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Lectionary Reflection Year C - A First Monster
Lectionary Reflection Year C - A First Monster
by SPCK - N T Wright
A First Monster Revelation 13.1-10 He wasn’t acting alone. That was the conclusion the enquiry reached after a long investigation into the background of a strange murder in a city street. A foreign diplomat had been stabbed by a young man who ran away, but was caught. At his tria…
Revelation for Everyone - Final Judgement
Revelation for Everyone - Final Judgement
by SPCK - N T Wright
Final Judgement Revelation 20.7-15 John was not the first to suppose that after God’s great act of rescue and restoration there might be a further challenge, a final fling of the powers of evil against the already-redeemed people of God. In one of his favourite books of scripture…
52 Reflections on Faith - John the Baptist: pointing to Jesus
52 Reflections on Faith - John the Baptist: pointing to Jesus
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
John the Baptist: pointing to Jesus The bones of John the Baptist have been discovered in Bulgaria, or so some newspapers have implied. A number of remains, including a knuckle bone, have been found in a sarcophagus in the grounds of a monastery on an island called Sveti Ivan, of…
How God Became King - 1d The Plot Thickens: Twentieth-Century Scholarly Trends
How God Became King - 1d The Plot Thickens: Twentieth-Century Scholarly Trends
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Plot Thickens: Twentieth-Century Scholarly Trends So far I have confined myself to personal observations. But I believe the problem I have highlighted resonates across the whole field of Bible reading, scholarly and popular, in all the different traditions…
How God Became King - 10e Temple, Kingdom and Cross
How God Became King - 10e Temple, Kingdom and Cross
by SPCK - N T Wright
Temple, Kingdom and Cross One particular symbol stood high above all others in first-century Palestinian Judaism. Indeed, it stood proudly upon a hill, where it could not be hidden. The Temple in Jerusalem was not simply a ‘religious’ building in our modern sense or even in the s…
Mere Apologetics - 1b The Basic Themes of Christian Apologetics
Mere Apologetics - 1b The Basic Themes of Christian Apologetics
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
The Basic Themes of Christian Apologetics Before exploring these possibilities, we need to think a little more about the nature of apologetics. What issues does it engage? How does it help us proclaim and communicate the gospel? We could summarize the three tasks faced by apologi…
Mere Apologetics - 5b Why Does the Reasonableness of Christianity Matter?
Mere Apologetics - 5b Why Does the Reasonableness of Christianity Matter?
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Why Does the Reasonableness of Christianity Matter? Why is this point so important? Why should we need to show that Christian belief is reasonable? Why not just assert it? One of the apologetic points we need to emphasize here is that it is difficult to defend ideas that seem cou…
Great Christian Thinkers - 26 St. Leo The Great
Great Christian Thinkers - 26 St. Leo The Great
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Leo The Great Continuing our journey through the Fathers of the Church, true stars that shine in the distance, we next encounter a pope who, in 1754, Benedict XIV proclaimed a Doctor of the Church: St. Leo the Great. As the nickname soon attributed to him by tradition suggest…
Great Christian Thinkers - 23 St. Ephrem
Great Christian Thinkers - 23 St. Ephrem
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Ephrem Common opinion today supposes Christianity to be a European religion that subsequently exported the culture of this continent to other countries. But the reality is far more complex, since the roots of the Christian religion are found in the Old Testament, hence, in Je…
Great Christian Thinkers - 17 St. Hilary of Poitiers
Great Christian Thinkers - 17 St. Hilary of Poitiers
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Hilary of Poitiers I reflect now on a great Father of the Church of the West, St. Hilary of Poitiers, one of the important episcopal figures of the fourth century. In the controversy with the Arians, who considered Jesus the Son of God to be an excellent human creature but on…
Great Christian Thinkers - 35 John Climacus
Great Christian Thinkers - 35 John Climacus
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
John Climacus In presenting the great writers of the Church of the East and West in the Middle Age, I include the figure of John, known as Climacus. His name is a Latin transliteration of the Greek term klimakos, which means “of the ladder” (klimax). This is the title of his most…
Great Christian Thinkers - 43 Sts. Cyril and Methodius
Great Christian Thinkers - 43 Sts. Cyril and Methodius
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Sts. Cyril and Methodius Saints Cyril and Methodius were brothers by blood and in the faith, the so-called Apostles to the Slavs. Cyril was born in Thessalonica to Leo, an imperial magistrate, in 826 or 827. He was the youngest of seven. As a child, he learned the Slavonic langua…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 6 Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 6 Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Lectionary reflections - Year A Ordinary Time Proper 6 Exodus 19.2–8a Romans 5.1–8 Matthew 9.35—10.8 Christians know that, through the work of God in Christ, made real to them by the Holy Spirit, the world is a different place. We are, to use Paul’s characteristic phrase, ‘justif…
The Post Evangelical - 1 A symbol of hope
The Post Evangelical - 1 A symbol of hope
by SPCK - Dave Tomlinson
1 A symbol of hope It may seem strange to be talking about ‘post-evangelical’ just as others are talking about an evangelical renaissance, yet the subject is of vital concern to an increasing number of people who, for various reasons, feel the urge to explore new possibilities wi…
Mark The People's Commentary - Not Dead but Sleeping