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A sermon should be about one thing

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The text of a sermon can be anything from (less than) a single verse to (more than) an entire book.  Proverbs, aphorisms, summary statements and theologically rich passages in, say, Paul’s letters serve well as short texts.  Narratives and parables more suitably serve as longer texts.

Whatever the length of the text, the sermon based on that text must hang together.  It must have unity.  This means paying close attention to the context.  How does your text (whether short or long) fit into the whole?…

Did Paul abandon his wife?

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Wyatt Houtz (The PostBarthian) asks, ‘Why is it so difficult for Christians to accept that Paul abandoned his wife?’

Houtz’s thesis is that it is likely, from the available evidence, that Paul had been married but that he had his wife had separated following his conversion to Christ.

Here are the main steps in the argument.

1. Paul had been married.  It is unthinkable that Paul, as a strict Pharisee (Phil 3:4-6; Gal 1:13-15; Acts 9:1f), would not have been married. …

Carson: reflecting on evil and suffering

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You don’t need me to remind you that our world, wonderful and beautiful as it is, is shot through with suffering and evil.

In a recent lecture, Don Carson spoke of six ‘pillars’ of the Christian worldview that will provide bulwarks as we seek to face up to this reality.

1. Insights from the beginning of the Bible’s storyline

God created a world of ‘breathtaking beauty and unfathomable goodness’.  But the perfection was short-lived.  We now find ourselves, from Genesis 3 onwards, in a world marked by ‘sin, suffering, death and decay’.…

Cross Vision 16 – Review

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Sydney Smith quipped:

‘I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices one so.’

Well, I have read Greg Boyd’s carefully, summarising as fairly and as accurately as I can the contents of each chapter.

So here is my (prejudiced?) opinion.

Boyd’s aim is to exonerate the God of the Old Testament (OT) from the charge of violence.  Not just excessive, capricious or malicious violence, but violence of all sorts.

He has set himself an extremely challenging task: he wishes, while affirming the inspiration and authority of the entire Bible, to show that these OT texts of violence convey a completely new meaning – a meaning that actually eschews violence – in the light of the cross of Christ.…

Paul and Jesus

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Many Bible readers will have wondered why Paul, in his letters, makes so few references to the Jesus of the Gospels.

Does this mean that Paul was the ‘real’ founder of Christianity, with his teaching having very little in common with that of Jesus?

Craig Blomberg writes:

‘An interesting dimension of a number of Paul’s letters, penned in the 50s, especially Romans, 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians are the quotations of and allusions to Jesus’ teachings that Paul could not have gotten simply by consulting a Gospel, since none had yet been written.…

Cathedrals: playgrounds or ‘sacred spaces’?

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Earlier this year, Chichester Cathedral was the venue for a ‘silent disco’ (where the music was played through wireless headphones, rather than loudspeakers).

Previous uses of cathedral space have included:

  • Stars Wars event (Peterborough)
  • Crazy golf course (Rochester)
  • Helter skelter (Norwich)
  • Indoor skate park (Gloucester)

Not surprisingly, these have provoked a certain amount of outrage:

‘Rochester Cathedral was founded in AD 604. It survived the Norman Conquest, 2 fires in the 12th century, and several rounds of pillaging.…

Cross Vision 15 – Commanding Child Sacrifice

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Summarising chapter 16

The idea that God could command Abraham to destroy his own son strikes many as being preposterous.

The problem is compounded by the fact the child sacrifice was very prevalent among the nations of the ANE, and by the consideration that the OT itself repeatedly condemns the practice.

The usual evangelical approach is to note that the Spirit of Christ finally breaks through.  At the last minute God prevents the sacrifice from taking place and provides a substitute.…

Cross Vision 14 – Misusing Divine Power

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Summarising chapter 15

Power – including God-given power – can be abused.

Jesus – fully human as well as fully God – submitted himself perfectly to his Father’s will.  Like us, he was tempted, but unlike us, he was without sin.  So, when the Father invested him with power, he used it wisely and obediently.  He could have abused that power (Mt 4:2-7; 26:53), but he didn’t.

But, in the case of Moses, Samson, Elijah and Elisha and others, there were times when they did abuse their God-given power. …

Cross Vision 13 – Dragon-Swallowing-Dragon Warfare

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Summarising chapter 14

The deliverance at the Red Sea (Ex 14) took place without any human assistance.  It has been argued that God would always have preferred to work that way, if only his people had trusted him.  But does God ever need to resort to violence?

The author of the narrative certainly thought that it was Yahweh, ‘a man of war’ (Ex 15:1), who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea.  But our cross-centred hermeneutic determines that we should see this ascription of divine violence to the writer’s fallen and culturally conditioned thinking. …

Cross Vision 12 – Creation Undone

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Summarising chapter 13.

Not all the violence in the OT can be attributed to human agents.

Take the flood, for example.  A cross-centred hermeneutic prompts us to discern Satanic powers using their God-given authority to brng this about.

Scripture assumes as certain solidarity between the human, animal and inanimate kingdoms.  In Gen 6:12f the same word (sāhat) is used to describe human sin, the effect of this on the earth, and the punishment.  This indicates that the flood ‘was an organic, not a judicial, divine judgment’.…