Jesus as Israel in Matthew’s Gospel The first words of Matthew's Gospel are, "The book of Genesis". Perhaps this is meant to remind us of something? In addition, perhaps the final verses o...
Calvin on the knowledge of God and Scripture Calvin wrote his Institutes as “a key to open a way for all children of God into a good and right understanding of Holy Scripture” (p.7). So it is appro...
Sex without bodies: understanding LGBT(QIA) What is it that unites those people who identify as LGBT—or LGBTQIA? Andy Crouch answers, in an excellent Christianity Today editorial: There is really ...
Calvin’s Institutes I’ve started (again) to read John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Undoubtedly it’s one of the most important books of the sixteenth-centu...
My ideal church Allowing myself to dream for a moment. What would my ideal church be like? Here are a few features. What would be on your list? Gospel-preaching. My id...
Jesus’ resurrection: extraordinary evidence required? Often when considering the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, the saying popularised by Carl Sagan is quoted: Extraordinary claims require extraordina...
Bishop of Chester: separation between legal and religious sides of marriage The Bishop of Chester, Peter Forster, speaking in yesterday's debate in the House of Lords (emphases added): How should we proceed? I have come to the v...
Liam Goligher on the state of preaching in the UK Liam Goligher moved not too long ago from the UK to the USA to become pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He was asked recently (video ...
Should we pray that Christians will be persecuted in the UK? I was speaking on Sunday evening at York Baptist Church on Paul's letter to the Philippians. Paul was in prison because he was preaching the gospel. Was...
The parable of the (two) lost son(s) At my church house group last night we were looking at Luke 15, with the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. Or is it the two lo...
Willem-Alexander: born with a destiny (like all of us) No one asked Willem-Alexander what he wanted to be when he was older. When he was born, his grandmother Juliana was Queen of the Netherlands, and his m...
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if yo...
Meeting God in the materiality of Christian worship I couldn't resist a few more quotes from James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom, this time on the theme of worship: One of the first things that should...
How to get a Christian university education I finished reading Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith last week. It's a superb book, with a broad theme and a narrow theme. The broad theme is the...
Rethinking the local church: ecclesiology for spiritual reductionists Last year I wrote a post entitled spiritual reductionism, about a view of reality in which the only things that ultimately matter are God and human souls.
Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women In Desiring the Kingdom, James K.A. Smith describes the mall (shopping centre) in religious terms (see here for a previous post and video). He sees the ...
Prayer for the church militant At this time of change for the Roman part of the Catholic Church, it seems appropriate to pray for the whole church on earth: the "church militant" (as ...
Nuclear Holocaust app to deliver world peace Violence could become a thing of the past, thanks to a new Nuclear Holocaust app. Studies of violence in various contexts have shown that, in general, a...
Venison and apples to be exported to New Zealand and then re-imported To deal with a surplus of deer and apples in the UK and an increasing demand for imported venison and apples from New Zealand, the government has announ...
Hope in troubled times We live in troubled times. Worldwide poverty, environmental degradation, widespread terrorism: the problems are massive and potentially catastrophic. As...
Green Party Conference The Green Party is celebrating its 40th birthday this weekend in Nottingham at its party conference. I'll be there (from tomorrow). It will be my first ...
I am making everything new (children’s talk) I gave a brief children's talk at our church yesterday. It went something like this... What is this a photo of? (A rubbish dump.) Would you like to go ...
Freedom from nature Your goal in life is to be free. Free from nature. You were born with a particular body, into a particular family, into a particular geographical, socia...
Same-sex marriage: anyone for a punch? Would you like a punch? "Punch" is an example of a word with more than one meaning. It might look like this in a dictionary—and you'd better be clear wh...
Anglicanism: comprehensive unity in the gospel? Stephen Neill (1900-1984), Anglican missionary, bishop and scholar, presents an appealing picture of Anglicanism in his 1958(*) book, simply titled, Ang...
Why should Christians care for creation? Great video from the Christian conservation charity A Rocha. It's a few years old (2006), but still has an excellent set of questions and an excellent l...
The Apostolic Gospel Heart-warming stuff from Michael Green, presenting the good news of Jesus Christ in its rich fullness (in 18 minutes!) to a group of Christian leaders e...
Why do you go to church? A bit of audience participation for the churchgoers out there... What are the main reasons you go to church? To hear good teaching? (But why not stay a...
Where is the holy catholic church? "I believe in ... the holy catholic church," we say in the Apostles' Creed. So where is this "holy catholic church"? One answer: the holy catholic churc...
Green politics: policies and practice The second half of Derek Wall's The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics (part 1) deals with the policies and practice of green politics. Chapter 4 looks...
End-of-year blogging ego trip Bloggers traditionally indulge themselves with a bit of introspection and ego-boosting on 31st December. Now, I'm no blogger (Ceci n'est pas un blog, of...
Green politics: holistic politics Halfway through reading the second of my Christmas present books, The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics, by Derek Wall (2010). Derek Wall is an econom...
The Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir This guy's a legend. And this film is awesome. Seriously! The Reverend Billy is on a mission to save Christmas from ... the shopocalypse! Pack the malls...
On congregationalism, presbyterianism and episcopalianism Jesus Christ has one body with many members. The one body is the global church throughout space and time, and the many members are the individual believ...
John Stevens on baptism Regular readers will (both) be aware that I’ve been trying to get a better understanding and appreciation of baptism.
A biblical case for female pastors? There's a purely cultural case for an "equal" (i.e., identical) role for men and women in the church. It goes something like this: For crying out loud, ...
Creation care: an urgent call to action The Lausanne Global Consultation on Creation Care and the Gospel took place recently in Jamaica. The outcome was an urgent Call to Action. Here are some...
Why is a church service called a “service”? I used to be ambivalent about the church "service", preferring a less "religious" word, such as "meeting" or "gathering". But now I think "service" is s...
Abortion: if a woman is denied her autonomy, is she denied her humanity? I can understand why someone would be zealously opposed to abortion. But it's been less obvious to me why someone would be zealously pro-abortion. I've ...
pIDLy update It's been a while since I posted anything here. And today won't mark a significant change in that pattern, I'm afraid. But my python-IDL interface, pIDL...
God’s new humanity Great talk by Andy Upton on God's new humanity (Ephesians 2:11-22): audio, video or below. It's wonderful stuff—God is breaking down the walls of divisi...
Progressive language Here are some commonly-used words and expressions. On their own, they are completely neutral. But we don't hear them as neutral, because they are about ...
Can infants be baptised? Is infant baptism something that should not be done, but can be done, or is it intrinsic to the nature of baptism that an infant cannot be baptised?
Living in God’s big story A sermon I preached last week (21 October) at Calvary Evangelical Church, Brighton: (Also available here or here.) What is a Christian? 1 Peter 1:1-9 A...
The Reformation Polka 495 years ago today, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther spoke out against the corrupt practices of the Roman Catholic Church at the time, by nailing his ...
Hymns of hope (6) Hail to the Lord’s anointed Jesus taught his followers to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The confident hope of the Christian is that thi...
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett visits York Natalie Bennett has been the leader of the Green Party for around 52 days. She's travelling around a lot, and visited York on Wednesday. I managed to ca...
Madrid to York by train I've never been a particularly frequent flyer, but I've been trying in recent years to keep my air miles low, mainly for environmental reasons. So, with...
Why Christians should be environmentalists Peter Harris has done great things in the environmental movement through Christian conservation organisation A Rocha. If you can spare just 10 minutes t...
A place in the Father’s house These verses, from John's account of the good news about Jesus, are often taken to mean that when Jesus comes again, he will take us away from the earth...
321: the story of God, the world and you Thanks to Kath for pointing me to this great video summary of the Christian good news. Strikingly, it starts by explaining the Trinity. This is very ref...
How to become a better lover What are you? James K.A. Smith gives two possible answers (my summary): I am a thinker. Information enters my mind, I think about it. I believe things ...
Could rules on vandalism be relaxed “to boost the economy”? Planning rules are to be relaxed, so that people can vandalise their neighbourhoods by building ugly extensions, in order "to boost the economy". But I'...
Should infants be baptised? Baptism is the sign of someone being a Christian. It represents the beginning of a new life in Jesus Christ. So is it appropriate for infants?
Hymns of hope (5) When the roll is called up yonder It’s not hard to find hymns that express the Christian hope for the future (wrongly) as a hope to escape this world and spend eternity far away in heave...
Is it un-Green to oppose same-sex marriage? The Green Party—of which I am a member—has a clear commitment to equality. It's a commitment that resonates with me as a Christian. But what does "equal...
The Story of Stuff I've been watching some, erm, stuff from The Story of Stuff Project. It's about our patterns of production and consumption, and how they are all messed ...
Global warming sceptics convinced The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project published some new results a couple of days ago. Here's what they said: According to a new Berkele...
The consumerisation of democracy "Consumerism was a way of giving people the illusion of control, while allowing a responsible elite to continue managing society." Part 4 of Adam Curtis...
Will you sponsor me to… Some of our social customs are so familiar that we don't realise how weird they are. Sponsorship is one of them. Here are two things a person might say,...
Worldview, story and mission The final chapter of Al Wolters' Creation Regained (1, 2[1], 2[2], 3, 4, 5-6) is a postscript that was added for the second edition of the book in 2005,...
Regaining creation [Jesus' parable of the talents] means that ... Christians must now employ all their God-given means in opposing the sickness and demonization of creatio...
Creation regained So far, in exploring an all-encompassing Christian worldview using Al Wolters' book, Creation Regained, we've seen how all areas of reality, including a...
The roots of consumerism Why did women start to smoke? Why did people start buying lots of stuff they didn't actually need? What led to the Wall Street Crash? What led to Hitler...
New creation vocabulary I'm always delighted when I hear people speaking about the true Christian hope for the future: not that we will escape this earth and go to heaven for e...
Hymns of hope (4) Creation sings A hymn, not so much sung by us, but sung by the whole creation. We know what we think about God’s redemptive work, but if the whole creation could sing,...
The Economics of Happiness (2011) Went to see The Economics of Happiness at our local Picturehouse cinema last night. The basic message: globalisation bad, localisation good. The first p...
Your kingdom come … on earth Great stuff in Margaret Killingray's Word for the Week at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC): The Christian church has, over the ...
How we became enlightened Typically cheeky and subversive thoughts by Mark Roques of Reality Bites (WYSOCS): Good evening and welcome to my lecture. For those who lack knowledge ...
Authors list script One of my most important roles within HerMES has been to generate the LaTeX for the lists of authors and affiliations in the astronomy journal papers (p...
Creation and evolution: my current thinking I've been pondering the issue of creation and evolution for years, and I thought it was about time to set out my current thinking on the area. This is a...
Transforming culture Great quote from James K.A. Smith: At its heart, the Kuyperian tradition has emphasized the lordship of Christ over all things and hence affirmed creati...
pIDLy on GitHub I thought I'd better figure out what Git and GitHub are. Git is a revision control system, enabling you to keep track of changes to computer software (...
Aspect-oriented programming That’s right, not object-oriented, but aspect-oriented. What’s that all about then?
Update Regular visitors to [what was] my boring technical blog, may be forgiven for thinking that nothing is going on. This is my fourth post here in two years...
Evidence for young-age creationism It's not clear precisely what role scientific evidence plays when someone chooses between young-age creationism and evolution over billions of years. Ce...
What’s so great about communion? Jesus gave his followers two signs, or sacraments, to strengthen them in their faith: baptism and communion (the Lord's Supper). Calvin gives a helpful ...
Creation distorted Al Wolters' Creation Regained traces out the themes of Creation, Fall and Redemption, and how they shape our understanding of everything. Having looked ...
John 3:16 corrected I've taken the liberty of correcting the most famous verse of the Bible, so that it fits more comfortably with what many Christians seem to believe. Do ...
The development of creation Back to Al Wolter's book, Creation Regained (1, 2[1]), and the rest of chapter 2, on Creation. We're trying to gain a biblical perspective on the whole ...
Spiritual reductionism Something has been bothering me about the evangelical church in the UK. It's certainly an issue elsewhere, and it's nothing new, but, as an evangelical...
Creation or evolution: which way forward? I posted this elsewhere a few months ago, but I thought it was worth posting it here too. The Christian church is still a long way from resolving the cr...
Krauss got plenty of nothing The title of Lawrence Krauss's book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, might have led you to believe that the theoret...
Responding to climate change I thought I'd share a video from Tearfund, which I saw on Saturday as part of an event in York looking at a Christian response to climate change: ...
Living on the earth for ever A bit of Easter reading for you: The Physical Future, an article on Theology Network by Paul Blackham, about the Christian hope for eternity. It's a hop...
Astronomy through a Christian telescope ...is the title of a talk I'm due to give later in April, to a Christian group in Leeds. Here's the summary: Is there a distinctively Christian view of ...
God and Government God and Government is an accessible, recent (2009) multi-author book, aimed at stimulating Christian thinking about political issues within the UK conte...
Coalition For Marriage: an open letter to fellow Christians Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I know many of you have been encouraging others to support the "Coalition For Marriage". And I fully respect you fo...
Does God have body parts, and did he create in six days? Have a quick look at this, and then read on: Does God have body parts? An idea... We could speak about different "domains" of reality. Some of these dom...
Keep politics out of marriage If you've signed the Coalition For Marriage (C4M) petition, or the Coalition For Equal Marriage (C4EM) petition, or indeed both or neither (and I think...
Magnificent Bach Just over a week to go... Bach's Magnificat, Easter Oratorio and Ascension Oratorio, with the Yorkshire Bach Choir and Yorkshire Baroque Soloists, at St...
Hymns of hope (3) It is well with my soul Horatio Spafford's moving hymn, When peace, like a river, is somewhat marred by a line in a verse that apparently was not in the original version or eve...
God the law-giver and his creation Chapter 2 of Creation Regained covers the first theme of the creation-fall-redemption triad: creation. It's quite a lengthy chapter, so I'll cover it in...
Hymns of hope (2) There is a day Another Christian song that expresses the Christian hope well is one of my favourites, There is a day, by Nathan Fellingham (2001) of Phatfish. Helpfull...
Hymns of hope (1) King of the ages This is part 1 of a series looking at the theme of hope in Christian hymns and songs. (I hope the series will have more than one part, but don’t assume ...
The gospel in the gospels? The gospel: Jesus came to earth to die and to rise again. But what about all the stuff Jesus did before he died, which the four gospels tell us about? I...
WALL-E (2008) We watched WALL-E (2008) last night. It's a great story. It's about planet earth, a planet that was supposed to be beautiful—in its landscapes, in the ...
On Gaussian approximations You have a function that you want to approximate as an N-dimensional (multivariate) Gaussian (normal) distribution. What do you do? If you are me, you ...
Those whom the state has joined together? A few thoughts on the proposals for allowing same-sex marriage. It seems to me that the Christian view on marriage can easily be lost in the discussion....