Christian Life

Having enjoyed episodes 2-10 of the BBC podcast presented by Jonny Dymond (“How did we get here?") on the historical background to the conflicts in Israel-Palestine, I look at the claims in episode 1 (featuring Simon Sebag Montefiore and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones) that the Bible is not a trusted historical source.

I’m enjoying reading Peter Leithart’s stimulating commentary (paid link) on 1 and 2 Kings.

He makes the point that, superficially, the book of Kings could reinforce Marcionite assumptions that the God of the Old Testament is harsh and vindictive, while we only meet his love and mercy in the New Testament.

Romans 8:31: “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Psalm 34 is an acrostic. In Hebrew, the first word of each verse starts with successive letters of the alphabet. So, if this were English, verse 1 would start with A, verse 2 would start with B, and so on.

At Trinity Church, we’ve been preaching through Book 1 of the Psalms (that is, Psalms 1-41) from Easter until the end of August. We won’t have had time to preach on all of them; we’ve had 18 weeks, so there will have been time to preach on just under half of them. Nevertheless, we thought it would serve the church better to preach selected psalms from the first book, rather than a selection dotted across the whole psalter.

I've never noticed this before, and it’s a bit of fun.

Whose tomb was Jesus buried in? Joseph of Arimathea, you’d reply, and you’d be correct.

On Tuesday 17th June, MPs voted on amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that change abortion law in England and Wales. This post explains what those amendments are, summarises their impact, and then offers 4 reflections on how we can make sense of what’s unfolding.

As the funeral of the late Pope Francis is held in the Vatican today, the liturgy has notable points of difference from the Anglican liturgies. Those differences expose some deep differences between Roman and Anglican theology, and the surprise is that the biggest problem is not actually transubstantiation.

I've been studying Deuteronomy chapters 5-7, preparing some notes for our small group leaders. As I've been doing that, I find myself approaching Easter freshly. Here are a couple of questions for us with chapters 5-6 particularly in mind.

Many modern Christians are familiar with Jesus' parable in Luke 14:15-24. The NIV entitles it, "The parable of the great banquet". I wish to give it a new name temporarily: "The parable of the great excuses". Although, once we've looked at it in context, we shall see the NIV has the emphasis right after all.