The Christian Vanguard

This past Friday, I went, along with my buddy Andy, to go see one of my favorite bands, Silversun Pickups. It was definitely a different experience from the other concerts I've been to. I usually go see punk or metal bands, and the environment can be pretty aggressive. Not in any dangerous way, but in a communal way. Silversun Pickups isn't like that. I've been in my share of moshpits, had my shins busted up in ska dances, maybe participated a wall of death or two, but there was no such tomfoolery at the Silversun Pickups concert. This is because it causes a different reaction. Which is kind of strange to say, that music can move you like this. I mean, it's very obvious that it does this. We all experience this. But it's still kind of mysterious to me how it is even possible for this to happen. But anyway, I remember trying to show my then girlfriend some of their music, and she immediately shut it down after a few notes. "Too girly" she said. And I wa...

Why do lingering feelings of guilt, shame, doubt still haunt us after we have confessed our sins which we think are the cause for such feelings? St. Thomas Aquinas may have some insight into the issue here when he says, "...passion is properly to be found where there is corporeal transmutation." Which is just basically to say that when you have a certain emotion, there is a corresponding bodily change. When you feel fear, your heart races, you begin to sweat. When you see the woman you are infatuated with, you have a slight pain in your stomach. When you see your wife walk over to the bed to fulfill marital duties, you also have an appropriate physical response.  And is well known, there is a difference between your passions and your intellect, or your will, in this case. When our intellect craves for something, we don't "feel" it like we feel our emotions. If I feel hungry, I have a bodily reaction to it, and is very immediate. When I feel sad, I have an ...

The following was a paper I turned in for class. There are footnotes, but they don't copy over for whatever reason.  Socrates argues that the soul has three parts, the appetite, the spirit, and reason. “Part” refers to a faculty that moves us to act. Since there are movements of the human soul that desire contradictory things, the origins of those desires must therefore be distinct. He argues for this by first putting forth the principle of noncontradiction when he says a thing cannot want or do contradictory things. If the soul wanted to do something contradictory, like to drink and not to drink, then we would be dealing with something else other than a whole unified soul. We would be dealing with some part of the soul instead. In further establishing this approach, Socrates deals with some possible counter examples, such as a moving man or a spinning top. In the case of a man who may move his arms and legs, this is dealt with by distinguishing the parts of the man which move...