Sublime

Are we to believe that God intentionally contrived a scheme of such torment in order to provoke our compassion and ability to endure? The Bible comes close to saying that, but never quite gets there.

ecclesiastical

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money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

ever claim to have been divinely inspired.

Ces derniers chapitres commencent par une charge violente contre les clercs, les théologiens et les autorités religieuses, qui utilisent et interprètent les Écritures afin de consolider leur pouvoir et d’étendre leur domination sur les hommes :

Macaulay believed that the disjunctions that afflicted us were intrinsic to the human condition and there was no permanent escape from them.

In a very real sense, Western Christianity is Augustinian Christianity.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was converted from an enduringly useful fiction into a dangerous assertion of historical fact. In their account, it wasn’t the fact that it went on happening now that mattered.