Tag: jesus

Let's go back in time to the day when Jesus spoke His apocalyptic words. At that time, rather than giving a revelation about the future, He was more concerned with warning about the dangers of deception.

Ultra-rich Silicon Valley tech magnate Bryan Johnson has been regularly having transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma in an effort to live longer. The treatments are expensive and are essentially still being trialled.

"History shows how surpassingly difficult it is for Christians not to forget Christ," says Professor Chris Green. Forgetting does not mean losing sight of His existence, but rather losing sight of His way of being, His values, and His way of relating to those around Him.

The veneration of saints is a very old tradition in Christianity. Many Christians cannot imagine their religion without appealing to saints for guidance, protection, healing and intercession. Less concerned with theological correctness, people seek the company of saints out of loneliness, hardship, sickness, fear, guilt, or disappointment.

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

Undoubtedly, the best known of all Bible verses is John 3:16, but even this does not sound the same in its different renderings. One of these is a personalised version, sometimes employed in church settings: “For God so loved [insert your name here] that He gave His one and only Son, so that if [insert your name here] believes in Him, [insert your name here] shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Over the centuries, strong but artificial tensions have been created between the Gospel of Paul (proclaimed especially by Augustine and many Protestants) and the "legalism" of the biblical writers James, Peter, Jude, and so on, which Catholic and Orthodox theologians have usually defended. What is at stake in these tensions is the authority of God's commandments and thus the duty or obligation to obey God's "commands, decrees and laws."

“And Who Is My Neighbour?” asked a Jewish teacher of the Law when Jesus Christ told him that eternal life entails observing two commandments: to love God and to love one’s neighbour.

Jesus had the highest regard for the Scriptures. The Gospels show that He was familiar with the content of the Scriptures, which He saw as the final authority for establishing truth, rejecting temptation, and choosing the way forward in the present and the future.

Who was Jesus really? While His historical existence is no longer questioned, many people believe that He was at best an exceptional personality of His time, a reformer whom His disciples later transformed into a deity. Why is neo-atheism concerned with promoting such a Jesus, and why is He nothing more than a new form of doubt?

Until that point in our marriage, my wife and I had shared a car. She worked in the city, close to public transport and wherever we went, we went together. And she preferred me to drive. When we had our daughter, the situation didn’t change much. Covid-19 made it hard to go anywhere and we found our four-door sedan big enough to tackle strollers, car seats and whatever other baby gear we needed.

In the first two articles of this series, we examined the biblical theology of the Sabbath in relation to the divine act of creation, the history and theology of the people of Israel and early Christianity. This third and final article in the series will examine the Sabbath from the perspective of legalism, under which some commentators have placed seventh-day observance.

To be a good Christian, they say, you must not swear, steal, lie, cheat or speak ill of anyone.

There are predictions made in the Bible. Have all the predictions of the past been fulfilled? If not, what does the failure of some of them to be fulfilled say about the credibility of the Bible?

Jesus Christ is certainly the most fascinating and controversial person in human history, if we look at how He has been understood throughout the history of Christian thought. But how did Jesus understand Himself?