Science and Genesis - N.T. Wright, John Polkinghorne, Allister McGrath

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Detention diary, day 2: “Good Friday behind bars”

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       Lent 2025, day 39.   It wasn’t your typical Good Friday service.   The 15 detainees arrived in the visiting area in waves.   Finally, everyone was assembled and a motley crew began to (ostensibly) commemorate the death of Jesus of Nazareth – Muslims, Sikhs and Christians together, from all around the globe.   Indeed, during this time of prayer and recollection, each individual had a very different experience and understood something uniquely personal.   Isaiah 53 was read in French, the Psalm in English and St. John’s passion narrative in Spanish.   During the “Laments of Christ against his faithless church” [1] , we sung the refrain, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom”.   We ended this liturgical moment by forming a circle, joining hands and offering spontaneous prayers of gratitude to Christ and supplications for each other, each pray-er addressing his God in his language.      Follow...
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Bonhoeffer's quest for a credible Christianity

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       Prophets have always been critical of “religious” institutions – in ancient Israel, this meant the cultic life of the tabernacle/temple which was overseen by priests and which was intimately associated with the Israelite monarch from the time of King Solomon.   Of course, a formalized liturgical life could easily lead to hypocrisy and a “cultural/civic religion” which, as Marx would denounce many centuries later, [1] could simply lend itself to the maintenance of the status quo, as opposed to producing real justice in society (cf. Micah 6.8; Jer. 7.1-15, etc.).   As opposed to religious practice that was merely “ritualistic”, prophetic religion was always concerned with faithfulness to the covenant with Yahweh – i.e. living a life of justice vis-à-vis God and your fellow humans (cf. Dt. 6.5; 11.13; 13.3; Lev. 19.18, 34).   The prophets of Israel were ruthless in their critique of religious observance that was not accompanied by a passionate con...
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Does the New Testament teach a doctrine of Hell?

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  INTRODUCTION      Until more recent times, it had long been a commonplace in Christian thought that the New Testament teaches unequivocally that there exists a place of eternal, conscious bodily/spiritual torment where the lost will spend eternity, a.k.a. Hell. [1]   However, there are many scholars who, albeit out of no desire to belittle the testimony of Scripture, now question whether the New Testament actually does affirm this traditional view of Hell.   In this brief paper, I will examine two NT expressions – “the Gehenna of fire” found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and “the lake of fire” of the book of Revelation – with the goal of determining whether they do indeed teach what they have traditionally been understood to teach, or whether a close examination of their language in its canonical, historical and cultural context might reveal a different referent for their “fiery imagery”. MATTHEW & MARK: “THE GEHENNA OF FIRE”  ...
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