Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured

He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history. Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is “humble and meek” and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

—Mere Christianity, Book II.3

Sunday Food for Thought from #CS Lewis 'In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms”
–Mere Christianity (chapter 4) #theology #churchhistory #anthropology pic.twitter.com/nBRtjewUtO

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 3, 2021

 I’ve said she is theological without being dogmatic, but I think the key to her project involves making space for theology more than defending specific claims. It’s the realm of metaphysics she cares about, the idea that our experience suggests something grander about us and about our apprehensions than our scientific models can account for. For her, the Christian narrative gives that transcendent realm its coordinates, but it’s our experience as human beings—Christians or non-Christians—that tells us that we matter and that the universe has beauty. She wants to recover a place for that mattering.

The gift of Marilynne Robinson’s long shelf of late work, then, is its refusal of cynicism, its declaration of wonder and awe, and its affirmation that our little minds haven’t exhausted the meaning of the universe—and won’t. Long before Robinson picked up her pen, Simone Weil told us that we’d already “lost the whole poetry of the cosmos.” Robinson hasn’t given up on that poetry.

One of my favorite notes of gratitude and hope comes in her novel Gilead (2004). “In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe,” her minister-hero declares, “and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.” It’s a startling image. It reverses the sense that our lives are trivial details in an unimaginable vastness. In Robinson’s vision, the universe—and the God who wills the universe into existence at the beginning of the book of Genesis—has a deep interest in us, such that even our follies are part of some epic song. It’s elevating. Maybe it’s fanciful, or maybe it’s true and sublime. “It depends upon the universe,” as Saul Bellow’s Herzog decides, “what it is.”

Read it all.

There are a handful of writers that, when I read them, I marvel at both their writing and wisdom.

I just completed Marilynne Robinson’s *Reading Genesis*, and I can assure you of her place on that short list.

She has clearly walked closely with the Lord these many years. pic.twitter.com/UCJQdSG7mJ

— Steve Bezner (@Bezner) May 4, 2024

If we want to understand how Irenaeus views the atonement, we need to do so within his understanding of the single overarching economy of God….

An example of Irenaeus’s approach to these issues is found in the scriptural image used by Christ to explain his own work: the sign of Jonah. Irenaeus gives the case of Jonah, who, by God’s arrangement, was swallowed up by the whale, not that he should perish, but that, having been cast out, he might be more obedient to God, and so glorify more the One who had unexpectedly saved him ( Haer. 3.20.1). For Irenaeus, God has borne the human race, from the beginning, while the great whale swallowed it up. Thre is no lost golden age of primordial perfection when we might not have needed Christ. Such language sounds strange to us, accustomed to thinking of God in all- too- human, temporal terms, imagining him “before” creation, deciding what he is going to do (plan A), and responding (plan B) aft er we messed up. However, as Irenaeus asserts repeatedly throughout his work, theological reflection is not to start from any other (hypothetical or counterfactual) position than the one proclaimed by the apostles, in accordance with the Scriptures ( Haer. 1.10.3). We are, he insists, to seek out the wisdom of God made manifest in the Christ preached by the apostles, the Word, Wisdom, and Power of God.

For Irenaeus, the starting point for all theological reflection (including the Fall) is the given fact of the work of Christ, his life- giving and saving death (cf. Barr, 89). So it is that in the passage we are considering Irenaeus speaks of God “arranging in advance the finding of salvation, which was accomplished by the Word through the sign of Jonah.” Creation and salvation, for Irenaeus, cohere as the one economy of God, which culminates in the work of Christ, to be understood and told from this point.

According to Irenaeus, this does not mitigate human responsibility for their action of apostasy, nor the reality of the work of the devil in beguiling Adam and Eve under “the pretext of immortality” ( Haer. 3.23.5; 4.Pref. 4). For Irenaeus, death is the result of human apostasy, turning away from the one and only Source of life, instigated by the devil. But death is also embraced within the divine economy, the way everything fi ts together in God’s hand. When viewed from the perspective of the salvation granted by Christ through “the sign of Jonah,” we can see that, as it was God himself who appointed the whale to swallow up Jonah, so also the engulfing of the human race by the great whale was “borne” by God in his arrangement, his economy, which culminates in the finding of salvation accomplished by the sign of Jonah.

—T&T Clark Companion to Atonement, ed. Adam J. Johnson (London: T and T Clark, 2017), pp. 569-570

Today is the feast of St Irenaeus of Lyons. I did my masters dissertation on Irenaeus. Absolutely key is his notion of divine economy. If by creation God gave us life, then we gain eternal life in Christ for 'The Son of God became what we are so we may become what He is' AH 3,19 pic.twitter.com/AI2rkJ9Dp0

— Revd Dr Thomas W Ruston (SCP) (@thomaswruston) June 28, 2024

“It may be that God is destroying the Church of England and who am I to stand in his way?

“The real tragedy would be if, in this traumatic, confusing time, if all of the evangelicals and the broader Orthodox group fall out with each other… if we can bear with each other in our different strategies, then that will be what we need (in whatever the future in England is going to be), whether that’s within the Church of England or outside.

Charlie Skrine, the senior minister of All Souls Langham Place London, says his church (and other evangelical churches in the UK) are in a world of pain at the moment over the growing split in the Church of England.

Mr Skrine, who is speaking at the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion Conference in Sydney, says All Souls is united in it’s commitment to biblical teaching on sexual ethics, but divided on what the best response should be.

Read and listen to it all.

But, for the better understanding and consideration of this thing, let us behold the end of his coming: so shall we perceive what great commodity and profit his nativity hath brought unto us miserable and sinful creatures. The end of his coming was to save and deliver his people, to fulfil the law for us, to bear witness to the truth, to teach and preach the words of his Father, to give light unto the world, to call sinners to repentance, to refresh them that labour and be heavy laden, to cast out the prince of this world, to reconcile us in the body of his flesh, to dissolve the works of the devil last of all, to become a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world.^[48] These were the chief ends wherefore Christ became man, not for any profit that should come to himself thereby, but only for our sakes ; that we might understand the will of God, be partakers of his heavenly light, be delivered out of the devil’s claws, released from the burden of sin, justified through faith in his blood, and finally received up into everlasting glory, there to reign with him for ever. Was not this a great and singular love of Christ towards mankind, that being the express and lively image of God^[49]he would notwithstanding humble himself and take upon him the form of a servant and that only to save and redeem us? O how much are we bound to the goodness of God in this behalf! How many thanks and praises do we owe unto him for this our salvation, wrought by his dear and only Son Christ: who became a pilgrim in earth, to make us citizens in heaven; who became the Son of man, to make us the sons of God; who became obedient to the law, to deliver us from the curse of the law; who became poor to make us rich;^[50] vile to make us precious; subject to death to make us live for ever. What greater love could we seely creatures desire or wish to have at God’s hands?

Read it all.

Merry Christmas 🎄

“For Sion's sake I will not hold my peace, and for the sake of Jerusalem, I will not rest till her just one come forth as brightness, and her saviour be lighted as a lamp.” Isaiah 62:1

(Painting: Adoration of the Shepherds by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich) pic.twitter.com/l4y1rnQxZX

— Lady Portia of Belmont 🎄 (@MerelyJustice) December 25, 2023

My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable. In some cases, these writers may be unconsciously infected with the Manichaean spirit of the times and suffer the much-discussed disjunction between sensibility and belief, but I think that more often the reason for this attention to the perverse is the difference between their beliefs and the beliefs of their audience. Redemption is meaningless unless there is case for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.

The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.

—Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969) pp. 33-34 [my emphasis]

Merry Christmas to all!!!

“The Nativity” (1776-1777) by John Singleton Copley pic.twitter.com/KEdKgL3OLD

— Isabel Azar (@izzyroseazar) December 26, 2021

This mediator must represent God to humankind, and humankind to God. He must have points of contact with both God and humanity, and yet be distinguishable from them both. The central Christian idea of the incarnation, which expresses the belief that Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, portrays Jesus as the perfect mediator between God and human beings. He, and he alone, is able to redeem us and reconcile us to God.

—“I Believe”: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p.48

'For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God'
Psalm 86: 10 pic.twitter.com/mYB4olG0Tz

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) December 26, 2023

The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context…the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it–not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

–J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; 20th Anniversary ed.), p.42

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1608 #rubens #flemishart https://t.co/Ks6skyuNca pic.twitter.com/SXrCNP3dPK

— Peter Paul Rubens (@artistrubens) March 5, 2023

You can listen directly just above or you can download it also there.

David Cumbie of Church of the Apostles, Houston, called to be new rector of Holy Cross, Sullivan's Island #SouthCarolina https://t.co/0ylo4poNBE #parishministry #lowcountrylife #anglican #religion #faith #transition #leadership #marriage #family #children #texas #acna pic.twitter.com/oAsFYduwBZ

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) October 18, 2023

The Cross is the abyss of wonders, the centre of desires, the school of virtues, the house of wisdom, the throne of love, the theatre of joys, and the place of sorrows; It is the root of happiness, and the gate of Heaven.

Of all the things in Heaven and Earth it is the most peculiar. It is the most exalted of all objects. It is an Ensign lifted up for all nations, to it shall the Gentiles seek, His rest shall be glorious: the dispersed of Judah shall be gathered together to it, from the four corners of the earth. If Love be the weight of the Soul, and its object the centre, all eyes and hearts may convert and turn unto this Object: cleave unto this centre, and by it enter into rest. There we might see all nations assembled with their eyes and hearts upon it. There we may see God’s goodness, wisdom and power: yea His mercy and anger displayed. There we may see man’s sin and infinite value. His hope and fear, his misery and happiness. There we might see the Rock of Ages, and the Joys of Heaven. There we may see a Man loving all the world, and a God dying for mankind. There we may see all types and ceremonies, figures and prophecies. And all kingdoms adoring a malefactor: An innocent malefactor, yet the greatest in the world. There we may see the most distant things in Eternity united: all mysteries at once couched together and explained. The only reason why this Glorious Object is so publicly admired by Churches and Kingdoms, and so little thought of by particular men, is because it is truly the most glorious: It is the Rock of Comforts and the Fountain of Joys. It is the only supreme and sovereign spectacle in all Worlds. It is a Well of Life beneath in which we may see the face of Heaven above: and the only mirror, wherein all things appear in their proper colours: that is, sprinkled in the blood of our Lord and Saviour.

The Cross of Christ is the Jacob’s ladder by which we ascend into the highest heavens. There we see joyful Patriarchs, expecting Saints, Prophets ministering Apostles publishing, and Doctors teaching, all Nations concentering, and Angels praising. That Cross is a tree set on fire with invisible flame, that Illuminateth all the world. The flame is Love: the Love in His bosom who died on it. In the light of which we see how to possess all the things in Heaven and Earth after His similitude. For He that suffered on it was the Son of God as you are: tho’ He seemed only a mortal man. He had acquaintance and relations as you have, but He was a lover of Men and Angels. Was he not the Son of God; and Heir of the whole world? To this poor, bleeding, naked Man did all the corn and wine, and oil, and gold and silver in the world minister in an invisible manner, even as He was exposed lying and dying upon the Cross.

—Centuries of Meditations 1:58-60

The Shining Human Creature#Christian #Ethics, Vol. 1

BY THOMAS TRAHERNE @ThomasTraherne, MODERNIZED BY COLIN REDEMER @RedemTheTimes @DavenantInst #Book https://t.co/MLhgx8qiYA pic.twitter.com/8oNfJOhRdB

— Theology Books (@theology_books) June 17, 2023

I’m grateful for the humor infused into our friendship. But I’m also grateful for the ways Tim Keller encouraged me. One such occurrence was at the conclusion of a conference when I was walking him out of the venue. As we made our way toward the exit, he stopped. When I turned around and walked back to him, this six-foot-five man extended his arm, pulled me in, and said, “You’re doing really good work here.” It was the most awkward, most affirming hug I’d ever received.

Yet, what’s equally important to the humor and the encouragement is the way Tim Keller shaped me as a preacher. Before I encountered him years ago, my messages were heavy on how-tos and performance. Do this. Become that. But in every single sermon I preach today, I strive to direct people to worship Jesus and adore him more as opposed to inspiring them to work harder as Christians.

I believe Tim was quoting D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones when he said, “There ought to come a time in every message where the pen goes down and the eyes go up and you stop saying, ‘Oh my God, look at all the things I have to do for you. And you start saying, ‘Oh my God, look at all the things you’ve done for me.’”

Read it all.

“Before I encountered Tim Keller years ago, my messages were heavy on how-tos and performance,” writes @jdgreear.

“But in every single sermon I preach today, I strive to direct people to worship Jesus and adore him more.”https://t.co/3sqHHvYefP

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 25, 2023

You can listen directly just above or you can download it also there.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, Domenico Fetti, c. 1620.

Jesus says: this is you, when you refuse to forgive others as you have been forgiven. Matt. 18:21-35 pic.twitter.com/dui1BzAErX

— Neil Shenvi (@NeilShenvi) August 16, 2022

O God, who by the passion of thy blessed Son didst make an instrument of shameful death to be unto us the means of life and peace: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Wishing everyone a joyful Holy Cross Day from St Saviour’s, Pimlico pic.twitter.com/oTbSYX7AFs

— Fr Matthew Catterick (@vicar_stsp) September 14, 2023

There is also downloadable option there.

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” John 20 pic.twitter.com/kSisRpFqOH

— ICE (@ICEontario) April 16, 2023

There is also a downloadable option there.

James Tissot, The Pardon of the Good Thief (Le pardon du bon Larron), 1886-1894 #brooklynmuseum #europeanart https://t.co/Vb9QB8koGZ pic.twitter.com/v0djHocGIH

— James Tissot (@artisttissot) February 10, 2023

‘Mercy goes beyond justice, it does not undercut it. If I forgive you the hundred dollar debt you owe me, that means I must use one hundred dollars of my own money to pay my creditors. I cannot really make you a hundred dollars richer without making myself hundred dollars poorer. If the debt is objectively real, it must be paid, and if it is my mercy that repays your debt, I must pay it. That is the reason why Christ had to die, why God could not simply say ‘forget it’. Instead he said ‘forgive it’ and meant that if we did not pay it, he had himself.’

–Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion (San Francisco, Ignatius Press. 1992) pp.113f, cited in the morning sermon

There is also more there.

Today's pick: Caravaggio: St John the Baptist (1604) https://t.co/4GpRchR5GI pic.twitter.com/n9obXdpmzL

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) May 7, 2021

The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context…the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it–not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

—-J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; 20th Anniversary ed.), p.42

A rather good Nativity in San Martino – by my favourite Sienese Mannerist, Domenico Beccafumi.#Siena details. pic.twitter.com/rIqBKgvESr

— mym (@LiberalDespot) May 6, 2022

The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context…the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it–not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

–J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; 20th Anniversary ed.), p.42

Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1608. Artists often distill a narrative to a single frame. Rubens knew angels didn’t appear to the shepherds while they were with Mary and Joseph. He’s telling several parts of the story in one image. #ArtWednesday #Nativity #Rubens pic.twitter.com/hiVaRcI1Y6

— Russ Ramsey 🫀 (@russramsey) December 21, 2022

But I am besides my purpose when I fall to bewail the cold affection which we bear towards that whereby we should be saved, my purpose being only to set down what the ground of salvation is. The doctrine of the Gospel proposeth salvation as the end, and doth it not teach the way of attaining thereunto? Yes, the damsel possessed with a spirit of divination spake the truth: “These men are the servants of the most high God who show unto us the way of salvation” [Acts 16:17] — “a new and living way which Christ hath prepared for us through the veil, that is, his flesh,” [Heb 10:20] salvation purchased by the death of Christ.

–Learned Discourse on Justification (my emphasis)

On the commemoration of Richard Hooker, words from his 'Discourse of Justification', suggestive of the root of his eirenic vision:

"the best of us are overtaken sometime through blindness, sometime through hastiness, sometime through impatience, sometime through other 1/3 pic.twitter.com/iUoGanjodU

— laudablePractice🇺🇦 (@cath_cov) November 3, 2022

It has been three decades since the Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison took his first step away from his life as one of the Episcopal Church’s strongest evangelical voices.

That tentative move took place in a small-group discussion during an Episcopal House of Bishops meeting at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina, during Allison’s final year serving as the 12th bishop of the historic Diocese of South Carolina. The topic that day was “Why are we dysfunctional?”

Allison attacked Episcopal priests and seminary professors who were openly proclaiming their faith in an ancient, erotic, divine spirit “older and greater” than the God of the Bible. There was, Allison said, a clear, ancient word for that — “apostasy.”

Other bishops said they had no problem accepting clergy who were testing the boundaries of ancient Christian doctrines.

Read it all.

(OPINION/@tweetmattingly) While sexuality, church properties and trust funds make headlines, the Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison said the dividing lines among Episcopalians and Anglicans are usually linked to a single controversial word — “sin.”https://t.co/JyMf1YYgLQ #apostasy

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) October 20, 2022

This is a very powerful and demanding book that is likely to change your thinking profoundly. Teresa Morgan is an Anglican priest, Professor of Graeco-Roman history at Oxford, and shortly to become Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Yale Divinity School.

Her new book is a follow-up to her widely acclaimed Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and fides in the early Roman Empire (OUP, 2015). In the latter, she argued that pistis (in Greek) and fides (in Latin), often translated as “faith” or “belief” in the New Testament, in reality usually signified “trust” across Classical, Jewish, and Christian first-century literature. She argued this at length (625 pages), and with impressive scholarship.

The new book repeats and occasionally corrects her earlier claims, and adds an extended theological discussion of them, together with insights about “trust” from recent philosophy and social science. As she has devoted far more than 1000 densely argued pages across the two books to a single issue, it is going to take a formidable (and highly assiduous) scholar to rebut her central thesis successfully.

Has this mammoth task been worth while? My verdict is a very emphatic “Yes”….

Read it all.

Robin Gill is impressed by a densely argued theological explorationhttps://t.co/ss9aIGY35o

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 27, 2022

O God, who by the passion of thy blessed Son didst make an instrument of shameful death to be unto us the means of life and peace: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today is the Feast of The Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The discovery of the True Cross is dated 14 September 320. The annual commemoration of the event has been celebrated since, in praise of the redemption won by the Christ. pic.twitter.com/0stfpgsYmX

— CatholicNewsIreland (@CatholicNewsIRL) September 14, 2022

Listen to it all and there re other options here.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
Romans 8:1 NIVhttps://t.co/IsIAGZlxhQ. Poster credit: @youversion pic.twitter.com/wvggAViYKa

— John Mmbaga (@johnmmbagaKE) April 5, 2021

The Christian faith always has direct social implications. It is not a privatised religion but overflows into practical action and community transformation. This is seen clearly in the Alpha movement, which has been putting on courses for 45 years. Alpha is a global phenomenon, one of the leading brands in Christian evangelisation, created at Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) in central London. More than 28 million people have attended the course worldwide, nearly five million in the UK, and many have become Christians as a result. Alpha’s pioneer, the former barrister Nicky Gumbel, has won plaudits as a Billy Graham for the modern age.

Alpha’s ambition, expressed in its famous catchphrase, is to see not only “lives changed” but also “society transformed”. Alpha has matured over three decades, with frequent revision of Gumbel’s books and films, and this emphasis has become increasingly explicit. For example, he suggests that to pray “Your Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer is to pray for the nation to be transformed in the areas of politics, economics, social justice, crime and education. Drawing lessons from church history, he praises John Wesley, the father of Methodism, as not only a preacher by also “a prophet of social righteousness”. Gumbel’s other heroes include campaigners such as William Wilberforce, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Questions of Life, the core Alpha text, has sold more than 1.7 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 40 languages. Recent editions reveal a great leap forward in the maturing of Gumbel’s social theology. “We experience the Holy Spirit not just so that we have a warm feeling in our hearts,” he declares, “but so that we go out and make a difference to our world.” Another of his popular paperbacks, The Heart of Revival, was published in the late 1990s, when many churches were excitedly looking for evidence of “revival”. Gumbel wrote: “True and lasting revival changes not only human hearts but also communities and institutions. Love for God and love for neighbour go hand in hand.”

Read it all (requires subscription).

Well conceived piece by Andrew Atherstone on the maturing of the Alpha Course: "The Christian faith always has direct social implications. It is not a privatised religion but overflows into practical action and community transformation."https://t.co/tOZ1h0qOgj

— Graham Tomlin (@gtomlin) July 16, 2022

You may also find more there.

Today's pick: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn: The Stoning of St Stephen https://t.co/SE7Dhp9CN4 pic.twitter.com/UVV4CJLZiP

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) November 21, 2019

There is also still more there.

John Constable's Ascension (1822), one of only 3 religious paintings by the great Suffolk artist, was painted as an altarpiece for Manningtree church but now hangs in an aisle at Dedham – relegated, like all Georgian church art it seems, to a subordinate position pic.twitter.com/E4IiIScP9V

— Dr Francis Young (@DrFrancisYoung) May 13, 2021

For then he opened their vnderstanding, that they might perceiue the Scriptures, and sayd vnto them: Thus it is written, and thus it behooued Christ to suffer, and to rise from death the third day, and that there should be preached openly in his name pardon and remission of sinnes to all the Nations of the world (Luke 24.45-47). Yee see (good Christian people) how necessary this Article of our faith is, seeing it was prooued of Christ himselfe by such euident reasons and tokens, by so long time and space. Now therefore as our Sauiour was diligent for our comfort and instruction to declare it: so let vs be as ready in our beliefe to receiue it to our comfort and instruction. As he died not for himselfe, no more did he rise againe for himselfe. He was dead (sayth Saint Paul) for our sinnes, and rose againe for our iustification (1 Corinthians 15.3-4). O most comfortable word, euermore to be borne in remembrance. He died (saith he) to put away sinne, hee rose againe to endow vs with righteousnesse. His death tooke away sinne and malediction, his death was the ransome of them both, his death destroyed death, and ouercame the deuill, which had the power of death in his subiection, his death destroyed hell, with all the damnation thereof. Thus is death swallowed vp by Christs victory, thus is hell spoyled for euer.

Read it all.

Tintoretto's Resurrection

Powerful Renaissance depiction of the central core of the Christian Gospels, The Resurrection of Tintoretto: https://t.co/AAC9lbVlaQ pic.twitter.com/mC3L1OSamt

— Caperton Classic Art (@CapertonFineArt) April 1, 2021

There is also still more there.

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem is a 1617 oil painting by Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It depicts #Jesus entering Jerusalem as described in the Gospels, the event celebrated on Palm Sunday. pic.twitter.com/luB13CgNYl

— EUROPEAN ART 💙💛 (@EuropeanArtHIST) February 12, 2019