The Christian Vanguard

Someone on Facebook asked me why I think contraception is immoral. This is what I wrote. When asked, “Why think contraception is wrong” we should lay out what our metaethical theory is. What is it that makes a thing wrong in the first place? St. Paul employs the Natural Law approach to ethics in Romans 1:26-27 when he writes, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that when men and women exchange their natural desires for unnatural ones, they do something vile, and they commit a shameless error. So, St. Paul is using basic Natural Law to explain the condemnation of homosexuality. But St. Paul doesn’t explicate the underlying metaphysics, so, allow me to do so. Why is it that when something is unnatural, it is wrong? It has to do with two metaphysical commitments within the Natural Law, first is essences, and the second is teleology. An essence is what makes a thing the kind of thing it is. It is in the essence, or definition, of a triangle to have three sides. It is in the essence o...

A Protestant friend sent me this question. I give my answer. "I was wondering if you could help me with something. I've recently become more appreciative of liturgy and I'm wondering if it may be a beneficial aspect of our walks with God that Protestants have done away with too quickly. My question is, how sincere are you being when you recite prayers, and how often do you pray when you are not reciting a scripted prayer? I feel like these recitation could help me and my family, but I want to make sure I do it right. Hope that makes sense." My answer.  "I'm being fairly sincere. But there are aspects of these prayers that I really appreciate that I didn't get from the freestyle kind of prayers as a Protestant, namely, meditation. Not only are you supposed to be sincere, but part of the structured prayer is to help one meditate on the truths within the prayer. So not only do these pre formed prayers lift up your heart, but they also lift up your mind and i...

 When one looks around the world, we see that animals are sexed. Dogs, cats, chickens, and humans. And we are able to pick out what it means to be sexed, which is basically the mode of reproduction. Male dogs, cats, and humans are all male in a univocal way. But need this be so? Could it be that an animal could be of no sex whatsoever? This is difficult to maintain for the simple reason that to be non-sexed is to be able to reproduce. And to be of the kind that does not reproduce means you will not exist. So, it seems like all animals must be sexed.  I mention this because I've come across an interesting passage from St. Thomas on whether Christ needed to be sexed. He says, "Yes." In Volume 3 of his commentary on the Sentences , distinction 12, question 3, he writes, "Christ came to restore (or redeem) human nature by his very assumption; and for this reason it was necessary that he assume everything following upon human nature, namely, all the properties and parts o...

I want to compare two personalities: Rush Limbaugh and Ravi Zacharias. Both were loved and hated intensely by many people. Both were involved in the public sphere. Both were involved in an arena where emotions can run high. Both wrote books. Both were heard on air. Both had speaking engagements. And both battled with sin. One with sexual perversion, and the other with drugs. But Rush made his sin public, and publicly repented. He left his show, entered rehab, even turned himself in to the authorities, damaging his reputation. Ravi hid his sin, denied it, attempted to destroy peoples lives in order to cover it up, for fear of what it would do to his reputation. We endearingly remember Rush. We now despise Ravi. Be sure that your sin will find you out. My point being: do not fear confession and repentance!

The following is from my friend who posted the following in a group I'm in, and I am copying it here for my readers benefit. He is British, so forgive his spelling.    It's often claimed that it's better to vote for baby killing politicians because they'll actually reduce the number of babies being killed through sex ed, welfare and contraception. As usual, there is a surprising lack of evidence for claims which are taken to be common knowledge, but it's hard to find some of the better resources showing this. Sex ed: Cochrane reviews are very prestigious systematic reviews in the UK which are taken to be pretty much authoritative in Medicine. They have one specifically on schools-based sex ed: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/.../14651858.CD006417.pub3/ They looked at 6 RCTs, with the conclusion that: "In these trials, the educational programmes evaluated had no demonstrable effect on the prevalence of HIV, or other STIs. There was also no apparent effect on the...

 I've been reflecting on my anxiety attack, and how I thought I was moments away from death. It wasn't the first time I thought I was going to die. The other time was when I got into my car crash. There is one major difference in my experience of both those events. The first, in my car crash, I was ready to die, and accept death. It's cool to think how fast my brain went through thoughts in a split second. Some of those thoughts were, "Oh no" "Oh well" "I didn't get to say goodbye" "I'm ready for this" "I'm confident in my salvation" "I'll see Jesus and be happy".  In my second anticipation of death, these were the thoughts that were going through my mind, as I lay on the floor, listening to my sister panic as she called the paramedics, "Oh no" "No no no" "I'm not ready" "I've done so many things I can't take back" "I'm going to hell"...

A friend asked me for biblical data concerning transgenderism. Here is what I wrote. I just copy-pasted from instagram, so, no spacings. I'll come back and edit later.  Okay, so, throughout the Bible, we have the warnings and condemnations about temple prostitutes. You see it in Deuteronomy 23:17-18, 1 Kings 14:24,15:12 22:46 and 2 Kings 23:7. So, you need to know some background, but these prostitutes were also trans (we'll just say trans for now, not trans-vestite, gender, or sexual). How do we know this? So from the textbook "Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia" it says this: "Since homosexual love was perfectly tolerated in the land, provided that it did not harm anyone, it should not be surprising to see professional homosexuals here, as if to balance the 'religious' prositutes mentioned above, the assinu, the kurgarru, the kulu'u, and even, on occasion, the kolû, who had rather a bad reputation in this regard, although we do not really know why. Nor...