Christian Life

James Cary is very helpful on the importance of refusing false choices between evangelism and other kinds of work.

Thanks Jam.

Today is Ascension Day, when we celebrate Jesus’ return to his Father, the completion of his work on earth, and the fact that he is now Lord of all the kingdoms on earth.

Yesterday I listened to Doug Wilson’s third talk from the Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference. Less content than the first two of his talks there, but very worth listening to. His main point was that we don’t see, on the ground, a world ruled by Jesus Christ. And then made the point that we are better at

Now that Sunday has passed, and our church members at St James Audley have had time to read their notice sheet, I can post this.

We have appointed Samantha Pentlow to be our next Schools and Youth Worker. She'll start working with us sometime in the summer - when she's finished her Part Time Oak Hill diploma in Youth and Children's Ministry, and finished off her youth work commitments at All Saints, Riseley, in North Beds.

Welcome to St James, Samantha! It'll be great to have you here. Many people spoke to me yesterday morning to tell me that they were thrilled to read of your appointment.a href=

I’ve just posted a comment on a friend’s blog. (If anyone is interested, here’s original post). He asks which Bible translation to use for serious study in English.

There’s no shortage of good articles tackling this subject, but I thought I’d post my response here too, just in case it helps anyone else.

Well I would say that – I went there. But not everyone is proud of institutions they attended, and it is with some envy that I look at a college that has got stronger every year. How good it would be to start over again in 2007!

In last week’s Church Times (4 May) a letter was published by a recently retired DDO of St Alban’s Diocese. She picked up on some of the critical things that Tom Wright has said about the recently published book, Pierced for our Transgressions, and concluded that Oak Hill was not fit to be an Anglican Training College. Actually, she thought Oak Hill was not fit to train for Anglican ordination long before the publication of said book, but she doesn’t show that card in her hand.

OK: I know this may be too general (macroscopic) to be useful, but does this work? If it does, broadly, work, I know for sure that my headings will need refining.

This will delight some of you.

I got an e-mail from the good people at the good book company yesterday. IVP are already reprinting Pierced for our Transgressions - the superb looking new defence of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Not read it yet - my copy is on order - awaiting reprinting!

After only a month that really is good going!

I can think of two reasons for this. Either of them means that the need for a reprint delights me. It might be that the book is selling outstandingly well. Or it might be that IVP were overly pessimistic in the size of print run they commissioned, and the pessimism has been exposed. Either way - top news that Mike, Steve and Sachy's hard work is enjoying a wide distribution. "It can't be written," some said. Well it has, and the hot cakes are going fast!

"Within the context of this vision 'the end' (19) need not be 'The End', the ultimate end of history. The earlier Hebrew prophets used the term 'the end' to indicate the end of a particular evil state of affairs or the final day of reckoning for a particular people (e.g. Amos 8:1-2). Sometimes what might seem to be 'end of the world' language is used of such events, though they clearly occur within history (e.g. Is. 13:9-22). These events within history are seen as foreshadowing the final day of reckoning, rather than being simply identified with it. This may be the case with the dreams and visions of Daniel, though at the end of the final vision there is a 'fusing' of the horizons of the end of Antiochus' career and the end of history."

E C Lucas, Daniel (AOTC), pages 94-95

"Five times in vv. 1-12 it is stated that the image was set up by Nebuchadnezzar. This emphasizes the way in which religion and the State get intertwined. Refusal to worship the image cannot be tolerated because it subverts the authority of the State. As Welch (1958:85) comments, 'The State has certain ends in view and want a certain type of citizen to fulfil them; it issues its orders by which it shall procure the best means to serve its ends. Some day it may demand an obedience which will make it impossible for certain men to save their souls alive. Then the opposite ends for life will come into open collision, and men will have to choose whom they mean to serve.' This is the choice that faced Diaspora Jews from time to time.

"Nebuchadnezzar's rage (13-15) may contain an element of annoyance at the ingratitude of these Jews. Powerful patrons can turn into dangerous enemies. However, he does not accept the accusation against them without giving them a chance to prove their loyalty and obedience. His primary concern is with their public conduct, rather than with their private beliefs. There is a parallel to this in modern secular society. Religion is acceptable as long as it is a matter of private belief and does not lead people to challenge the assumptions and values of their society by what they say or do."

I’ve just read (in the transcript online – I’d got home long before this point) Andrew Brown’s conclusion to the programme:

But what can we change? What should our arrangements be? We can’t disentangle the problems of children from those of adults. The government, too, sends families mixed messages. They are to be, in Gordon Brown’s great phrase, “hard working families”. But do the hardest-working families have the happiest children? The evidence suggests that they don’t and that it’s the family which plays together that stays together. In fact it’s hard to resist a rather heretical conclusion. Most of what we have seen as the peculiar horrors of modern childhood seem to arise from a lack of authority: they can, in shorthand, be blamed on the Sixties. But that was a complicated decade, with good as well as bad; and one of the distinctive attitudes of the Sixties was a distrust of money, and a belief that material success should not be the measure of everything. We’re never going to get away from a society that cares about status. But one in which status is measured only by material success makes us, and our children, needlessly miserable.