Category Archives: Theology

Tragedy

Posted on 12/02/2021 by Peter Hickman

This is a guest post by Dr Peter Hickman, an experienced UK medical practitioner, and a regular commenter on The Hump. The phrase “every death is a tragedy” has been repeated multiple times by the Prime Minister and other politicians during the 2020/21 SARS-Cov-2 Coronavirus pandemic. What does “every death is a tragedy” actually mean, and is it a useful or appropriate thing to say?

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

When public truth becomes subjective

Posted on 09/02/2021 by Jon Garvey

In my last post I wrote about the subjectivisation of truth in the progressive programme. But it would be a mistake to think this is restricted to specific examples like race and gender, because the postmodern element of progressivism extends it to the whole of life. It is all truth that becomes subjectivised to a preferred narrative, not just particular instances. Needless to say, this has profound implications.

Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Why lockdown kills everybody

Posted on 31/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

I’m pretty sure a new word is soon going to become part of the English language: “zoomed-out.” I keep hearing the concept, if not always the phrase, used by people who are, ostensibly, doing reasonably well under lockdown. Whether it’s our own student pastor, doing all his church and college work on a screen, or historian Neil Oliver comparing dreary lockdown life with the buzz he felt from a live audience on a book tour before all this, or even my old school-fellow J. J. Burnel commenting ruefully on trying to compose a new Stranglers album via Zoom (having sadly lost his friend and keyboard player, Dave Greenfield, to COVID … Continue reading →

Posted in Medicine, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

On compromise

Posted on 28/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

Looking back on the Soviet era, what Christians do you remember? Richard Wurmbrandt, perhaps, tortured for Christ in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Or Brother Andrew, risking his life to smuggle Bibles to believers. Or the pastor Georgi Vins, allowed out of prison to the west after an intensive campaign by Christians here. Or Solzhenitsyn, whose multiple accounts of believers both widely known and nameless, inside and outside the Gulag, show how the Spirit of Truth suffered under, yet finally triumphed over, Communism.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Bible Study: The finding of the Book of the Pandemic

Posted on 26/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

34 Boris was fifty four years old when he became king, and he reigned in London for four years… 3 In the third year of his lockdown the famine had become very great in the land, and he began secretly to doubt the advice he was getting from SAGE. In his fourth year he began to scour England and London for whatever remained of any value…

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How Christ released Prometheus (but not like Adam did)

Posted on 18/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

I’m reading a recent book by Carl Trueman, recommended by a Cambridge contemporary who read my e-book, Seeing Through Smoke (and generally liked it). It’s entitled The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Trueman is a Christian historian who seeks to explain the origin of our contemporary moral confusion. To capture his theme, how did a sentence like “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” come to make sense?

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

A prophetic word (maybe) from 2019

Posted on 10/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

One small effect of the events of 2020 has been to discredit the whole Charismatic prophetic movement, especially in the USA. The self-styled prophets foretold wonderful things for the year, entirely missing the slightly important COVID-19 outbreak, and then decreed with their pretended apostolic authority to cast it out, to absolutely no effect. Then they predicted a massive election win for Donald Trump, which whatever the election shenanigans were is now clearly false prophecy. They are blind guides – shun them.

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The official case for a UK casedemic

Posted on 08/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

Pathologist Claire Craig (whose excellent work I’ve mentioned before) has collated a remarkable page of official UK statistics for the whole of 2020, now that Public Health England has released the end-of-year data. Actually it’s game-changing, but let’s avoid hyperbole. Essentially, the PHE data gives official information on the clinical reason for every hospital admission this year, plus every other health contact that didn’t lead to admissions. Let me elaborate.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Post-COVID expectations

Posted on 07/01/2021 by Jon Garvey

One of the strangest things about the unfolding disaster of 2020 is the way in which so many, and especially Christians, seem to have acquired strongly rose-tinted spectacles regarding its final outcome.

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Music in Babel

Posted on 23/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

It came upon the midnight clear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth, To touch their harps of gold: “Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, From heaven’s all-gracious King.” The world in solemn stillness lay, To hear the angels sing.

Posted in History, Music, Theology | 2 Comments