Becoming Luther, part 3
BECOMING LUTHER (part 3): A Spiritual Diary September 4, 1525 – Wittenberg The Peasants’ Revolt has ended in catastrophe. Thousands dead. My tract against the murdering hordes has brought universal […]
Becoming Luther, part 2
BECOMING LUTHER (part 2): A Spiritual Diary The Break with Rome (1518-1525) February 28, 1518 – Wittenberg The 95 theses have spread across Germany like wildfire. I wrote them in […]
Becoming Luther, part 1
BECOMING LUTHER (part 1): A Spiritual Diary An imaginative reconstruction of Martin Luther’s inner life, drawn from his letters, Table Talk, and theological writings, woven with philosophical reflections on consciousness, […]
Poem: I’m Coming Back
I’m Coming Back After John 14:1-3, Song of Solomon 3.6 (and Dr Who Season 4, Episode 13 River’s Song) The last time I saw you—the real you—you materialized at my […]
Poem: Beyond Human Limitations
Beyond Human Limitations After 2 Corinthians 12:9 With open face to your precious Word, desperately I hunt for You in my broken wanting, glass-brittle, web-thin in the hush. Something stirs in […]
Poem: Simon Peter, after the crucifixion
Simon Peter, after the crucifixion As my mind surveys my Master’s anointed head, His bruised heel, His struggle to give His life for mine, to drink the bitter cup, to […]
My life in Messiah (Ephesians 1:4; 2:10)
I thought I heard his footsteps faintly like a cool wind rustling through my mind when as a young boy. Jesus called me by my name; I heard him whisper […]
The Subtle Art of Deception – C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters (Part 3)
One of the devil’s most subtle temptations is dealt with in Letter 7 where Screwtape instructs Wormwood concealing the presence of devils. Moderns mostly regard devils as comic figures in red tights. […]
The Subtle Art of Deception: C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters (Part 2)
In Letter 4 Screwtape covers the subject of prayer and instructs Wormwood how to tie his ‘patient’ up in knots. He does this by trying to get him to conjure […]
The Subtle Art of Deception: C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters (Part 1)
C. S. Lewis published his much acclaimed Screwtape Letters in 1942. Drawing on his own long experience of conversion from atheism to Christianity, he constructed a story of a senior Devil named […]
Paul’s Argument in Galatians is Covenantal
Before his conversion on the Damascus road (Acts 9.1-19), the apostle Paul would have found the idea of a crucified messiah abhorrent because of Deuteronomy 21.23 (‘for he that is […]
Paul’s Journal (Acts 9.3; 2 Timothy 4.7)
God is light with us, God is light behind us, whispered into time. Is his light abiding? Springing as a clay bird, his wondrous voice encircling, strikes me like a […]
Like a Flower in the Wind -The Life of Charlotte Bronte
‘There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when […]
Freudian Psychology and its Opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ
According to Christian theology, sin and guilt are the result of Adam’s transgression of God’s moral law, and are passed down and become ours individually by imputation. Sin can only […]
Faith Has Its Reasons: The Life of Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 at Clermont – Ferrand, Auvergne, in France. He was home-schooled by his father Etienne, a lawyer who was also an able mathematician and physicist […]
Jesus beyond the Talmud
A Jew’s pattern of moral behaviour involves absolute adherence to the literal directives of Torah (the Five books of Moses) especially the 613 mitzvot or commandments as classified by Maimonides […]