Effective communication is a matter not simply of chosen words but also of how those words are spoken—i.e. of the tone of voice used when speaking. As C. S. Lewis once observed, “In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses...
Towards the end of his book That All Shall Be Saved Dr. David Bentley Hart makes the following extraordinary statement: “I have been asked more than once whether, if I were to become convinced that Christian adherence absolutely requires...
What was the Church like in 60 A.D.? We do not know as much as our curiosity might demand, but we do know some things. In many ways the Church back then was very different and in other ways it was same. I would like to look...
Now that I am retired from active (and stipendiary) ministry I find that I have more time to write and devote myself to my first love which is studying and teaching the Scriptures. Much of my previous work on the Scriptures is already...
They were fighting to the end. The Jews who had retreated into Jerusalem, the Holy City of God, were determined not to surrender to the besieging Romans but would hold out, daily expecting divine deliverance. Certainly only...
People who are staunchly pro-choice (i.e. who support the mother’s supposed right to have her unborn child killed at any time during the pregnancy for any reason) are usually at a loss to explain what precisely happens to the child so...
I once knew a dear man who said that he was the brother of a saint. Though I thought he was one of twelve children, he was actually one of thirteen children. It turns out that the youngest and thirteenth child died an hour or so after...
Saul of Tarsus was not a friend of The Way (as the followers of Jesus were then called). Saul was a Pharisee and a strict one and like many other Pharisees he regarded Jesus of Nazareth as a deceiver, a false prophet, a false Christ, a...
The phrase “the Curate’s egg” refers to a cartoon in an 1895 edition of Punch magazine, in which a nervous curate (i.e. an apprentice priest) is having breakfast with his bishop. When the curate shows reluctance to eat his egg because...
On June 1 the Right Reverend N. T. Wright was answering some questions on his Ask N.T. Wright Anything podcast. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and a widely-published and very popular scholar. I own his...
Christian discipleship has always required courage—sometimes a lot of courage, sometimes just a little. During the happy days of the Emperor Justinian, following Christ took (maybe) a smidgeon of courage, while during the unhappy days...
Well, okay, not really an announcement or two so much as an advertisement or two. In the absence of being able to put the information on roadside billboards, I am letting anyone who might be interested to know that I have published a...
I suppose it is because of some Facebook algorithm that has discerned that I am almost pathologically sentimental, but in my Facebook feed I regularly find videos of emotional reunions. Most of them are reunions of soldiers returning...
I will, alas, readily admit to at least one failing: I have little patience with what is called ‘woke’. Denunciations of our first Canadian Prime Minister as “colonial”, blaming “the patriarchy” for all perceived modern ills, flying...
I suppose that many people know that Christians read as sacred Scripture both the Old Testament (i.e. the Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament and that they further imagine that Christians interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in the same...
