Browsing Archive: January, 2012
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, January 31, 2012,
In :
Bible
Bishops, sex and science: a
combination that was quite controversial last week as ever. At stake is the
dignity of a section of our society and the livelihood of one psychotherapist.
The story behind the headlines involves a journalist pretending to seek
counselling to 'deal with his homosexual tendencies'. The psychotherapist –
working in private practice – agrees as she is a Christian who believes a gay
man can be cured of his homosexuality. The journalist breaks the story and the
psych...
Pagan
Christianity. The title says it all, does it not? And if
you had any doubts about the contents of Frank Viola and George Barna’s book
then their sub-title makes it even clearer – Exploring the roots of our church practices. Their central theme is
that practices not ordained by God in Jesus have entered church life; practices
first devised by pagans and introduced into the church and over the centuries have
become the accepted way of doing things.
Church practices
Viola and Barna are i... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 27, 2012,
In :
Bible
Over the past couple of
weeks I’ve been looking at 2 Timothy 3:16 and suggesting that though some will
pluck it out of context and use it to ‘prove’ that the Bible is the inerrant
word of God in all its detail this verse in fact can be used to do no such
thing. Last week I looked at the word God-breathed and the previous week I
considered which Scriptures it was referring to. Today it would be good to ask
what the verse has to say about the purpose of Scripture.
Useful not sufficient
The ... Continue reading ...
How could the church have
been so infected by imperial power to render it so ineffective? This is the
question that Roger Mitchell attempts to answer in the remainder of the first
two parts of his book. He introduces key characters and periods in which the
imperial principle was introduced and consolidated. The first of which is
Eusebius of Caesarea.
Father of church history
Eusebius has the distinction
of being referred to as ‘the father of church history’ and his most famous of books,
The... Continue reading ...
Brian
McLaren’s tenth and final question in his book A New Kind of Christianity asks ‘how we can translate our quest
into action?’ He acknowledges that many will reject the quest but asks that we
take Gamaliel’s view into consideration – if the quest is of God then it will
flourish, if not then it will wither and die (Acts 5:36ff). Much of this
chapter contains practical advice for people who share some of the same
questions – especially people who find themselves in the midst of ...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 20, 2012,
In :
Bible
When Paul said that ‘all
scripture is inspired’ (2 Timothy 3:16, NASV) what did he mean? Last week I
looked at the issue of which biblical books he could be referring to and
concluded that it was the books of the Old Testament alone he had in mind. In
this post I want to look at the word ‘inspired’.
God-breathed
The Greek word here is ‘theopneustos’ – literally
‘God-breathed’. (Interestingly the NIV uses this translation rather than
‘inspired’.) Nowhere else in the NT does... Continue reading ...
How is creation to be
restored and how will peace – in all its manifestations and consequences – be
effected within it and between it and God? Roger Mitchell understands the
gospel way of doing this as a ‘kenotic gift’, a giving away by God of himself
and his power for the good of creation. But it is the opposite of this that he
sees in the church as it was subsumed by the ‘imperial sovereignty’ of the
Roman Empire in the fourth century.
Supreme power
He defines sovereignty as
the e... Continue reading ...
“Jesus
said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father
but through me’.” This was Jesus’ answer when Thomas asked him how people get
into heaven and what happens to all the other religions in the world. Except
this wasn’t the question Thomas asked and we should, therefore, be very wary of
trying to make Jesus’ words fit into our preconceived ideas. And it is through
studying the context of Jesus’ words that Brian McLaren attempts an alternative
...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 13, 2012,
In :
Bible
A common misuse of the Bible
is to pluck out a verse to prove a point. Where the Bible itself is the subject
of the discussion the verse most commonly used is 2 Timothy 3:16 – ‘All
scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness.’ There, they say with a flourish,
this proves that the Bible as a whole is the word of God. I’d like to take the
next two or three posts to have a closer look at this text.
All scripture
Let... Continue reading ...
‘How is it that the best of
church experience in both traditional and radical expressions tends to relapse
to hierarchical domination and control?’ This is Roger Hadon Mitchell’s
chilling question in his introduction to his newly published PhD thesis, Church, Gospel & Empire (Eugene, OR,
2011.) It isn’t the only question posed but for the purpose of this blog it is
possibly the most important.
And it includes within it
some vital clues as to how Roger Mitchell intends to answer his own... Continue reading ...
Brian
McLaren (in A New Kind of Christianity) frames his ninth question – on
religious pluralism – within the context of armed conflict between faith
communities around the world. This is certainly a very potent frame but he
could also have mentioned the current narrative that is predominant among some
Christian conservatives in the west – that of the rise of Islam and the threat
to Christian religious freedom. Whichever frame we use the need to explore
pluralism is vital in today’s w...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 6, 2012,
In :
Bible
For the past 200 years or so
the Bible has come to play an increasingly central part in the daily life of
ordinary Christians. It wasn’t always the case. Go further back and few
ordinary Christians could either read or could afford their own copy. Go
further back again and the Bible did not exist in their language. Even further
and the Latin version was quite rare. Take another step to the third century
and there wasn’t even a common agreement on which books should be included in the
Bibl...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, January 4, 2012,
In :
Random
I’m hoping to be a bit more
focussed in my blogging this year so regular readers will notice some changes.
The first change will be fewer posts. Rather than the five posts a week I will
only aim to fill three slots – though if I feel I have something to say about
an issue then you may well see additional posts. These three slots (Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays) will have a particular focus each week and will
reflect my current reading, research and thinking.
Mondays
On Mondays my aim is t... Continue reading ...
Posted by Dyfed on Sunday, January 1, 2012,
In :
Random
So it’s 2012 already. I’ve
never really done the whole New Year thing and have mostly been asleep in bed
as the clock strikes midnight. I think there are two reasons for this – one which
is real and the other which I made up as an excuse for being a miserable sod.
The latter is a wholly rational thing whereby I reason there is no real change
from one day to the next just because it’s the start of a new year. And of
course that’s true – but only a glum, down-in-the-mouth schmuck wo...
Continue reading ...
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