God's moral law is theonomous, meaning that it is both internal and external, inscribed in our hearts and revealed to us during the course of salvation history. God's law reveals God's will for humanity; it is an instrument of grace which heals the weakness of human nature and restores what humanity lost as a result of its primal fall from grace. The Decalogue, the ten moral precepts of the Old Covenant, pertain to both God and neighbor. Jesus summarizes...

The mystical experience is one that leads to harmony and convergence among religions. The reason is that the mystic does not focus on doctrine, but rather religious experience. On the level of religious experience, it is the one God that we all encounter regardless of race, religion, economic status or nationality.

The miraculous includes what has power, is infrequent, provides benefit, is a sign, and has a relationship to nature. In this segment, consider the different definitions of miracles offered by Catholic teaching and the philosopher David Hume. Violations of the laws of nature? Extraordinary events? Signs of the supernatural? The jury hasn't come back yet.

This segment introduces the listener to an ancient and tested way of reading that we call Lectio Divina, or "Holy Reading." It will build on the previous segment and give you tools that can be used for a mystical reading of sacred texts. We will look at the concept of leisure, as well as the writings of the Church Fathers.

"Faith-ing" is a newly created word, parallel to believing. Uses of these terms include: believing that some statement is true; believing in or trusting; and believing someone giving testimony (i.e. accepting someone's word). Whereas some opinions and beliefs must proceed from evidence, the faith by which Christians are saved includes and is shaped by love and allegiance.

The end of the world has been a constant source of fascination for humanity. Our understanding of physics, aided by our observations of astronomy, paints a different though equally inexorable end to the universe as we know it. In this lecture, Dr. Consolmagno examines scientific predictions about the death of the cosmos.

The cosmological argument takes reasoning steps from a contingent existing fact to a sufficient explainer of that fact, namely a necessary being (that cannot be otherwise than existing). Challenges to the argument include the notion of contingency, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, no infinite regress in explanation, understanding causation, and necessary being as God.

The Beatitudes are intimately related to the life of discipleship. They have been interpreted in many ways, but can best be described as actions manifesting the attitudes of the Kingdom. They cannot be lived, however, apart from the grace of God and the movement of the Spirit in our lives. In his Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine draws various connections between the Beatitudes, the gifts of the Spirit, and the petitions of the...

By way of introduction, this lecture elucidates the fundamental question of the relationship between science and religion. First of all, what motivates us to "do science"–? Dr. Consolmagno examines certain presuppositions of scientific inquiry and the building blocks of the scientific method.

A well-known hadith speaks of five pillars of Islam: declaration of faith (in God and Muḥammad), prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and the pilgrimage. In this segment, Prof. Reynolds focuses on prayer, specifically the ritual prayer to be performed five times a day, the fast during the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca-which all Muslims should perform at least once in their life.