In Depth:  theology

‘Was that the doorbell? Did you hear something?’ One of my greatest frustrations is getting an email saying that a parcel is going to be delivered, waiting in all morning for it, and then going to the front door – only to discover a passive-aggressive card that claims ‘We tried to deliver’. Did you? Really?

Mind you, there have been times when the delivery person has rung the bell and knocked on the door, but I have been too busy to answer. Honestly thinking that what I was doing was far more important. Every time I see that little card I start to wonder – what have I missed?

‘For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:22).

Imagine for a moment two giants standing astride the world. Each giant has a thick belt around his waist. From both belts hang billions of hooks. And on each hook is a human being – billions of men and women, girls and boys, from the unborn to the elderly. But the giants are very different. One giant is falling to destruction, and the people hanging from his belt are going with him. The other giant is standing strong for eternal life, and with him all those who hang from his belt.

Michael Reeves

‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). Those three words could hardly be more bouncy.

They seem lively, lovely, and as warming as a crackling fire. But ‘God is Trinity’? No, hardly the same effect: that just sounds cold and stodgy. All quite understandable, but Christians must see the reality behind what can be off-putting language. Yes, the Trinity can be presented as a fusty and irrelevant dogma, but the truth is that God is love because God is a Trinity.

Have you ever watched someone be far, far more loving than you, and wondered how they do it?

I can think of a lady who, in caring for her husband with worsening dementia, showed endless patience, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, helping him with the same ordinary little things, over and over and over again. I never saw her cross, or even a little irritated at her husband for his inability to do the simplest things or to remember anything from one minute to the next. I often wondered how I would be in a similar situation, and I’m pretty sure I would soon be irritated. Her beautiful character was a mystery to me – how did she do it? What made her tick so much better than me?

In the ancient Middle East, people took hospitality more seriously than most of us, and were more guarded with whom they ate. Most cultures had dietary restrictions and taboos. In some instances, eating the wrong food could render a person ritually unclean.

But whereas the Pharisees avoided contact with ‘sinners’ so that they would not become ritually unclean, Jesus befriended sinners – because He believed that His holiness was contagious.

As we move towards Good Friday and Easter, this short book extract helps us focus once again on the message at the heart of the Christian faith – the cross.

When we think of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into this world to redeem us from death, we must see His work of redemption under three important categories.

Bill James

As Christians we may well feel beleaguered by a number of pressing issues in the world today.

There is first of all our society’s insistence on the rights of personal sexual freedom and identity, threatening the church with ‘conversion therapy’ bans if we dare to disagree. Then there is the related issue of family breakdown, and the undermining of marriage. What about environmentalism, and the impending ‘climate crisis’? This is linked to warnings of world overpopulation, and a whole generation considering childlessness ‘for the sake of the planet’. Or is it systemic racism and injustice in society which is of primary concern?

One of the perennial questions that Christians ask is how the church should engage with society.

The Bible is clear that individual Christians should share God’s love with everyone in the contexts that God has placed them, but to what extent should the church, as the church, seek to influence society? There are several ways of addressing this question, but in recent years many evangelicals have gravitated to one of two paradigms – either a two-kingdoms model, or a transformationist model. These models or views can get complicated, but it’s useful for Christians to have a basic sense of the strengths and weaknesses of each, as well as being aware of the history.

‘… He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise” ’ (Heb. 2:11-12).

Do you remember the brothers in the ‘parable of the lost [prodigal] son’ in Luke 15?

‘What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?’ (Ps. 8:4).

When you meet another human being, what are you encountering? As you look into the eyes of a friend, or a parent, or a child, what is it that you see? Is an encounter with another human being different from an encounter with a mouse, or a goldfish, or your pet dog? Is it different from an encounter with an AI Chatbot? Intuitively we think it probably is. But why?

Graham Nicholls

What is evangelical unity and does it matter? And anyway, who’s to say what an evangelical actually is, and even then, what would visible evangelical unity look like?

That was part of our discussion at the autumn meeting of the Affinity Council – a group of leaders from churches and Christian organisations that help guide Affinity as we set our priorities.

Who needs Theological College? Everyone! Well, sort of…

Theological Colleges ideally exist ‘to prepare God’s people for works of service’ (Eph.4:12). But isn’t that what the local church should be doing for all its members? Of course. However, some do it better than others, and some not at all. Nevertheless, some believers begin to sense a call to serve the Lord in a more full-time capacity as pastors and teachers, evangelists, missionaries, church workers, youth leaders etc. Do they need to ‘go to college’ to train to do so?

John Woods

Andrew Wilson is based in Eastbourne and serves as the Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London.

Andrew will be familiar to many from his books, including The God of All Things and 1 Corinthians for Today, the Think Theology website, and his regular columns in US magazine, Christianity Today. Our Reviews Editor John Woods was pleased to have the opportunity to chat with Andrew about his latest book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West, which is now hot off the press from Crossway.

It was a wise and gracious man who said, ‘I want a feeling religion, not a religion of feelings,’ and Joseph Hart sang the truth when he wrote: ‘True religion’s more than notion, Something must be known and felt.’

True Christianity has as its foundation the great unalterable doctrines of Biblical revelation, the undeniable facts of history and, pre-eminently, the real living Lord Jesus Christ whose life, death, and resurrection is infallibly recorded under the direction of the Holy Spirit. This is the varied panorama of objective truth to which the humbled spirit of a believer always looks with the utmost confidence as he says ‘I believe this is absolutely true and reliable’. Yet the same believer can say more. He or she can speak of the subjective side of their religion, their experience and their experiences; and this is an essential and vital part of true Christianity. Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners whether people believe it or not, but only the believer knows Him as his own Saviour; he alone may say ‘I know whom I have believed’, and he alone can express this subjective experience by saying, ‘He is the Son of God and I trust in Him for my salvation’.

‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.’ (Rom. 15:13)

Dressed in black, a family gathers round a grave. Slowly, the coffin is lowered into the ground. One by one, the mourners gather a handful of earth and let it slip through fingers onto the lid of the plain oak box. The minister speaks: ‘…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ…’. For centuries, this was how Anglican Christians buried their dead.

Jon Barrett

Converted aged 20, I’ve been a Christian for 34 years and an ordained minister for 24. Add to that the fact that I was brought up in an evangelical family and you’ve got over half a century of life lived in and around the evangelical world.

Recently, I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time ruminating on how evangelistic preaching has changed over that time period and how- much to my concern- it now tends to focus almost entirely on the benefits of the gospel at the expense of the substance of the gospel.

Why did Paul care about spiritual maturity and why, for that matter, should we?

At first glance, this question seems too trivial to need an answer. We care because we want to become the people we were made to be, right? To develop our gifts, and to put them to work in the world.

Come and let me take you where I have been. For the last 50 years of my life I have met with the traumatised. They have been abused as children, raped, victims of domestic violence, trafficked, and affected by the ravages of war.

The vast majority of those precious image bearers have experienced these atrocities within the bounds of Christendom. The victims have come from churches, homes and Christian organisations. Many were abused by pastors, youth workers, teachers or family members. Many have found no refuge in the church. They understand what Jesus meant when he said that the Temple had become a safe place for those who steal and exploit the vulnerable (Matt. 21:13).

In my day-to-day interactions, it is rare to find women discussing theology, ecclesiology, the state of the current evangelical church, missions, or really anything vital to the well-being of the church.

Our conversations revolve mainly around two subjects: our children – how we will educate them, what they are eating, if they are sleeping, and our husbands and their jobs. If we are in a close and healthy group, we may intermittently discuss our walk with Christ, spiritual growth, or struggles. But, at least in my experience, those are few – and even in them, true theological discussions are highly uncommon.

en speaks to Julian Hardyman, Senior Pastor at Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge, about his most recent book on the Song of Songs.

en: Julian, tell us about your new book…

In every season of life, we say, either silently whispering to ourselves or in utter desperation to others: ‘I just want to be happy.’

If we’re honest, we all long for happiness. Happiness that rises above the temporal circumstances in which we find ourselves. Happiness that sores above the dark clouds of suffering and pain. As the world seemingly advances, cries for joy grow louder. The vast majority of those seeking ultimate happiness end up only manufacturing utter misery in the end. Real and meaningful joy seems elusive and impossible to obtain with any substantial measure of satisfaction.

As I write, the Dyson Report has just laid bare the deception used by Martin Bashir to obtain the interview with Diana.

But actually this is symptomatic of the whole realm of public and political life, where lies and deceit are commonplace. Truth has indeed stumbled in the public squares (Isa. 59:14), as Chris Wright reminded us in his article ‘The Modern War on Truth’ (en January 2020).

A Bible College training is sometimes dismissed as preparing students to face every challenge of previous generations.

It can seem otherworldly and out of touch. And are Bible Colleges in danger of removing capable people from the secular world and isolating them in the bubbles of Christian ministry?

William Christofides explores the question, does Atheism provide an adequate basis for morality?

In his book on Humanism, Jim Herrick writes: ‘For humanists, morality is a human construct underpinned by our biological development’.¹

James Cary

We all thought there were four but actually there are five. Not Gospels, but tastes. There’s sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness. And the fifth is umami, the Pete Best* of the culinary world that was there from the beginning. Umami is a meaty, broth-like, or savoury taste.

What’s your favourite taste? For me, there’s nothing better than a juicy ripe sliced tomato with olive oil, salt, red onion and basil, accompanying a medium-rare T-bone steak with some twice-cooked chips. And mustard mayo. There’s a restaurant in Stellenbosch in South Africa which did that to perfection. One day, I hope to return there for that transcendent experience.

Accountability, ‘the fact or condition of being accountable/ responsible’ is a word we hear a lot these days, whether in the public sphere when things have gone wrong, or something being encouraged between friends or prayer partners.

So it is worth taking the time to think about accountability from a human and heavenly perspective to make the most of its blessings without expecting too much.

Jonah’s wandering away from God is somewhat legendary … and a little fishy.

He didn’t just stray from God; he ran. And he ran from God because he was disobeying Him. As a prophet of God, Jonah was supposed to be one of God’s elite. Yet when God sends him off to be a street preacher in what is modern-day Iraq, to a people who are Jonah’s equivalent of the Islamic State, Jonah hauls off in the other direction (Jonah 1:3). And who can blame him? A holiday in the Mediterranean sounds a lot more appealing.

Ray Porter, formerly Director of World Mission Studies at Oak Hill Theological College and Chair of Global Connections responds to the article ‘The contextualised gospel – delightful, doubtful or damnable’ published in the February issue of en.

The history of contextualisation has almost as many failures as successes. Dr Wells and his daughter have questioned some patterns of contextualisation that are embraced in mission circles today and suggested that they in fact represent ‘another gospel’.

Adeline Wenham (INTP) wonders whether the whole idea of ‘personality types’ is even faintly Biblical...

Lockdown proved to be a time of heightened self-awareness, if Mumsnet is at all indicative. Some of us are now painfully conscious of where we lie on the introvert/ extrovert spectrum.

We know so much about love that we don’t realise how much we don’t know about it. We know it matters. We know we can’t live without it. This is so intuitive we don’t stop to think about why it is so obviously the case. It just is.

Whatever our worldview or politics or belief system or cultural background, we all know that life is, in some sense, about love. It is what makes life work. We sense that without love, everything else loses much of its point and purpose.