How far would you be willing to travel in order to meet, or see, or hear, someone you really admired? Your favourite musician, perhaps, or a dear friend.
How far would you be willing to travel to meet Jesus in the flesh? Without the benefit of modern transport? And what would you say to him when you met him?
Well, here are some people who came all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee to see Jesus.…
Bishop Tom Wright opposes the idea of the government setting up an independent enquiry to look at assisted suicide. Speaking recently in the House of Lords, he said that
‘Parliament is there not to bend to every media-manipulated public whim, but to take the larger and longer view.’
It is often the case that ethics debates taking on a special meaning when individual cases are considered. Bishop Wright drew attention to
…‘The old lady who last summer told me several times that she just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up, but who eventually made a full recovery and celebrated her 63rd wedding anniversary last month and greeted her sixth greatgrandchild last week.
In his excellent collection of essays and papers on the Puritans, J.I. Packer offers the following succinct account of spiritual authority:-
‘Spiritual authority is hard to pin down in words, but we recognise it when we meet it. It is a product compounded of
I’ve been listening to another of Premier Radio’s Unbelievable podcasts.
This one featured a debate between atheist Ed Turner (a lawyer) and Christian Meic Pearse (a historian).
The focus of discussion was Pearse’s recent book The Gods of War (IVP 2007). His contention is that while religion can play a significant part in armed conflict, that point is often over-stated, and the main factors leading to warfare are cultural and economic.
The debate was, as is usual for this show, thoughtful and civilised. …
I’ve been pondering recently some of the limitations of evidentialist apologetics. The problems become readily apparent when unsympathetic sceptics (Hitchens, Dawkins, Atkins et al) insist that apologists provide detailed and irrefutable evidence for this or that Christian claim (everything from the existence of God, say, to the reality of ‘miracles’). But it seems that the a priori commitments of convinced atheists are such that no evidence would satisfy them. They are either unable or unwilling to imagine their way into thinking about things from a theistic perspective.…
A scientific outlook becomes ‘scientism’ when it adopts the view that the scientific method is the only reliable way of knowing. ‘Scientism’ leaves no room for other ways of knowing, including theological approaches.
There are, however, several limitations to scientism:-
1. It is self-defeating. The assumption that the scientific method is the only way of knowing cannot itself be derived scientifically. It is internally inconsistent and must itself start with an act of faith.
2. …
The writer A.N. Wilson has recently been writing about his return to faith. Associated in his earlier life in turns with the Church of England and with Roman Catholicism, he describes his ‘Damascus Road conversion’ to atheism, which took place in the 1980s.
I’m not sure what flavour of Christian faith Wilson has returned to, but I was struck with one statement in particular in his piece in New Statesman:-
…When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love.
Unitarians, as far as I can tell, don’t believe in miracles. At least, they don’t believe in the kinds of miracles recorded in the Bible, including Christ’s Virgin Birth and resurrection.
However, while spending a bit of time exploring the beliefs and practices of Unitarians, I came across a rather extraordinary statement which, if true, would certainly have to be regarded as evidence for the miraculous.
I was reading the transcript of a sermon recently preached by Unitarian minister Rev Sarah Tinker. …
I’ve been listening to one of Premier Radio’s Unbelievable podcasts.
This one was held on 14th June 2008 between Dr Alex McFarland, President of Southern Evangelical Seminary in the US, and agnostic Stephen Pilcher.
The topic of discussion was ‘biblical inerrancy’. I found it one of the less satisfying episodes of this normally excellent show.
Stephen came up with a typical selection of supposed ‘contradictions’ – was there one pair, or seven pairs, of animals in Noah’s ark? …
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it will be recalled, was the German Lutheran pastor who stood up to the Nazis and was hanged for his trouble. During his short life – he died in 1945, at the age of 39 – he wrote a number of works of considerable insight and influence. Among these are Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison.
John Shelby Spong (born 1931) is the retired bishop of the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey. …
