A Biblical Theology of Hand Washing
All of our church services are currently online-only, due to Covid-19.
This morning, rather than preaching on a single passage, I did a topical sermon, unpacking a biblical theology of hand washing.
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James's Weblog
Edit IPN settings on a standard PayPal account
Another "note to self" post.
PayPal have changed things so that you need a business account to set up an "IPN" notification endpoint. In their own words:
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is a PayPal feature that sends messages about payments (and other transactional events) directly from PayPal to your website(s)' back-end systems.
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Retrospect Error 530: Client not found
For many years I have used Retrospect for backing up our home computers. It's very important to have a thought-through backup strategy, that includes keeping more than one copy of your data, including at least one copy that is "off-site". If disaster strikes, such as your computer hard-drive failing, you wouldn't want to lose all your documents, photos and possibly emails.
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What we fear to be unconquerable has been conquered
Our church produces a quarterly magazine that goes, free, to every household in our parish. It's called The Well.
As vicar, I get to write a letter near the front of each issue, in which I seek briefly to bring a Christian perspective to bear on some contemporary issue or other.
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Holy Saturday in Narnia
As we sit between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, here's a quotation from CS Lewis classic novel: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
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Anglican Reality Check
I wish to commend to you a new website, Anglican Reality Check. In the past 22 years, a lot has changed in the Anglican landscape at home and around the world. The changes have happened gradually, so that it can be hard to keep track of the key developments that make up the still-unfolding story.
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The might of Rome bringing God's king into the world
There's a little gem of a commentary on Luke's gospel, by G B Caird, long out-of-print, but can easily be picked up second-hand.
I think he gets to the heart of Luke 2:1-7 succinctly in a way that many more detailed commentaries don't.
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Short Version: The Census in the time of Quirinius
On Saturday, I posted notes from Darrell Bock's commentary on Luke, addressing the questions that are often asked of the historicity of the census mentioned in Luke 2:1-2.
His arguments are excellent and detailed, so I wanted to reproduce them in fairly full form, as that will help some people.
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The Census in the time of Quirinius
I often hear it said that Luke got his history wrong in Luke 2:1-6. He refers to "the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria". It is said that there was no such census; it never took place.
This is a serious charge to levy against a gospel writer who is historically impeccable when he records any fact for which we have independent records, and who says (Luke 1:1-4) that he worked hard to check everything out with primary eye witnesses.
Much ink has been spilled on this. However, the commentary on Luke by Darrell Bock is thorough and contains a helpful excursus examining this question at length. For my own future reference, and for the benefit of others, here's a summary of his argument.
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