My tradition (the Baptist part of the Nonconformist or radical Reformation) has stressed the idea that Scripture is perspicuous, that the Bible is easy to understand, and that anyone can understand it – or at least grasp its essentials – without special training or equipment. Yet there are for sure some difficult passages. There are [&hellip...
The prophet Jonah (at least as his story is told in the book that bears his name) is perhaps the most orthodox if perhaps the most heteropractic (( The prefix “ortho-” straight or right and “hetero-” different or wrong are used as opposites. The endings “-dox” to do with worship or theology and “-praxis” to [&hellip...
In the legal manouvreing at the start of this reading Paul quotes Isaiah: “Listen and listen but not understand look and look but not see!” But if the Bible is perspicuous (listen to The Perspicuity of Scripture) so is creation: we can’t miss evidence of God, but sometimes we don’t want to hear… And what [&hellip...
Peter gets some powerful lines in these two great chapters 🙂 Since I was a child I’ve loved his: “I don’t have silver and gold, but what I do have I’ll give you. Get up and walk!” So different from what we usually hear… And then when faced by the authorities he talks about his [&hellip...
The last reading last week about the ascension of Jesus to heaven explained that soon the Spirit would come. The disciples might not know all the secrets of God (as religions forever claim to do), but they will experience and share God’s power. Then in the first reading this week we move from the ascension [&hellip...
