Search Results
Mere Apologetics - 7b Opening the Door to Faith
Mere Apologetics - 7b Opening the Door to Faith
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Opening the Door to Faith First, this approach is not well-grounded in the Bible. Truth, especially for the Old Testament, primarily designates reliability and trustworthiness. The apologetic issue is that God is a secure base, a place of safety on which to build the life of fait…
Mere Apologetics - 8b Case Study 1: Why Does God Allow Suffering?
Mere Apologetics - 8b Case Study 1: Why Does God Allow Suffering?
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Case Study 1: Why Does God Allow Suffering? Our first case study is an issue that is regularly raised both in public debates and private conversations. If God is good, why is there suffering in the world? Why do bad things happen in a universe created by a supposedly loving God? …
Mere Apologetics - 8c Case Study 2: God as a Crutch
Mere Apologetics - 8c Case Study 2: God as a Crutch
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Case Study 2: God as a Crutch One of the most familiar criticisms of Christianity is that it offers consolation to life’s losers. The only way such sad people can cope with life, it is argued, is by inventing a God who comforts them. Real people don’t need such spurious reassuran…
Mere Apologetics - 8 Questions about Faith
Mere Apologetics - 8 Questions about Faith
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Questions about Faith Apologetics is about communicating the joy, coherence, and relevance of the Christian faith on the one hand, and dealing with anxieties, difficulties, and concerns about that faith on the other. This has always been the case, from the time of the New Testame…
Mere Apologetics - 8d Working the Angles: Applying the Case Studies
Mere Apologetics - 8d Working the Angles: Applying the Case Studies
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Working the Angles: Applying the Case Studies In the previous two sections of this chapter we have explored some themes relating to two classic questions of Christian apologetics and identified some components of answers to two important anxieties about faith. But apologetics is …
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 1 Introduction
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 1 Introduction
by SPCK - N T Wright
Chapter One Introduction The land of Israel is a small country. You can walk its length, north to south, in a few days, and from its central mountains you can see its lateral boundaries, the sea to the west and the river to the east…
embodying mark - 4 Following the Shepherd
embodying mark - 4 Following the Shepherd
by SPCK - meda a a stamper
4 Following the Shepherd As in the last chapter, so also here Mark begins a story, interrupts it with another, and then comes round to the first story again. The passage we are exploring now follows on from Jesus’ sending of the disciples two by two in 6.7–13 to participate in hi…
embodying mark - 3 Following the Healer
embodying mark - 3 Following the Healer
by SPCK - meda a a stamper
3 Following the Healer Hearing the healing in Mark The teacher on the boat of Mark 4 has crossed over to the other side. Beyond the stormy seas, he is confronted by the torment of human suffering in its various guises: the raging of a tortured demoniac, the desperation of the fat…
embodying mark - 8 Into the Silence
embodying mark - 8 Into the Silence
by SPCK - meda a a stamper
8 Into the Silence They have been in the story all along, but silent and invisible, unnamed like the woman with her alabaster jar, until now. Even once some of them are named, at the death and the burial (15.40 – 41, 47), still they are motionless and voiceless…
journeying with John - 4 Passion and Holy Week
journeying with John - 4 Passion and Holy Week
by SPCK - Woodward, Gooder and Pryce
4 Passion and Holy Week Each of the Gospels brings its portrayal of Jesus to a climax with his death. Although the themes are different in each Gospel, it is important to pay close attention to the themes that come to the fore in the crucifixion accounts, since they tell us somet…
journeying with John - 7 Pentecost He breathed on them
journeying with John - 7 Pentecost He breathed on them
by SPCK - Woodward, Gooder and Pryce
7 Pentecost He breathed on them As we have noted on more than one occasion, the equivalent of the Acts account of Pentecost occurs in John’s Gospel in 20.19 –23. So far in this book we taken the resurrection passages out of order because of the way the Christian year falls…
journeying with John - 1 Advent and Christmas
journeying with John - 1 Advent and Christmas
by SPCK - Woodward, Gooder and Pryce
1 Advent and Christmas The Prologue of John is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in the whole of the New Testament, and no carol service would be complete without the rolling lyricism. So iconic is it that many people can quote its opening verses from memory…
journeying with John - 6 The Easter season Knowing, belonging, loving