Monthly Archives

So what's the problem? He's alive!

Mon, 29/03/2010 - 12:58 -- James Oakley

People sometimes worry that the 4 Gospels don't tell the resurrection story in exactly the same way. This is to worry needlessly. If the 4 Gospels told the resurrection story in contradictory ways, that would be a different matter. As it is, we simply have a difference in perspective. Look at the story from different angles, you include different details and stress different things. It couldn't be otherwise. The four Gospels are not an assortment of favourite deeds of Jesus, thrown together haphazardly.

Blog Category: 
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Theology

Run out of words to pray?

Thu, 04/03/2010 - 14:55 -- James Oakley

Then enjoy the wisdom of William Cowper, as found in two verses of his hymn What various hinderances we meet:

Have we no words? But think again;
words flow apace when we complain
and fill our fellow-creature’s ear
with the sad tale of all our care.

Were half the breath thus vainly spent
to heaven in supplication sent,
our cheerful song would oftener be,
‘Hear what the Lord has done for me!’

Blog Category: 
Hymns and Songs

Towards a doctrine of Scripture

Tue, 02/03/2010 - 15:50 -- James Oakley

There is a danger in any area of Christian thought that we talk past one another, objecting to caricatures of what another Christian thinks, rather than to what they actually think. It is a tragedy whenever it happens, because it means that careful understanding (which is the grounds for charity) is replaced with a climate of suspicion. So we need to express what we think with great care, and that is as much about affirming what we do believe to be true as it is about denying what is not true.

Blog Category: 
Theology

What does the Bible really teach? Epilogue

Mon, 01/03/2010 - 15:18 -- James Oakley

I've just finished posting through the 19 chapters of the Jehovah's Witnesses primary study text, What does the Bible really teach? You'll find a table of contents for those blog posts in the post that opened the sequence of them: http://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog/2010/01/what_the_bible_really_teaches_int....

Now that I've finished, there are a few more things that need to be said.

Blog Category: 
Jehovah's Witnesses
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