Music, the universal language

Posted on 10/03/2025 by Jon Garvey

When I was at school, I borrowed a balalaika (souvenir of a Russian school cruise) from another kid, in order to play a self-penned song called Boris and his Balalaika, which used the only three chords I knew on guitar in 1969. I reckoned it couldn’t be harder to play on three strings than six, and would be more authentic for the youth club social.

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Posted in History, Music | 2 Comments

Soft sacerdotalism

Posted on 03/03/2025 by Jon Garvey

Tom Wadsworth’s 2021 paper, The Shift, for the ETS (available here) gives a good account of how the New Testament’s primarily “horizontal” concept of “meeting for mutual edification in the Spirit” became a vertical “meeting to serve God in worship” by the fourth century. Essentially, the Christian assembly became temple worship redividus despite the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the culprit was sacerdotalism.

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Posted in Theology | 2 Comments

What the Spirit says, and how he says it

Posted on 26/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

Tom Wadsworth, whom I referenced recently, is particularly strong on the idea that teaching and exhortation in church is not simply the job of a credentialed Pastor, but of multiple people in a fellowship. I expressed some caveats to this in my linked piece, but it is a particularly strong idea when linked to the role of the Holy Spirit in co-ordinating Christian assemblies so that they are, indeed, edifying to all because all participate.

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Posted in Theology | Leave a comment

Science simony

Posted on 20/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

Our own commenter Shopwindows recently coined the excellent Virgilian aphorism for corruption in science: “I do not trust Geeks bearing grifts.” Physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder gives an excellent, and disturbing, example of this not in the politically controversial fields like climatology or vaccinology, but in fundamental science.

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

Christians need to learn who their friends are

Posted on 18/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

Currently London is hosting a conference of the ARC (Affiliation for Responsible Citizenship). Attending is Toby Young (now Lord Toby Young, PBUH), the founder and chief honcho of the excellent Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic website. Both are rare defenders of independent thought on the British scene.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 5 Comments

Darwin’s “Designative Virtue”

Posted on 14/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein was on Joe Rogan’s show, commenting on the fact that Tucker Carlson has expressed his scepticism about Darwinian evolution. He says that Tucker is happy to meet to be instructed on why he’s misunderstood the problem, which for a generally decent bloke is a disappointing recycling of the commonest Darwinian response to criticism from anyone who can be shoe-horned into the “layman” category – even if they are also evolutionary biologists. I came to the conclusion years ago that no-one understands Darwinism.

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Posted in Creation, Science | 2 Comments

In the end greatness means God’s law

Posted on 10/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

With the recent revelations of the horrible corruption of USAID, a number of “awakened” commentators, broadly supportive of the Trump revolution, have lined up to express caution lest the president’s own team dismantle Deep State evils only to construct their own. This is a sign of political health – if from the start one’s supporters are critical friends rather than starry-eyed worshippers, then the checks and balances of a political entity are operating.

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

Brotherly babies and baptismal bathwater

Posted on 07/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

Last year I wrote about David Peterson’s Engaging with God and how it radically transforms our view of Christian assembly by showing that the New Testament never describes, or intends, such meetings to be for worship. Inasmuch as “worship” forms a part of Christian life, it is transformed from the Old Testament temple-locus of God’s presence, to the concept of Christ and his people being the temple and the priesthood, and therefore Christian living itself is our “spiritual sacrifice.”

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to avoid Misinformation

Posted on 01/02/2025 by Jon Garvey

A friend and Humpist from America (who was also a Cambridge contemporary) sent me this link to a new paper calling for the withdrawal of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID “vaccines.” It is not the first such report.

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Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 7 Comments

All that glisters is not gold

Posted on 27/01/2025 by Jon Garvey

There’s a good deal of optimism amongst “conservatives” (a euphemism for “Far Right Thugs” to Mr Starmer, of course) about the breakneck speed of the turnaround under Donald Trump. I share it, and yet I wonder why I still seem to feel these are “bad times” rather than “good times,” and still less the start of a “Golden Age” as per the President’s inaugural rhetoric.

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