Many readers here will know of the recent controversy in the Church of England. The Crown Nominations Commission nominated Philip North to be the next Bishop of Sheffield. But Philip North believes that women cannot be priests. And when he was ordained bishop, no one who had ordained a woman laid hands on him. So
How Revealed Is Christianity? Read More »
Inevitably, I’m expecting people to misunderstand the following post. And, sadly, some might even do so intentionally. I’m, in this post, not primarily presenting my own pastoral position in relation to divorce and remarriage in our contemporary context. I want to, in this post, present fairly an exegesis of New Testament texts which interpret Jesus
Sunday’s second reading (1 Corinthians 1:10-18) was almost a Monty Python sketch as St Paul started with declaring he had baptised no one and then remembering more and more names, finally concluding, “I do not know whether I baptised anyone else.” In the midst of this, there was something that stood out for me: Or
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Two Sources of Authority There is an apologetics oversimplification which gives the (straw-man) impression that alongside the written words of the scriptures, the apostles verbally told the bishops they ordained supplementary material which each bishop has passed on verbally to the next bishops they ordained in an unbroken chain of oral tradition. This is obviously
From time to time I stumble upon Bible-aloners arguing between themselves about the Bible being inspired, and/or infallible, and/or inerrant, etc… And then about whether it is sola scriptura, or nuda scriptura,… And then about Schleiermacherian and Barthian and Bultmannian approaches to scripture… And Calvin… And Warfield… and Spurgeon… and Vos… And, once people have
Is The Bible Wrong? Read More »
In one discussion I was part of recently people were arguing for gender equality based on what they termed a “trajectory” in the Bible. A trajectory, of course, means that earlier biblical texts are not expressing God’s will for all people for all time. This presents an understanding of inspiration that some Christians are uncomfortable
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I regularly see the phrase, “revealed in the Bible”, and it pulls me up short. Sure, maybe some people are using the phrase “revealed in the Bible” as shorthand for something akin to “revealed by God and recorded under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in one of the books of the Bible”. To be
Revealed In The Bible? Read More »
In an age in which “reason” is regularly contrasted with “religion” in our infotainment-driven media, it has been encouraging to find a couple of articles in the last week or so that firmly put reason with religious faith, not against it. My friend, Rev. Ron Hay (we trained together for the priesthood), has been in
