Theology

One of the Bible’s most refined literary and artistic works is the Gospel of John. In recent readings, it increasingly emerges as a gospel of decisive, personal encounters between the Lord Jesus and various individuals.

Jessica was 19 when she had to tell her parents, both practicing Christians, that she was pregnant. That moment generated a real earthquake in the young woman’s family who, together with her boyfriend at the time, had been strongly involved in the purity movement, an ideology that promotes sexual abstinence until marriage, for religious reasons.

Traditional communities are like rivers, while modern societies are like oceans, said Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Consider that a river—deeper or shallower, faster or slower—always has a direction, as traditional societies usually direct the lives of their members. The ocean is a different story.

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God...

For me, 2022 was the year of waiting—a word that managed to define our lives, thoughts and actions to an unexpected degree.

Back when I was a student, I heard this joke that, despite being funny, made me stop and think. It went something like this: a man starts hearing an "inner voice" telling him to sell his house, move to Bucharest, and use all the money to bet on a black 13 at roulette. The man complies without question because the voice spoke with...

Almost 500 years have passed since the 1524 publication of the work that one prominent leader of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, Andreas Karlstadt, wrote in defence of the Sabbath doctrine.[1] It was the first work on this subject written by a leader of the Reformation.

Sometimes, life is a succession of questions that God seems to ignore—until, at the right time, His silence provides an answer that is better than any answer in the world.

The story of Jesus's first coming to earth is remarkable, not only because it was foretold thousands of years in advance, but also because the prophesied details of His passion and death were exactly fulfilled.

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28).

When I was at high school, I played basketball a lot—most days at school, then team training sessions and often two or three games each week. At university, I played on the best team I have been part of. We trained and competed regularly over two years, and twice won our league championship.

It is hard to remain indifferent to a life story like that of Terri Roberts, the mother of a young man who, in a still-unexplained moment of madness, stormed into an all-girls Amish school and began shooting, killing five of the students before killing himself.

The danger of the novel coronavirus has given us pause to reflect. As Christian believers, apart from praying, we are expected to examine and question our beliefs in this time, and to seek answers which are rooted in the perspective of the Holy Scriptures.

From the temple in Jerusalem to the final pages of Revelation, the Bible points toward a future where God finishes what He started.

In this second article in a series of three, we continue our analysis of three major anti-Sabbatarian arguments. The series will conclude with an assessment of Jesus' practice and teaching on the Sabbath.