Theology for non-Theologians
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How one Philosopher became Christian through reading Aristotle
In 1981 the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre converted to Christianity during the course of writing his most famous work, After Virtue. The book argues that today’s Western understanding of right and wrong (morality) is a shipwreck...
What is Worship?
I grew up in a church which was home to two competing attitudes to Christian worship. One of them was expressed when people emerged from a service grumbling that they “didn’t get anything out of” the worship that morning. The other was...
Sex and the Church – and Diarmaid MacCulloch
“I think religion has got everything appallingly wrong and it has been terrible for us in sexual terms” declared Diarmaid MacCulloch in an interview about his three-part BBC series, “Sex and the Church.” The series is an attempt to prove...
More than Just Evangelism? The Calling of Christians in the World
A review of the ReFrame course Why did God put us on the earth? What is his purpose for art, science, law, finance, literature and education? What does he want Christians do in those areas? For many Christians the answer to these...
The Rise and Fall of Biblical Theology
“Modern exegetes are like us. They work and think at the end of a history. In this sense, the one thing that would be criticisable would be the naive claim of an exegesis that held itself to be without a history, as though it were...
Resurrection and Injustice
A Book Review It all lies in the fact that men think there are circumstances in which one may deal with human beings without love; and there are no such circumstances. One may deal with things without love; one may cut down trees, make...
Does Theology Bring you Closer to God?
Through encounters with both anti-intellectualism and ivory-tower elitism, I have come to some opinions about the rightful place of theology in Christian life.
Are there really “different ways” of interpreting the Bible?
I want to make an observation about many (not all) of the contemporary controversies surrounding biblical interpretation. I don’t mean historical debates (such as when Paul wrote Galatians or whether John the Baptist was Essene), I mean...
Did Everything Go Wrong When the Church Came to Power?
“You will have power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” – Acts 1:8 In a short space of time, the early Christians went from being a relational, organic, life-filled community to a powerful and corrupt institutional structure which would...