Rev Dr Ian Paul is a Christian theologian. Rev Jon Barrett is Mission and Communications Enabler for Leicester Diocese in England.
Christianity
Such a haunting image
Sultan Abdul Hamid II towards the end of his life. He was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. For all their mistakes, the Middle East was a… Read More ›
The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah..
“The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that the Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshiped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places, to… Read More ›
Shock survey: most Americans are now closer to Islam than Christianity in their view of who Jesus really was.
I confess to being surprised by this survey. Perhaps the instinctive common sense of most people shines through. A man who allegedly cried out: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46, Mark 15:34) is obviously not… Read More ›
Does anti-Islam missionary Hatun Tash crave Christian martyrdom?
The face of a Christian fanatic. History tells of some fanatical Christian missionaries who were determined to seek martyrdom at the hands of Muslims in Muslim Spain (then known as Al-Andalus). Traveling into enemy territory they made for the town… Read More ›
Suppose Matthew and Paul had been brought together and instructed to produce a joint position paper on whether believers in Jesus were to follow the Jewish Law. Would they have been able to hammer out a consensus?
Early and Diverging Views of Christians and Jews. Divergent understandings of Judaism were found among Christians in the mid-second century. At one extreme were the Jewish-Christian adoptionists, who continued to worship the God of Israel as the one true God… Read More ›
Equality is hardly biblical.
Equality is not a biblical value. We see a decidedly hierarchical view of human relationships. For instance: ‘I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the… Read More ›
The head coverings worn by traditional Roman Catholic women and their obvious similarity to the hijab.
The Roman Catholic custom of women covering their heads, usually with a lace mantilla (called in America a ‘chapel veil’) was obligatory under the 1917 Code of Canon Law (which was superseded by the 1983 Code). The practice goes back… Read More ›
When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation
Paula Fredriksen is Professor of Scripture at Boston University and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In her latest work When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation Fredriksen writes: ‘The Paul of history stands… Read More ›
Yale University professor of the Bible explains how Jesus came to be viewed as a god
The Issue of Worship One of the key questions in the debate about the divinity of Jesus has been whether he is worshiped in a way that “principal agents” of God are not (see Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus… Read More ›
The Devil carries Jesus [ie God Himself!] up to a mountain to tempt him with an earthly kingdom (Luke 4:5–8; Matthew 4:8–10)
~ Missal, France c.1470-75; Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 425, fol. 48r.
