Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
Yesterday I was preaching on Judges 19, the story of the dismembered concubine, as the final sermon in our series on the Book of Judges. Because of its challenges, it is a text that has been long debated in scholarship, but (unsurprisingly) it is seldom preached on or referred to in church worship. (A member …
Even a few days on, it is hard to take in the horror of the Paris killings, and experience of those affected and their families. There are still those who do not know whether their relatives are alive and wounded or dead. But it hasn’t taken long for a whole series of questions to be …
At Lee Abbey last week and New Wine this, I have been leading a series of sessions on ‘Gods of Our Age’. (I did the teaching myself last week; this week I am hosting a series of contributors.) It struck me some time ago that the gods of the ancient world were not merely the …
It was surely only going to be a matter of time, following the execution of two Americans, that a British citizen was going to be the next victim of the brutal violence of the self-styled ‘Islamic State.’ David Haines was, by all account, an impressive individual, someone of ‘unstoppable energy’ who was deeply committed to …
(continued from the previous post here) Fourth, as we move from the united kingdom to the return from exile, the prophet Zechariah reinforces this perspective. Many people know the verse from Zechariah 4.6: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’ says the Lord. But what is not always realised is that the re-establishment …
Events of recent weeks offer a serious challenge to our thinking about God and conflict. The video released by the ISIS group of militant Sunni Muslims fighting in Iraq included an British Muslim from Cardiff urging others to join him. In the video he makes three claims: that jihad (understood by some Muslims as a spiritual struggle) …
The problem of violence in the Old Testament is something that confronts any careful reader. It is one of the first ports of call for New Atheist criticisms of the Bible, but it also provides a personal challenge anyone with a tender conscience who is aware of the prevalence of violence in the modern world. …
Tom Wright has written a fascinating reflection on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and he has given permission for me to post: Consider the following scenario. A group of IRA terrorists carry out a bombing raid in London. People are killed and wounded. The group escapes, first to Ireland, then to the United States, …
