Month: June 2012
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Plundering the Egyptians: The place of secular wisdom in gospel mission and ministry
From The Briefing: flickr: knitsteel Rock performances. Accounting textbooks. Voice coaching sessions. Self-help books. Leadership seminars. Adult education techniques. Sociological surveys. Jazz piano lessons. Child safety courses. Food safety courses. Statistical surveys. Statistics lectures. Corporate management textbooks. Primers on psychology. Magazine articles on cosmology. Blogs on modern communication techniques. Tips on writing style. In my…
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Dangerous love
From The Briefing: flickr: MousyBoyWithGlasses Just recently I came to realise that I had been treating a part of the Bible like a Mr Squiggle picture. Mr Squiggle was a kids’ TV show I used to watch. Children throughout Australia would draw little random squiggles–a couple of lines or curves on a piece of paper–and…
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Support the training of future gospel workers
Prior to Moore College, I undertook a two year MTS (Ministry Training Strategy) apprenticeship at the University of New South Wales. I’m immensely grateful for this experience; the apprenticeship gave me a gospel-centred, ministry-oriented theological perspective, which was foundational both for my academic study and for my future ministry roles. MTS Sunday is happening on…
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Polygamy in the Bible: A sordid tale
From The Briefing: I saw an excellent interview on Australia’s Channel 7 Sunrise program recently. Christian leaders were being asked about their opposition to proposals to redefine marriage, and were discussing the Bible’s view of marriage. At one point, the interviewer asked a question which is often brought up in these contexts: Doesn’t the Old…
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Spectacular find: original Greek sermons by Origen of Alexandria discovered
[My translation of the original article from the Bavarian State Library, H/T Ben Blackwell]: A spectacular discovery was recently made in the Bavarian State Library, in the process of cataloguing the Greek manuscripts from the collection of Johann Jakob Fuggers. While cataloguing a manuscript, Philologist Marina Molin Pradel identified numerous texts of sermons on the…
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Are we really devoted to the public reading of Scripture? (Scott Newling, Cambridge)
As evangelicals, we’ll often claim to believe that God speaks to us through the Bible. But do our public church gatherings actually reflect this conviction? This article by Scott Newling (currently in Cambridge), which appeared last year, is a salutary reminder to put our beliefs into action: Many evangelical churches are today characterized by what…
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Same sex marriage: why are so many Christians opposed?
Kudos to the Sunrise team for this excellent interview. No matter where you are in this debate, it’s well worth taking 11 and a half minutes to hear this balanced and helpful presentation of the biblical viewpoint:
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Philosophers, puppies, parchments and Pastoral epistles
Paul’s Pastoral letters can sound strange to our modern ears, especially since they mix high-minded theology together with mundane, personal instructions. In 2 Timothy, for example, we read the following theological exhortation: Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel…
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An anatomy of sin
From The Briefing: flickr: SashaW The first stage in Paul’s announcement of the gospel of God’s grace is a concise anatomy of sin (Rom 1:18-32). Sin is, at its heart, a suppression of truth. This suppression of truth has a kind of logical progression to it: rejection of God (vv. 19-21) leads to worshipping the…
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A new morality: child death and suffering is the price we must pay for sexual freedom?
I just heard Andrew Marr’s BBC program “Start the week”, broadcast from the Charleston Festival which is celebrating the Bloomsbury Group. This was a group of artists and intellectuals–including, for example, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes–(in)famous both for their enormously influential intellectual output, and also for their complex polyamorous sexual relationships. It was interesting…