Tag: NewTestament

As Christians, when we read John’s Gospel, we do come across some passages in which the language about “the Jews” does, and should, make us uncomfortable. And there is no question that the history of European ‘Christendom’ down the centuries is littered with horrific examples of hostility towards, and persecution of, Europe’s Jews. This unsavoury

[<<] [Contents] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [>>] The Christian faith is not infrequently derided as irrational, delusional, fairyland. Though such arguments are sometimes made in an intellectually vigorous manner, I would argue that at least as often

[<<] [Contents] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [>>] The Christian faith is not infrequently derided as irrational, delusional, fairyland. Though such arguments are sometimes made in an intellectually vigorous manner, I would argue that at least as often

[Contents] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [>>] The Christian faith is not infrequently derided as irrational, delusional, fairyland. Though such arguments are sometimes made in an intellectually vigorous manner, I would argue that at least as often such

[Part 1. New Testament] [Part 2. Old Testament] A friend once asked me, “When did the Bible become the Bible?” Although that is a question with a fairly well-understood answer historically, it’s not a simple, straightforward answer to relate; it’s one that, to be properly understood, requires some time to explain (and I told him

I have corrected a mistake in the previous articles, “Clement of Rome’s New Testament” (14 Feb 2018) and “Four things Clement of Rome tells us about early Christianity” (27 Feb 2018). Towards the end of ‘Clement of Rome’s New Testament’ I summarized the New Testament books quoted, or alluded to, by Clement in his letter1

One of the Christian historical questions about which there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation is when the New Testament became the New Testament. In other words, when did the 27 individual books get collected together into what we now know as ‘the New Testament’? I will write about this in a subsequent

It is sometimes falsely claimed that the Church arbitrarily selected the 27 books of the New Testament in the fourth century. While it is true that the 27 books of our New Testament were not formally recognized as ‘the New Testament’ until near the end of the fourth century, and our earliest canon list containing

This is the first of a number of short reflections on Gregory of Nyssa’s fifth (and final) sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:12-13). Gregory of Nyssa was a fourth-century Christian theologian and one