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'These fragments I have shored against my ruins' (TS Eliot, The Waste Land)
Browsing All posts tagged under »Atonement«
The bare minimum gospel?
I’ve been involved in a discussion recently, connected to the excellent Evangelical Alliance Confidence in the Gospel campaign, which raised, amongst other issues, the question ‘what is essential to a gospel presentation?’ I understood the reason the question was on the table – are their certain things that, if they are not included, make an account […]
Rob Bell (insert stupidly large number here)
April 5, 2011
In chapter 5, ‘Dying to live,’ Bell turns to give an account of the atonement. He begins with a reflection on the ubiquity of the symbol of the cross, and the slogan, ‘Jesus died on the cross for your sins.’ (122) But what does that mean? Bell explores a ‘multiple metaphors’ view of the atonement, […]
Rob Bell, Love Wins 4
March 21, 2011
Chapter 1 of the book is entitled ‘What about the flat tire? [sic…]’ It is an example of the questioning methodology recommended in the preface: for twenty pages, Bell offers a stream-of-consciousness meander around questions concerning the accounts of how salvation is achieved, and what that says about God. The purpose of the chapter is […]
The Manchester Passion
August 29, 2010
I have just discovered that a video of the whole of this is online. It was broadcast live Good Friday 2006, a modern-day passion play set amongst the streets of Manchester, and using music from the city’s club scene to convey the story. Even for a live outside broadcast, the sound was sometimes not great, […]
How new is the ‘new perspective’?
August 27, 2010
I am no expert on the ‘new perspective on Paul’. I’ve read the obvious things – Sanders, Dunn, Wright, &c., although not Doug Campbell’s new book yet – and routinely use commentaries that presume or argue for the position; I’ve even preached and taught in ways that broadly assumed the correctness of the NPP; but […]
Good Friday poem: R.S. Thomas, The Musician
April 2, 2010
Ruth Gouldbourne, now senior pastor at Bloomsbury Baptist, introduced me to Thomas’s poetry, one of several things for which I will always remain in her debt. Wales produced more than its fair share of worthwhile poets in the twentieth century, but I’d trade all of them – not excluding Wilfred Owen – for Thomas if […]
Pushing the atonement to the limit?
September 24, 2009
(What follows is a summary of a paper I’ve been meaning to write for several years now, but never got around to. If anybody is interested enough to comment, I’d be happy to know if it would be worth actually doing…) The doctrine of limited atonement seems largely forgotten by mainstream academic theology today. Actually, […]
Culture, guilt, and Lockerbie
August 19, 2009
Local news today is full of the debate over whether Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, should be freed on compassionate grounds. He is dying of cancer, and my understanding is that it would be normal practice in Britain to allow any prisoner who is terminally ill to die at home […]
‘A debate belonging more to grammar than theology…’
November 20, 2008
…such was the judgement of Sergius of Constantinople on the monoenergist controversy. I don’t want to argue the rightness or wrongness of Sergius’ case here, but reflect on a more recent discussion. There is little doubt that Stuart Townend is one of our more gifted writers of worship music at present. His masterpiece thus far […]
Hating the sin and loving the sinner?
May 8, 2008
Mark Driscoll seems to have been making quite a lot of capital recently with the claim that ‘ “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner” is not a Biblical claim–Gandhi said it, and he was on a different team to ours’ (variously phrased in different talks and publications, but this is the gist of […]
Shored Fragments 
August 26, 2012
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