Search
-
Recent Posts
- A rose by any other name is still a rose… 14/06/2026
- Some brief new thoughts on Genesis 6 09/06/2026
- Ideology as brain surgery 06/06/2026
- What turns Evangelicals Catholic? 03/06/2026
- British values were Evangelical Christian values 30/05/2026
Recent Comments
- Jon Garvey on Some brief new thoughts on Genesis 6
- Jon Garvey on Some brief new thoughts on Genesis 6
- Peter Hickman on Some brief new thoughts on Genesis 6
- Jon Garvey on Speech suppression more contagious than COVID – and certainly deadlier
- Ben on Speech suppression more contagious than COVID – and certainly deadlier
Post Archive
Category Archives: Theology
The triumph of the cross
The ever-helpful YouTube offered me a video which, a little research showed, drew on a 1995 paper by W. E. Schmidt entitled The Crucifixion Narrative and the Roman Triumphal Procession. It was a revelation to me. The article demonstrates the remarkable, and clearly deliberate, similarity between Mark’s account of the humiliation of Jesus as he goes to the Cross and the Imperial Triumph tradition. Mark has shaped his account to show how the Romans (at the instigation of the Jewish authorities) have actually given Jesus an Imperial Triumph, culminating in the Cross as his final victory.
What I think I know about life in the deep past
Colin Patterson, FRS, was a palaeontologist and proponent of “transformed cladistics” based at London’s Natural History Museum, who raised a controversy in 1981 by rhetorically asking his colleagues at a conference, “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?”
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
Leave a comment
How Darwinian evolution became plausible (for a time)
Here are some thoughts on what factors provided the fertile ground for Darwinian evolutionary theory to appear plausible when it was published in 1859. This is followed by some of the problems raised at the time the theory was published, showing that they have all become more acute, rather than being resolved, since 1859. The net result is that “variation and natural selection” as the origin of species is now thoroughly implausible, and remains a consensus only by academic inertia.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology of nature
6 Comments
To Ur is human, to dig divine.
When I wrote The Generations of Heaven and Earth I was concerned with the setting of the biblical Adam and Eve in history, which overlapped with their role in the ancestry of the present human race. This involved discussion of possible geographical settings for Eden, and for the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. This in turn raised the question of possible sites for a regional flood involving Noah.
Posted in Genealogical Adam, History, Theology
Leave a comment
Prayers for peace
Christianity has always had an ambivalent attitude towards war, unlike Islam which is unambiguously a religion of peace… once all that is non-Islamic has been obliterated or subjugated by brute force, including the wrong kind of Muslims like the peace-loving Ahmadiyya and any daring to apostasize.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
2 Comments
Temporal resonances
I’ve just given my Stratocaster guitar to my granddaughter, having decided I’m unlikely ever to join another rock band. And in any case, I still have a Telecaster. It’s not a Fender Stratocaster, you understand, but a Japanese Tokai, though when it was made, in 1984, their quality was arguably better than the the CBS Fenders of the time, and certainly superior to Fender’s Japanese Squiers, one of which I bought in 1983, but was never entirely happy with.
Posted in History, Music, Theology
2 Comments
Gospel obedience and the Spirit
We have just celebrated the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and here I am writing yet another post on Pentecostal doctrine. Why? Because Charismatic teaching is still prevalent in Evangelical churches and denominations, and because in these crucial times it actually weakens the resistance of the Church to the increasing concerted attacks of the enemy, and blunts its offensive power. False teaching must inevitably debilitate the Church Militant.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
Leave a comment
Jesus was not a failed prophet
Today is Palm Sunday, when the promised Messiah son of Joseph was acclaimed by his people as he came to Zion, but subsequently, in fulfilment of Scripture, was slain in saving them, and was even rejected by the nation (though ascending to God), leading to a new exile for Israel until the coming of the Messiah son of David as a conquering king, inaugurating the eternal kingdom of God.
Posted in History, Theology
Leave a comment
Before knowing your enemy recognise his enmity
In a comment on my last post, Ben links to an X post that compares Islam to Tolkein’s ring of power, arguing that whoever tries to control it will be controlled, and then destroyed, by it.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
3 Comments
Christendom has its advantages
I was recently in touch with a friend from my old church in Essex, which has now grown to over 1,000 weekly attenders. There were only about 80 when I joined in 1987, and it has grown steadily since. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s doing something right – Hillsong and Bethel were bigger, after all, and look what’s happened to them. But in this case it is, and it’s a cause for personal rejoicing.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
10 Comments