In Depth:  Bob Allaway

Dear Editor,

It was good that Garry Williams took the trouble to examine whether a ‘cyber-supper’ was possible. While I share his opposition to the practice, it is for a different reason from his. He seems to be hung up on the authority of the elders/pastor – in his case, to excommunicate. The real problem, that Paul highlights in 1 Corinthians, is social.

Dear Editor,

I welcomed the December en, with your usual mix of useful and informative articles. However, I was uneasy about Barger’s article (p.18). He lumps together a variety of heretical ideas along with some perfectly innocuous terms, as symptoms of the Emergent Church. Any reader might label me as an adherent of such ideas, as I talk a lot about ‘Spiritual Formation’, but what I, and others, mean by that is training in such spiritual disciplines as having a daily quiet time, when one reads a portion of Scripture, not merely to acquire knowledge, but to apply its teaching to one’s life. Evangelicals have been observing such disciplines since the Reformation!

Dear Sir,

Macaulay and Martin (October en) may have good points to make about the nature of humanity in the ‘image of God’, but this is a separate issue from their attack on what they call ‘Theistic evolution’, which is nothing of the kind. ‘Through purely physical forces, they suggest, organic life gave rise to ape-like creatures …’ No, a theistic evolu-tionist believes that God gave rise to them. ‘We conclude, therefore, that God’s image-bearers didn’t just evolve. They were designed …’ But theistic evolutionists would agree they were designed. They would say, ‘They didn’t just evolve by chance.’