The New Testament seems to contain a strange mixture of optimism and pessimism. On the optimistic side there is a heaven and so everything must work out all right in the end. But on the pessimistic side is some of the teaching of Jesus: ‘Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines and plagues everywhere; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky.’ So what are Christians - optimists or pessimists? Read more
The New Testament teaching about the future is not that we look forward to what we do not have at the moment. For the Christian, the present and the future are closely tied together. So before we look at how Christians should prepare for the future, we need to look at the way the present and the future affect each other. Read more
The Christian hope, first and foremost, is in God himself. Because we know God, and learn to have confidence in him, we know that what he has promised will be fulfilled.
The resurrection
Our hope is not for the release of our souls from our bodies, as many people imagine. The teaching of the New Testament is that at the last day, the day when Jesus returns, we shall be raised from death to be with God for ever. Paul expresses it in this way: Read more
The modern family differs very strikingly from families in ancient times. We talk today about the ‘nuclear’ family — the somewhat isolated unit of mother, father and children. The historical reasons for this are quite well-known. Read more
Art has a lot to do with religion. Most of the ‘art-works’ unearthed by archaeologists link in with some religious practice or other. Until recent times the church was the most important patron of the arts. Contemporary artists regularly discuss their work in ’spiritual’ terms. Read more
Humanity’s fall is not just a theological statement; human history and experience show us that the image has been defaced in us all. As Paul puts it, ‘We have all fallen short of God’s standard’. But does this mean that God’s image has never been seen in its fullness since the beginning? No, because Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God. That is the New Testament’s bold declaration. The task of his mission was to lead us back to God and to restore the image in us.
This is where the New Testament connects the study of Christ with the study of humankind. Because Jesus is both true likeness of God and perfect man, he is the promise of a renewed humanity. To be ‘in Christ‘ is to belong to a ‘new humanity‘, just as to be ‘in Adam’ is to belong to the old, sinful humanity. The apostle Paul wrote of the ‘new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator’. As the ‘image of the invisible God‘, Jesus is the model of what men and women were created to be. Read more
One writer has confessed, the longer I live, the more faith I have in Providence, and the less faith I have in my interpretations of Providence.’
Providence is the care God takes of all existing things. So its range and depth are immense. The word itself is taken from
Abraham’s promise to his son Isaac on the way to sacrifice: ‘My Son, God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.’ ‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. This is God’s rule as moral governor over all the universe.
There is also God’s forgiveness of the sinner. God’s great acts of salvation are all part of God’s activity in providence: Read more
Modern science developed in one place only, and over a restricted period of time. The place was Western Europe; the time, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It is not immediately obvious why conditions were then particularly favourable. Much of the intellectual background of Western Europe at that time
“I have shown man the glory of your works, as much of their unending wealth as my feeble intellect was able to grasp.”
Johannes Kepler was not original — it was derived from classical antiquity. In technical invention, the Chinese had reached a higher level of sophistication than the Europeans, and at a much earlier stage. Why then was the decisive step to modern science not taken centuries before in Greece or China? Read more
During the first part of the nineteenth century, scientists began the serious study of fossils. This showed a clear succession of life on earth, with some forms (such as the dinosaurs) becoming extinct and new ones arising. At the same time geologists, looking at the natural processes at work on rocks, began to suggest that the world was older than the traditional 6,000 years.
Charles Lyell, who was staunchly opposed to evolution, calculated in 1859 that life had been on earth not less than 300 million years’. Speculations that extinct species had perished in Noah’s flood or that they were remains of previous creations destroyed by God seemed increasingly improbable. But those who denied that God had created each species uniquely did not at this stage find general acceptance. This was because no one could envisage how biological change (evolution) could take place. Read more
Can there be an atheistic religion? If so, is Buddhism that religion?
Unlike Hinduism, which can point to no one founder, and of which the origins are hidden in mystery, Buddhism sprang into being in an identifiable period of history (the sixth century BC), and owes its beginnings to a founder about whom we know a good deal.
The figure of Gautama the Buddha, or ‘awakened one’, is much encrusted with legend. But we can discern a real person — gentle, compassionate, courteous. At the age of about forty he made a great discovery. He felt a compulsion to pass on his discovery to others, spent the next forty years preaching, and left behind a community which has carried on his work to the present day. Read more
