Category Archives: Paul, Ian

Repentance

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The first recorded words of Jesus, as he began his public ministry, were:

Mark 1:15 — “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!”

But what does the word ‘repentance’ mean?

Jerome, in the Vulgate, translated μετανοεῖτε as poenitentiam agite (‘do acts of penance’).  As Ian Paul notes, this does several things to Jesus’ command:

it shifts it from being focused on attitude and outlook to being concerned with ritual acts;

it moves it from being a response to God to being set in the context of the institution of the Church (whose priests alone could dispense forgiveness through the rite of penance and confession);

and it became a habitual ritual rather than an urgent response to the ‘end times’ coming of God.

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Romans 11:26 – ‘All Israel’ and the land

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Romans 11:26 (NET) — ‘And so all Israel will be saved’.

I have compiled extensive notes on this provocative phrase.  The key question is whether Paul is referring to

(a) ethnic Israel (as the majority of scholars think), or to

(b) ‘renewed’ Israel, comprising Jewish and Gentile believers alike.  The latter view is advocated by John Calvin and N.T. Wright (along with some others), and I am inclined to agree with it.

In the course of his discussion of the question of whether the modern State of Israel has a divine right to occupy ‘the land’, Ian Paul has expressed support for this second view. …

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.…

The centrality of Christ’s ascension

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A case could be made from John’s Gospel for regarding the crucifixion as the climax of Jesus’ ministry.  For it is from the cross that Jesus is recorded as crying, triumphantly, “It is finished!”

More frequently, the resurrection is placarded as marking the completion of Jesus’ work.  The crucified Jesus, preaches Peter, was raised from the dead (Acts 2).  Paul preached ‘Jesus and the resurrection’ (Acts 17:18).  In 1 Cor 15:3f the summary of the gospel is that ‘Christ died for our sins…was buried…and was raised on the third day.’…

Where is the Holy Spirit in the Lord’s Prayer?

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This is the title of a recent post by Ian Paul.  What follows is based on that article.

We might well think that prayer, if it is to be regarded as distinctively Christian prayer, should be Trinitarian.

But what, then, are we to make of the Christian’s model prayer, which does not mention the Holy Spirit at all.

Ian Paul suggests that the Holy Spirit is indeed ‘present’ in the Lord’s Prayer, even though not mentioned.…

Abandoning hell

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A while ago, Dr Sam Wells wrote this article for the Church Times in which he explores the implications of a Christianity without belief in hell.

Wells begins with the words of Jesus in Jn 10:10 – “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  This, he says, supplies an excellent mission statement for the church:

‘Jesus is our model of abundant life; his life, death and resurrection chart the transformation from the scarcity of sin and death to the ab­un­dance of healing and resur­rection; he longs to bring all humankind into reconciled and flourishing relationship with God, one another, themselves, and all creation.’
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Christian ethics – creational or eschatological?

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In seeking to develop and refine biblical ethics, are we supposed to look back, to how things were when God created the heavens and the earth, and pronounced all things good?  Or should we look forward, to our perfected life in the new heavens and new earth?

Sam Wells would like to see ‘backward-looking’ thinking replaced by ‘forward-looking thinking.’

There is no getting away from the fact that Jesus and the apostles do look back to creation to support and explain their ethical teachings.…

Sexuality: is Paul’s teaching clear?

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Ian Paul notes that, in the recent past, two responses to same-sex relationships have been prevalent:

  • In the wider society, same-sex marriage has provided gay relationships with the respectability and status that many desired;
  • In the UK church, questions have been asked about whether the New Testament writers understood sexuality in the way that we understand it today, and, consequently, whether their negative assessments are well-founded.

Today (Ian Paul is writing in 2019), another response has come to the fore:

  • Is the teaching of Scripture (and of Paul in particular) sufficiently clear and coherent for us to be able to follow its teaching on same-sex relationships?
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God is love. Discuss

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The formula ‘God is love’ is often used as if it were a trump card that enabled its user to win every ethical and theological debate.  Moreover, it is appealed to in person-to-person communication and behaviour, so that everything that is said and done is evaluated according to whether the other person feels loved.  The flip side of this is, of course, seen in the current interest in ‘hate speech’ and its associated attitudes and behaviours.…

Online preaching for the virtual church

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Ian Paul has some helpful thoughts on preaching online during the present corona virus epidemic.

I summarise.

Introductory thoughts

  • We’re likely to be in this situation for some while (several months, at least).
  • The first few weeks have been something of a novelty period.  But the novelty will wear off!
  • Online services are being accessed by a number of people who would not normally come to church.  We need to communicate well with them, and find ways of connecting with them after the crisis is over.
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