||Pastoral Passage|| In light of the current coronavirus pandemic and the use of vaccines to ward off its serious ill effects, I would like to share two incidents – deaths – from the life of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards’ faith was in the same God and gospel we have today. The same confident hope is offered and there are the same expectations for selfless, humble, purposed living.
||Technical Article|| In the face of the unchallenged claim that the emperors ruled supreme, Paul begged to differ, shaping his Christology to offer an alternative world-ruler, sent not only to rule but also to redeem the Creator’s wayward world.
||Article|| Christians (and others) who ultimately refuse to get vaccinated and acquire a vaccine-passport face being made maligned and marginalised members of New Zealand for the foreseeable future. Whatever their rationale, they will not be doing it lightly, and it is not the role of vaccinated Christians to make life harder for them.
||Article|| As you read this, I would like you to imagine how things might be different today if the ideas here were widespread in churches 30-40 years ago. It is unfortunately common for churches to be slow to respond properly to difficult social issues – too often the response has been silence, reactionary, or capitulation. Nevertheless, “late” is better than “never” and churches are increasingly taking these kinds of ideas on board.
Some thoughts on a letter Martin Luther wrote to a friend during a health crisis.
||Short Article|| Reception history provides a useful and exciting set of new tools for studying the Bible, which I am confident will be a much more fruitful and satisfying endeavour than studying the film-texts that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
||Book Summary|| Noted church historian Justo L. Gonzalez does what professional historians usually don’t – he tells a history in order to make a point about the present.
A short while ago I came across a summary of the gospel from John Stott’s commentary on the book of Acts. I appreciated the summary but wondered what place gospel-motivated social transformation has in it. How does the gospel make us make the world better?
||Book Summary|| Children from families who have immigrated are often said to be caught between two cultures. They belong to their parents’ culture but grow up within another. It can be a tricky tension for them to navigate as they often wish to be faithful to their ‘home culture’ as well as fit in with their adopted culture at school and with their friends.
||Book Summary|| The contest of rights between women and their unborn is one of modern society’s fraught issues for which a Christian ethic that embraces both justice and care is needed. Gorman’s Abortion and the Early Church is an informative and worthwhile read for anyone wishing to survey the sources and contexts for Christianity’s first voices on the subject.