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‘The Nativity’ – too much doubt, not enough joy

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It all came together in last night’s final episode of the BBC’s ‘The Nativity’.

Jupiter, Saturn, and Regulus came together in an improbably brilliant and sudden conjunction.

Mary and Joseph came together in a somewhat contrived joining of hands as she gave birth to her first-born.

The shepherds came together to greet the new baby, as did the three Magi a few moments later.

As with the previous three episodes, there was something rather thoughtful and human about the reactions of the various participants. …

Much ado about ‘The Nativity’

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The Daily Express has melodramatically announced that there is ‘fury over BBC’s nativity insult’:-

The BBC has angered Christians with a TV drama in which the Virgin Mary is branded a prostitute and sex cheat.

Already, there is a danger of too little light being obscured by too much smoke.  The Express only cites one angry Christian – Stephen Green, of Christian Voice.  And I think his criticism is misplaced.

I’ve seen the first three episodes of this drama (the fourth and last is to be broadcast tomorrow). …

Evidentialist and presuppositionalist apologetics

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I suppose that the most wide-recognised form of Christian apologetics is evidentialism.  As practiced by Josh McDowell (Evidence That Demands a Verdict, etc.) and others, this type of apologetics seeks, as the name implies, to pile up historical, scientific, and others kinds of evidence to prove that Christianity is ‘true’.

Presuppositionalist apologetics, on the other hand, insists that the natural mind is so perverse that it is incapable of being converted by evidence and argument. …

What was Asia Bibi’s ‘crime’?

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Asia Bibi is a 45-year-old Christian woman who is behind bars in Pakistan, sentenced to death by hanging, having fallen foul of the blasphemy laws of that country.

What, exactly, was her ‘crime’?  She had been working in the fields when she was asked to fetch drinking water.  Some of the women she was with – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore ‘unclean’. …

Motivational appeal in evangelistic preaching

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In an recent edition of Themelios, D.A. Carson suggests that there are a number of possible motivations that preachers might appeal to, especially when addressing unbelievers.  I summarise:-

1.  Fear.  Although the gospel promises deliverance from fear (Heb 2:14-18), Christ and the apostles did not shrink from warning people of the consequences of unbelief (Mt 10:38; 13:30; 16:26; 22:10-13).  It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:31).…

Preacher: butcher or cook?

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Jay Adams puts it well, I think:-

‘Whitehead said, “A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.”  All of us know how desperately dull preachers can become at imes when they try to teach.  But the transmission of information certainly doesn’t need to be dull.  Rather, it can be exciting and interesting.  Preachers must not become Bible butchers, chopping out great chunks of scriptural meat and throwing them raw and bloody to their congregations as if they were feeding tigers. 

…

Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’

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Mention of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, popularly known as the Book of Martyrs, has often cropped up in my reading.

I was aware that this book chronicled the persecution of English Protestant reformers by Roman Catholics, and that the work exerted a vast (pro-Protestant, anti-Catholic) influence from the time of its first publication in the 16th century right up until the 20th century.

I probably assumed that it was a work of propaganda, and could not be taken seriously as an historical record. …

A major publishing event in reformed theology

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‘The Theology of B.B. Warfield: a systematic survey‘, by Fred G. Zaspel, IVP/Apollos, 2010.

I acquired most of B. B. Warfield’s writings (in their Presbyterian & Reformed editions) over thirty years ago. ‘The Person and Work of Christ’, for example, was given to me by my fiancee (soon after to become my wife) in 1977; ‘Calvin and Augustine’ was snaffled up while on holiday in Lochgilphead, Scotland, in 1979.

I have always been impressed by Warfield’s lucidity, versatility, spiritual warmth, and biblical faithfulness.…

Is God the Ultimate Boeing 747?

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In chapter 4 of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins attempts to demonstrate that the existence of God is extremely improbable.  He gives pride of place to his ‘Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit’.  This argument, he says, is ‘the big one’.

The starting-point is the comment attributed to Fred Hoyle that the probability of life originating on earth by chance is no greater that a tornado in a junk-yard asembling a fully-functioning Boeing 747.  Theists often like to say that that the universe is so complex that only God could have brought it into being.…

The fight

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In his celebrated book, Holiness, J.C. Ryle writes with his customary vigour about the Christian fight.  He takes as his text 1 Timothy 6:12 – “Fight the good fight of faith.”

What follows is a summary.

Many are fascinated by warfare and fighting.  But there is a warfare that is as real as any human battle, and of far greater importance.  It is waged by every Christian man and woman who ever entered the world.…