How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…ome appeal to fear, resentment, compassion or tribal pride. Some circulate what is false. Social media intensifies the problem because it does not present a neutral sample of reality. It presents a selection shaped by whom we follow, what attracts engagement, what our contacts sh…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…does not make the promised reign over the house of Jacob meaningless. The new covenant is mediated by Christ; that does not erase its stated making with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The same principle applies to Abraham. Christ is the Seed through whom the nations…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…plifications. It is wrong to accept every inquisitorial classification as a photograph of social reality. It is equally wrong to make the surviving dualist texts vanish because authorities used the category polemically. Some western dissidents held recognisably dualist beliefs; n…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…through one theologian. It developed as the Church became increasingly Gentile, separated socially from Jewish communities, interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem as lasting displacement, and read Israel's Scriptures principally through their fulfilment in Christ and the Church…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…er. The force is cumulative: the Gospels continually place their claims within a coherent social, political, geographical and religious environment. They also preserve material which Christian propagandists might have preferred to simplify. The disciples misunderstand Jesus, comp…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…tism, New Age spirituality, and some movements carrying the Christian name. This should immediately make us cautious about the claim that the experience authenticates its own source. A feeling of unity cannot tell us whether God is personal or impersonal. A vision cannot prove th…
Read article →The brothers of Jesus, the sons of Mary, and an argument of strong plausibility
…hers of Jesus were biological sons of Mary. Nevertheless, when the verse is read in its immediate literary setting and alongside the Gospel accounts, it creates a strong presumption in favour of that conclusion. Psalm 69:8 is part of a messianic unit Psalm 69:8 should not be trea…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…read critically. Yet we possess the creed, the twenty canons, letters written during or immediately after the council, and accounts from three participants representing markedly different interests. They do not tell the story found in social-media mythology. The historical verdic…
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