word | spirit | world | church
This is the next part of my ongoing series exploring the letter written by St Polycarp to the church in Philippi, collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill of the Raven’s Writing Desk. You can read the previous parts at these links: I; II; III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI. Dear Adsum Thank you for your last letter, sobering though it… Continue reading Learning to be Angry Well: Polycarp XII
There can be a tendency in a certain kind of academic work on the Bible to heavily assert that the Bible is a collection of documents written by a diverse array of authors in different settings and time periods (so far, that’s entirely true) and that therefore it isn’t reasonable to speak as if the… Continue reading Is the Bible a cacophony?
This is one of those topics you rarely hear anyone who isn’t a charismatic or Pentecostal talking about—what are the Ephesians 4 Ministries (or sometimes ‘fivefold ministry’) and should local churches care about them? Except, I recently noticed a definitely-not-a-charismatic friend mentioning them. This piece from Rhys Laverty that builds off some of my blogging… Continue reading Ephesians 4 Ministries
AI is sycophantic, did you know that? Antropic AI, recently published a paper explaining their recent research in Large Language Models (LLMs, what we have taken to calling Generative AI). They found that LLMs have a bias towards answers that they defined as sycophantic but incorrect. In other words, the AI tells us what we… Continue reading Sycophants and Liars
This is the next part of my ongoing series exploring the letter written by St Polycarp to the church in Philippi, collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill of the Raven’s Writing Desk. You can read the previous parts at these links: I; II; III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX. Dear Adsum Thank you for your last letter, particularly your guidance to… Continue reading Stand Fast: Polycarp X
In Luke chapter 9, a Samaritan village rejects Jesus. James and John, in their infinite wisdom, ask Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to burn up the offending Samaritans. Jesus rebuked them and they carry on. There are two interesting things to explore here, firstly why James and John thought that was… Continue reading Fire from heaven
What does Jesus mean by that? I've got a new article out at Mere Orthodoxy exploring this saying of Jesus. This is one of those flashes of inspiration I had, sat in a conference that was expounding why it's a difficult saying, three different books I'd read collided in my head. It took me a… Continue reading Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
We don’t like the ten plagues in Exodus, they feel like exactly the sort of thing we secretly wish wasn’t in the Old Testament because they afflict our innate sense of fairness and our unexpressed desire for God to be kind to everyone—even those who hate and afflict his people. Our affections there are out… Continue reading Thinking about Plagues
The New Testament is full of metaphors used to describe the Church. Here are five of them. The People of God In God’s promise of deliverance to the Hebrews he says that ‘they will be his people’ and he ‘will be their God’ and they shall know him as Yahweh who has brought them out… Continue reading Five Pictures of the Church
The Exodus 'motif' is one the Bible's recurring patterns or 'jokes.' We're supposed to spot it when we see it. The Biblical authors often play with the literary shapes they employ and they want us to notice when they subvert our expectations as well as use them. Jonah is a case in point: the author… Continue reading Jonah’s Backwards Exodus
nuakh 