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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The waning influence of the Bible

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The Folio Society offered its fifty thousand members a list of fifty books and asked them to say which had exercised the most significant influence on their lives. When the votes were counted, pride of place went to J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, which was judged the most influential book. The Bible came in at number thirty-five, sandwiched between Don Quixote and Flaubert’s novel of provincial adultery, Madame Bovary. Writing in the Bible Society’s magazine, TransMission, Dan Beeby commented, “Ironically, rejected by many as legend and myth, the Bible lost out to fable, fantasy and fiction.…

“Baptism in the Holy Spirit” – a separate stage of salvation?

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A key question in debates about the ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ is whether this describes a separate stage of salvation or not.

Some have argued in the affirmative.  For instance, Pentecostal leader Ralph Riggs asserted that:-

The baptism with the Spirit is a work of the Holy Spirit distinct from and subsequent and additional to His regeneration work. A man may be regenerated by the Holy Spirit and still not be baptized with the Holy Spirit.…

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.…

Open Theism and Quantum Physics

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It is as I suspected: open theists have recruited ideas drawn from quantum physics to support their view that indeterminacy is built into the deep structure of the universe, and that the future is unknowable in all its details, even to God.

From what I had read and heard, I expected the noted scientist/theologian John Polkinghorne would take such a view, and I now find this to be the case.  Open theist Greg Boyd has an article on Scientific Support for the Open View, and quotes Polkinghorne (in Science and Providence) as saying that notions of indeterminacy in physics

…emphasize how different time is from space [and] how seriously we must take its unfolding as a process of genuine becoming.

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Feminist Biblical Interpretation

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The Bible, writes Phyllis Trible, was born and bred in a land of patriarchy, and abounds in male imagery and language.  The interpretation of the Bible, too, has largely been in the hands of men.  Only recently has any critique of this male dominance begun to emerge.

With particular reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, three approaches to the study of women may be identified:-

1.  The case against women

The first approach emphasises the case against women. …

‘Historic’ or ‘historical’ theology?

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An Amazon reviewer of J.I. Packer’s fine book Concise Theology (IVP) complains that the sub-title (‘A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs’)  is misleading, because the book does not deal with the historical development of Christian doctrine.

But Packer does not set out to write a guide to historical theology, but rather historic theology.  And that’s a rather different aim. By ‘historic Christian beliefs’, he means the ‘classic mainstream’ beliefs as set out in the Westminster Confession and similar documents.…

God, evolution, and natural evil

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One of the most significant objections to the theory of evolution is the moral one: if there is an all-wise God, why would he use a process that involves so much waste, suffering and death?

Biology, says, Denis Alexander, is a ‘package deal’. For every ‘plus’ that we might see as positive for life and well-being, there is a ‘minus’. For example: mutations are essential for biodiversity, and yet mutations also cause cancer and genetic diseases.…

Why an atheist says, ‘We must rekindle our religion’

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According to Richard Dawkins, religion is ‘the root of all evil’, and the teaching of religion to children is tantamount to ‘child abuse’.  Not to be outdone, Christopher Hitchens declares that ‘religion poisons everything’.

Now, I do not hold a brief to defend either the truth or the goodness of religion generally.  We must distinguish between what is good, what is neutral, and what is actually evil in religion.

But we should not assume that the blanket condemnation of all religions by Dawkins et al is condoned by all atheists.…