Author Archives: admin

The life of prayer

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Albert Barnes offers the following guidelines:-

1. Every Christian should have some time allotted for this service, and some place where he may be alone with God.

2. It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to maintain a life of piety without regular habits of secret devotion.

3. The morning, when we have experienced God’s protecting care, when the mind is fresh, and the thoughts are as yet clear and unoccupied with the world, when we go forth to the duties, trials, and temptations of the day; and the evening, when we have again experienced his goodness, and are about to commit ourselves to his protecting care, and when we need his pardoning mercy for the errors and follies of the day, seem to be times which commend themselves to all as appropriate seasons for private devotion.

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The grammar of Christology

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Theology teacher Ben Myers has a list of twelve ‘rules’ on how we speak of Christ:-

1. Not to speak of Christ in any way that sidelines his human experience. Jesus Christ is truly human.

2. Not to speak of Jesus in any way that sidelines the divine depth beneath his human experience. Jesus Christ is truly God.

3. Not to divide Christ’s divinity and humanity, or to give the impression that he sometimes functions as God and sometimes as a human.

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Acts 4:32-5:16 – Ananias and Sapphira (sermon notes)

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Text: Acts 4:32-5:16

It’s a shocking story.  What is our gut reaction?

Disbelief? (a God of love wouldn’t do such a thing)

Dismay? (I’m no better than this pair.  If only you knew what impure thoughts, what insincere prayers, what resentful attitudes I’m capable of…)

1. What was so wrong in what they did?

Collusion: they had hatched this plan together v2.

Deceit: their sin was not in keeping some of the money back.  (Selling off houses and land was neither universal nor compulsory). …

Mark’s Gospel and the ‘invention’ of the historical Jesus

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I have written several posts that support the essential historicity of the events that are recorded in Mark’s Gospel (no less than those that are recorded in the other three Gospels).

I have found it interesting, however, to consider the views of Robert M. Price (one of the contributors to The Historical Jesus: Five Views), who takes the polar opposite view.  For Price, the ‘events’ recorded in Mark’s Gospel (no less that the others) have virtually no basis in history, but were invented by the Christian community on the basis of their reading of (what we call) the Old Testament scriptures.…

Dying and rising gods

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Was the notion of a dying and rising Saviour, as recorded in the canonical Gospels, derived from pagan myths concerning the Canaanite god Baal, the Phoenician god Adonis, the Egyptian god Osiris, and others?  This view was first popularised by J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion (first published in 1890).  Frazer thought that he had discovered a universal core in religion – a myth about a dying and rising fertility god, along with associated rituals – and this idea was taken up by some others, including Joseph Campbell.…

Male and female disciples in Mark’s Gospel

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Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) observes that in Mark’s Gospel the male disciples are represented as oscillating between understanding and misunderstanding, and between loyalty and apostasy.

‘In both cases,’ writes Bauckham, ‘the disciples oscillate between the possibilities, but the negative pole in each case (misunderstanding and apostasy) tends to predominate, resulting in the overall portrayal of them as fallible and failing disciples, whose inability to understand the necessity for Jesus’ suffering and death is connected with their failure to remain faithful to him when his passion begins.’…

The plural-to-singular narrative device in Mark’s Gospel

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Referring back to an old (1925) and neglected article by Cuthbert Taylor, Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) notes that there are twenty-one instances of a narrative device in Mark’s Gospel that invite attention.  This is a device in which switches, slightly awkwardly, from third-person plural to third-person singular.  Here are some examples:-

Mk 5:1f – ‘They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat .…

The twelve disciples as ‘official’ eyewitnesses

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At first glance, the lists of Jesus’ disciples (Matt 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:13-16; see also Acts 1:13) seem simply to introduce some of the key players in the story.  But these lists probably serve a more specific purpose, especially given that about half of the characters named in the lists are never named again in the Gospels.  So this more specific function of the lists of disciples is that they display continuity between Jesus and the early Christian community, and provide the latter with reassurance about the overall shape and content of Jesus ministry that could only come from those who had closely associated with him.  …

The women at the cross and the tomb

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There is a group of women who, according to the Synoptic Gospels, saw Jesus’ crucifixion (Matt 27:55; Mark 15:40; Luke 23:49), saw him being laid in his tomb (Matt 27:61; Mark 15:47; Luke 23:55), and saw that the tomb was subsequently empty (Matt 28:1,6; Mark 16:4-6).  ‘It could hardly be clearer,’ writes Richard Bauckham, ‘that the Gospels are appealing to their role as eyewitnesses.’

All the Gospels name some of these women, while implying that others were also present (Matt 27:55; 28:1, 5; Mark 15:41, 47; 16:6; Luke 24:10; John 20:2).  …

Why did Jesus heal?

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Briefly, we may say that healing miracles

  1. provide ‘signs’ to authenticate the gospel message.
  2. show God’s mercy and compassion in bringing relief and comfort to the suffering.
  3. equip and strengthen people for God’s service.
  4. give opportunity for God to be glorified as people see concrete evidence of his goodness, love, power, wisdom and presence.

According to N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God) the healing miracles of Jesus went further than the relief of physical suffering, or even social acceptance.  …