Category Archives: Theology

Helping Starmer build my internet footprint

Yesterday, the fifty-ninth anniversary of my new birth in Christ happened to coincide with my being asked to preach on one of the parables of Jesus. I chose “the labourers in the vineyard” from Matthew 20, and it seemed natural to include some testimony to my six decades of being one.

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The Turin anomaly

The Shroud of Turin is in the news again, after some sophisticated scientific study of the aging of the linen cloth not only suggested that it is, indeed, two thousand years old, but proposed the most likely itinerary among those previously suggested, based on climatic factors, and assuming, I suppose, that the shroud is a genuine relic from Jesus’s time.

Posted in History, Science, Theology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Unpluggable gaps?

Earlier this month I wrote a piece on the accusation that ID resorts to a version of the “God of the Gaps” fallacy (whilst repeating my belief that the fallacy is itself largely a fallacy).

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | 4 Comments

Christians outsourcing persecution?

To follow up on my last-but-one post, consider this.

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Christians hindering revival?

The time has come for judgment to begin, and God’s own people are the first to be judged. 1 Peter 4:17 The thing that upset many people most during COVID, and in the permacrisis since, was the total failure of a majority of people to comprehend that there was anything fundamentally wrong. That blind attitude has persisted into the most recent manifestation of the crisis (if you don’t count monkeypox and the NATO invasion of Russia at our expense), that is the protests and riots that have many US commentators wondering what has become of English justice, and even caused a friend in the impoverished and violent state of Sri … Continue reading

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 7 Comments

Plugging more gaps in the God of the gaps

Last Thursday I was interviewed for a podcast on God’s Good Earth by geologist Gregg Davidson, co-author with Ken Turner of the excellent Manifold Beauty of Genesis One, as well as writing an excellent sci-fi trilogy. The podcast should be online in about five weeks, Gregg says, so I’ll let you know about it when it happens.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Fifteen minute Ĩitties

My basic mental schema for the industrial revolution has been that it eventually brought great benefits, but only at the initial cost of millions of working people (including my Garvey ancestors) living in squalid and unhealthy conditions in city slums. Oliver Twist and all that. But I’m having to revise my ideas.

Posted in History, Prometheus, Theology | 2 Comments

Providence meticulous, mysterious and momentous

I’ve just re-read Luther’s classic The Bondage of the Will, in which he refutes the ubiquitous belief that the (fallen) human will is balanced between good and evil, able to choose either. I’ve only just got it back after an Arminian friend borrowed it to refute it twenty-two years ago, seeking to achieve against Luther what Erasmus failed to do, and not succeeding, kept it on his shelf.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 3 Comments

The deep roots of Englishness

I’ve recently re-read Beowulf, which has been described as the foundation of English literature. And that’s partly true, but partly also it’s a record of what the English abandoned in order to become a nation worth celebrating.

Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

WeAreNotWorship

I play in, but am no longer in oversight of, our church’s music group. Regular readers will know I am somewhat underwhelmed by the state of the “Christian Worship Industry” nowadays, and I’m unashamedly returning to that theme today. It’s better than thinking about the election.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments