter in the end? Why not just have the rich decide since we've become more of an oligarchy anyways." I don't think the electorate college was put in place because people were uneducated, and if you think so I'd like to see a citation, but rather because we never wanted a direct democracy in the first place. And the reason we don't want a direct democracy is because it is a direct threat to liberty, and liberty is one of the highest principles in the country, and the founding fathers believed an electoral college ...

I love watching movies, but there is a lot of garbage out there. I think it is important to watch movies, if one wishes to be a Christian engaged in culture. More people watch movies than read a novel these days I think, so watching a movie is part of being culturally literate. Sure, there are movies that are meant to just entertain you, like Transformers , and I am not interested in those. What I am interested in are movies that might interest the philosophically inclined, or may encourage the layman to think about philosophical issues. I'll list some of my favorites down below, but as time rolls on, I'll add some more.

I love a good fight in a hotly debated controversy. It keeps me sharp and I often learn things. Some have taken note on my silence concerning what is perhaps the most important contemporary controversy within the Church, which is,

Some of my libertarians friends will say that whatever the state has the power to do, it is able to do so because it threatens to shoot you. This is too simplistic, and probably false.

In just about every talk I hear on transgenderism, talks that try to normalize the disorder, there is a preemptive argument that genitals don't determine who or what you are. I heard it recently here , and the way he phrased it, as "genitalifying", makes me want to say something about this very common argument.  The most important point to be made is that this is a straw-man. We do not say that because you have a penis, you are a man, or because you have a vagina, you are a female. And I would press any critic to actually cite a philosopher who argues this. You probably won't find it in those terms. This is what you probably will find, and is what has been said for a very long time and is not criticized by those who want to normalize madness, which is, a male is that which has the power to reproduce actively, and a female is that which has the power to reproduce passively.  This is a better definition because it helps classify what things are, not just in hum...