Most christians have been taught to reverence the Bible. This has been especially true of Protestant christianity. The Reformation was built on the doctrine of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). And when conservative christianity felt threatened by evolution, liberal theology and modernist thinking in the 19th century, it developed a statement of “the fundamentals”, one […]
Larry Hurtado is retired New Testament scholar, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He has continued hs scholarly work since retiring.
There’s a lot of new, and sometimes scary, ideas flying around the christian scene these days. What are we to make of them?? Where is Protestant christianity heading? If you have doubts and questions about your form of christian belief, perhaps another form has something to offer. Check out a few ideas here.
This is a post about what christians believe, how we should express our belief and how cultures can clash. This is a post about an unfortunate episode in Australian sport and culture, from which no-one is likely to emerge a winner. And hopefully this is a post that won’t add, even in a small way, […]
I’ve been thinking for a while about modern western evangelical christianity. Not what some people may see as the worst of this belief system – televangelists, conservative politics and a focus on sexual ethics – but the mainstream. My initial christian experience was in this culture and belief, and while I have moved on in […]
I have been re-reading NT Wright’s chapter on the “The Surprise of Resurrection” in Jesus: the final days, where he corrects some doubtful christian ideas about the resurrection, and offers reasons why we should regard the gospel accounts as basically historical.
Are you the sort of christian whose faith is built more on reason and evidence than an experience of God? Do you enjoy answering sceptics’ questions about Jesus and the Bible? Perhaps even enjoy arguing with atheists online? Have you considered that apologetics might be dangerous for your faith? (Well, sort of! But read on!) […]
How much do you and I know about Jesus? How much of it is really the truth about him? The obvious answer is that we know more about him than most ancient figures, because we have quite a few accounts of his life and teachings. But everyone seems to read them differently. In my previous […]
You can find a lot of different views on the internet about the accuracy of Old Testament history and how archaeology does, or doesn’t, support the Old Testament accounts. Minimalist historians, and internet sceptics, will tell you it’s almost all invented myth, while maximalist historians and christian apologists will tell you that archaeology supports the […]
Believing the Bible is what it appears to be rather than what we may want it to be solves a lot of problems.