Category Archives: Theology

Congregational singing is not karaoke

Posted on 16/11/2023 by Jon Garvey

One of our guys at church has just come off the sound team, and after a break of a decade is getting back into playing flute for our church band. “As I get deeper into practising,” he said, “I’m finding that a lot of the new songs aren’t written for worship, but performance.”

Posted in Music, Theology | 2 Comments

The religious apologetics of naturalistic materialism

Posted on 09/11/2023 by Jon Garvey

James Tour, as many of you will know, is a noted chemist who wears his Christian faith on his sleeve, unashamedly engaging in apologetics alongside his groundbreaking research, particularly that involving nano-particles.

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

Divine geopolitics is individual

Posted on 27/10/2023 by Jon Garvey

I was walking Charlie the dog, and idly wondering about a common Evangelical saying I’d recently heard again somewhere, which runs: “If I’d been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would still have died for me.“

Posted in Theology | Leave a comment

The strange ethics of propaganda

Posted on 14/10/2023 by Jon Garvey

YouTube is becoming all tough and militant (terroristic?) about the use of Ad-blockers. If I open a copy of YouTube in a fresh window now, in the time it has taken me to type these two sentences, twenty five ads have been blocked by Firefox. No, twenty six, as I did the full stop. If I actually open a video, pretty soon some threatening message will now flash up tell me it’s evil not to watch them all.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

The pivot of history

Posted on 09/10/2023 by Jon Garvey

At the purely geopolitical level, war in Israel is a highly significant and concerning matter. But if biblical prophecy is more than the fairy-tales the New Atheists loved to claim, without investigation, before their own demise as a movement, then war in Israel may be of cosmic significance. I have no intention here of going down the rabbit hole of placing the current situation of Israel in 2023 into the prophetic matrix of the Bible. Instead I want to take a look at the wider question of whether there is a basis for taking that matrix seriously, rather than airily dismissing it like the Gnus’ talk of “your imaginary friend,” … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 6 Comments

Providence, raindrops and horsehoe-nails

Posted on 25/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

One throw-away line in a video for the excellent Christian course Discipleship Exploredcaught my attention. The narrator, speaking of God’s care for us, said that “each drop of rain has its intended target.”

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 2 Comments

Forgetting the gift and the giver at harvest time

Posted on 19/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

It’s the time of year when churches still tend to have some kind of harvest festival. I was reminded of that this morning both by having to get the songs for our harvest service out to the various musicians, projectionists and so on, and even more by my daily reading happening to be Acts 14, in which Paul and Barnabas discourage the Lycaonians from treating them as gods by reminding them that the true God has revealed himself to them because “he has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Ironically, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology, Theology of nature | 4 Comments

What’s wrong with the mark of the beast, anyway?

Posted on 15/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

It’s generally thought that the earthly reality behind the book of Revelation’s “mark of the beast,” the infamous 666, was the imposition of emperor-worship by Nero, whose name is argued to add up numerologically to that number. For the Christian, it meant the compulsion to own any other god than the true one revealed by and in Christ.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

More on soul as the sole reality

Posted on 09/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

I eventually worked through Joshua Farris’s The Creation of Self, as mentioned recently, and have to say I felt it improved towards the end.

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

The sole soul

Posted on 23/08/2023 by Jon Garvey

the Apologies for sparsity of posts just now, but it’s both the B&B season for visiting grandchildren, and the labour-intensive mowing period for our hillside wild-flower meadow. Nevertheless I’ve had reason, whilst raking a hill-full of grass, to ponder the matter of the human soul.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 1 Comment