Times of lock down do highlight what the Bible says about God’s covenant community. Throughout the Bible, God unfolds covenants with His people – a covenant of works with Adam; and then succeeding covenants of grace in various guises, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, and finally the …
The lockdowns associated with COVID-19 have had the effect of straining relationships in a number of places, and the church has not escaped. The threat that worshippers in NSW churches will require vaccine passports before they can be allowed to join in public worship adds an extra dimension of angst. …
‘All that is not eternal is eternally out of date,’ said C. S. Lewis. It is one of those fresh and startling comments that Lewis was prone to make. We live in a world which is imprisoned within itself, yet full of geniuses telling us how to respond to it, …
Before he died of cancer in 2011, Christopher Hitchens spoke for many a modern atheist – and ancient one for that matter – when he declared: ‘We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion.’ It has become a common enough view. The recently appointed president …
Ecclesiastes 3 sets out a poetic and memorable reminder that life has its seasons, and there is a time for everything – to be born and to die, to plant and to reap, to kill and to heal, to break down and to build up, to weep and to laugh, …
In explaining the cross, the apostle Paul demonstrates that it reveals both God’s righteousness and His mercy, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom.3:25-26). At Calvary, Christ satisfied the justice of God, and opened up the mercy of God. That …
Peter Abelard (1079-1142) managed to get himself into theological and moral trouble throughout most of his life. When he wrote Sic et Non (‘Yes and No’) to argue that the Early Church Fathers did not always agree with one another, he was being provocative, as usual, but was more accurate …
John Stuart Mill is known as the great liberal political philosopher of nineteenth century England. He was also an atheist, but later in life he came to write of Christ: ‘When this pre-eminent genius of Christ is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to …
Our response to the world needs to embrace more than lament, but a deep malaise has descended upon contemporary Western society. There is a hardness of heart, but a softness in the head; a trivialisation of life, yet a lack of humour; and a coarsened culture but a distorted sensitivity …
The common saying is that only death and taxes are certain; everything else is up for grabs. Actually, there is some doubt about taxes. Jonathan Riley-Smith says that it was the Crusades which helped to promote nursing and income tax – mixed blessings, perhaps. Governments have always managed to extract …
