* The Love of Bruriah is a fictional blog journalizing the life of Bruriah, the woman-sage in the Talmud. Very cool idea. (HT: Haveil Havalim #32)
* At "Dervish", Umm Yasmin looks at Irshad Manji's recent comments in Tampering with the Text. I had a similar reaction to the Spong point. Umm Yasmin develops the issue, from a Muslim perspective, at much greater length than my throw-away comment. Well worth reading.
* When Bad Things Happen to Good People at "SAFspace" (HT: State of the Ummah I)
* (1) Why ask why? at "Uncle Sam's Cabin" and (2) Why Would God Allow This? at "Parableman"
* Mourning and Redemption at "Velveteen Rabbi"
* Also at "Velveteen Rabbi": Reading the Qur'an 1.
* Fr. Jim Tucker has a lovely post on Edith Stein and Nagasaki at "Dappled Things". It's St. Edith's feastday. I've written a few posts on her philosophical thought before. See this selection from Stein on Hume; The Hidden Treasure of the Interior Castle (which discusses an image she shares with the Teresa of Avila); and Existential Angst and Eternal Being (on a key argument in Finite and Eternal Being).
* This would have been good for the Reading for the Holy Days post, but I missed it because it was somewhat earlier: Prayer and the Transfiguration at "dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos"
* Whence the title of this post? Ramon Lull wrote a philosophical dialogue in which a Gentile (pagan) is aided in his search for truth by three wise men: a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim. The way they help him is by arguing for the positions of their faiths; naturally, they agree on a number of things, and disagree on others. The book ends with the Gentile about to choose the best of the three; the three wise men ask him not to tell them yet, because they wish to continue the discussion. Since Lull was Christian the arguments lean that way, but Lull, to the extent he was able given the limits of communication (and thus dissemination of accurate information) among Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the time, worked very hard to make the arguments fair. All three of the wise men use Lull's method, which is based on the divine attributes (which he calls dignitates or axioms: things like goodness, greatness, etc.). The Gentile, of course, represents the world; and the point is that the three wise men try to convert him by each striving to give him the best understanding of God's excellence.
