Category Archives: People

McGrath vs Dawkins: faith and evidence

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Richard Dawkins is no philosopher, nor theologian, nor biblical scholar.  None of which automatically disqualifies him from expressing his opinions on religion, but all of which should make him exercise a little more care and caution in expressing those opinions.

For a man so committed to evidence and reason, it is remarkable that Dawkins pays so little attention to both in certain sections of The God Delusion.  It is clear that before he wrote that book, he had read Alister McGrath’s Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (2005).  …

Money, sex and power

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Money, sex and power, writes Richard Foster, are inseparably intertwined:-

Money manifests itself as power.  Sex is used to acquire both money and power.  And power is often called ‘the best aphrodisiac’.  We could discuss at length the interlacing connections.  There is, for example, an important relationship between sex and poverty: sex is the poor man’s holiday and the poor woman’s disaster.  Note also the connection between power and wealth: power is frequently used to manipulate wealth, and wealth is used just as frequently to buy power. 

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Options for rich Christians

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John Stott outlines three options for rich Christians.

Become poor

It might be supposed that 2 Cor 8:9 teaches this. Consider also:-

(a) The example of Jesus. He was born into a poor home. He had no home and few possessions. ‘He taught from a borrowed boat, rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, spent his last evening in a borrowed room, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. He and his disicples shared a common purse, and depended for their support on a group of women who sometimes accompanied them.…

Free agency and free will

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Clear thinking about humankind’s fallen nature requires a careful distinction to be made between ‘free agency’ and ‘free will’.

Free agency is part of what it means to be human.  We all make decisions as to what we will do and how we will behave, based on our personal inclinations and our sense of what is right and wrong.  We are moral agents, accountable to God and to one another for our voluntary choices.

Free will, on the other hand, has been defined as the ability to choose from all the moral options that may be available in a given situation. …

Judges 19:11-28 – The priest and the concubine

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As evidence for the nastiness of the Old Testament and its God, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, 240f) can find no better example than the account of an unnamed Levite and his concubine while travelling in Gibeah (Judges 19:11-28).

Quoting the Authorised Version (why?), Dawkins outlines the ghastly unfolding of events.  The two of them spend the night in the house of an old man.  While eating their supper, the men of the city come to the door and demand that the old man hands over his male guest so that they can have their way with him. …

The Bible is for ordinary people

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Donald Macleod writes:-

It was one of the great achievements of the Reformation to give the Bible back to the people, stressing that ‘not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means’ could attain to a sufficient understanding of the scriptures (Westminster Confession 1.7). Today, we need to get back to this. The Bible is not targeted at experts, yielding its meaning only to priests or scholars. You don’t need rows of commentaries to understand it.

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The Holy Spirit and the Bible

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It has been said that ‘the Bible without the Holy Spirit is like a sun-dial at night.’

J.I. Packer has written:-

‘The Spirit’s witness to Scripture is like his witness to Jesus, which we find spoken of in Jn 15:26 and 1 Jn 5:7. (cf. 1 Jn 2:20,27) It is a matter not of imparting new information but of enlightening previously darkened minds to discern divinity through sensing its unique impact – the impact in the case of the Jesus of the gospel, and in the other case of the words of Holy Scripture.…

Christ and the Bible

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The Living and the Written Word

Christ and the Bible – the Living Word and the written word – are sometimes placed in opposition to one another.  The Living Word is (rightly) magnified, but (wrongly) at the expense of the proper honour that is due to the written word.  In fact, the very high view that we should have of the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures is inculcated by Christ himself.

John Stott reminds us that we should not think of Christ, the living Word, and Scripture, the written word, apart, for they witness to one another:-

‘Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance—to a degree quite extraordinary in so ancient a book—and that the secret of both is in Jesus Christ.

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Protecting the unborn child

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John Stott is his usual measured self when he speaks and writes on the subject of abortion.  So it is without hyperbole that he urges us to avoid euphemisms, and to speak of things as they really are:-

‘The popular euphemisms make it easier for us to conceal the truth from ourselves. The occupant of the mother’s womb is not a ‘product of conception’ or ‘gametic material’, but an unborn child. Even ‘pregnancy’ tells us not more than that a woman has been ‘impregnated’, whereas the truth in old-fashioned language is that she is ‘with child’.

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Julian of Norwich

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Recently, I attended a Eucharist.  It being the feast day of Julian of Norwich (8th May), some attention was given within the service to this spiritual writer (1342-c1416).

Those who know me, or who are regular readers of my web site will realise that I was slightly out of my comfort zone at this event.  Clearly, we were firmly within the High Church, or Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England.  A crucifix was prominent, as was a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and various other accoutrements of that tradition.…