• Starting again for Christ
• The Commentary
  Encouragement in the storm
• No one kills in the name of atheism?
  Neil Powell, of City Church, Birmingham, takes issue with Richard Dawkins
• Reverse missionaries
• Same-sex marriage
  Graham Wood asks whether it will bring stability or disaster
• Limelight help
  Tim Thornborough with tips for making the most of media interviews
• Crash course in evangelism
• My personal foreign country
  Lesley Barnes shares her experience of depression
• Unapologetic Christianity
  Alone in the universe?
• The Music Exchange
  Music and sunshine!
• Crossing the culture
  Beauty or the beast?
• Notes to growing Christians
  Y the OT?
• Monthly youth leaders column
  The long haul

other articles

• Astounding stories of God's intervention in Islamic Africa
• Courageous
• Redefining marriage
• The Pirates! In an adventure with scientists
• The trials of theology - Becoming a 'proven worker' in a dangerous business
• The wisdom of the cross - Exploring 1 Corinthians
• God made something amazing / enormous / tall / funny
• Amazing conversions - John Ashworth and his strange tales
• Confident Christianity - Conversations that lead to the cross
• The intolerance of tolerance
• What the Bible means to me - Testimonies of how God's Word impacts our lives
• Never give up on your dreams
• Mark time
• Marriage forecasting
• Between naivety and hostility - Uncovering the best of Christian responses to Islam in Britain
• Wesley as a pastoral theologian
• Christian music - A global history
• Women of faith & courage
• Out of the ashes - The restoration of a burned boy
• Victorian nonconformity

Holiday in Corinth

THE WISDOM OF THE CROSS
Exploring 1 Corinthians
Edited by Brian S. Rosner
IVP Apollos. 229 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 2 844 745 487

1 Corinthians is attracting some excellent commentaries. New kids on the block are Brian Rosner and Ray Ciampa, with their excellent ‘Pillar’ volume.

But that gives preachers a problem. 1 Corinthians is long, with issues at every turn. Commentaries are therefore long too.

Brian Rosner has come to our aid with these excellent articles from a range of authors, most based at Moore College in Sydney. Here are essays on the structure, language and themes of the letter, written with a contemporary eye. Church, the cross, sex, gifts and ministries, ethics, eschatology and God’s glory are all covered in rich sequence, with a wonderful concluding chapter by Rosner on preaching the letter itself.

I was not always persuaded, but then that is why books like this are so useful. For instance, while I agree that ‘love’ is a critical matter in the letter, I am not convinced that it is the defining centre. Rather, I think the arc from cross to resurrection which the letter embodies means that we are to deal with all the issues Paul raises under that time-frame; that is our eschatology, and misunderstanding it was the primary root of the Corinthian problems.

Keith Condie’s chapter did not grip me by its title, ‘Of God’: Karl Barth and the coherence of 1 Corinthians, but was actually really interesting and, while you might disagree with Barth himself, the result of the chapter is to put God, and not the Corinthians, at the centre of our thinking.

This book would be excellent reading for someone getting ready for a series on 1 Corinthians. It will bring you up to date, but, more importantly, it will keep your eyes on 1 Corinthians’ theme of the wisdom of the cross as you work week by week.

Chris Green,
Vice Principal, Oak Hill Theological College, London