Nem o cenário alternativo da Páscoa proposto por Lüdemann, no qual Pedro e Paulo experimentaram fantasias geradas pelo luto e culpa respectivamente, nem a alternativa de Crossan, na qual um grupo de escribas cristãos começou,...

We have to grow into Scripture, like a young boy inheriting his older brother’s clothes and flopping around in them, but he gradually builds out and grows up. Perhaps it’s a measure of our maturity...

The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If...

The future goal is the thing which produces character in the present.

Human was simultaneously the bearer of God’s wise rule into the world, and also the creature who would bring the loyalty and praise of that creation for its Creator into love, speech, and conscious obedience.

Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.

What we have at the moment isn’t as the old liturgies used to say, ‘the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,’ but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may...

In particular, we must take account of the well-known and striking saying of Jesus to the dying brigand beside him, recorded by Luke (23.43). ‘Today,’ he said, ‘you will be with me in paradise.’ ‘Paradise’...

What Paul understands by holiness or sanctification (is) the learning in the present of the habits which anticipate the ultimate future.

Many people think that being Christian makes you sort of subhuman or, at least, less than fully human. Guys out there on the street (people think) are having a wonderful time enjoying human life to...

Forget happiness. You were called to a throne. How will you prepare for it? That is the question of virtue, Christian style.

Human” is a kind of midway creature, reflecting God into the world, and reflecting the world back to God.

We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command...

All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.

Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don’t light a candle in a room that’s already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that’s so murky that the candle, when lit,...

Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence.

You see, the bodily resurrection of Jesus isn’t a take-it-or-leave-it thing, as though some Christians are welcome to believe it and others are welcome not to believe it. Take it away, and the whole picture...

Virtue is what happens when habitual choices have been wise.

Within biblical theology it remains the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming...

The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and the rest. This is the point that Paul grasped. And that is...

Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it ‘moral...

On the seventh day God rested in the darkness of the tomb;Having finished on the sixth day all his work of joy and doom.Now the Word had fallen silent, and the water had run dry,The...

Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren’t the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more “natural”...

At the heart of Galatians 2 is not an abstract individualized salvation, but a common meal. Paul does not want the Galatians to wait until they have agreed on all doctrinal arguments before they can...

Financial crashes happen precisely because the people who remember the last one have either died or retired and thus are no longer around, with memories and character formed by that previous experience, to warn people...