Christian Life

To give credit where credit is due, some readers may spot echoes of the late Mike Ovey's CD1.1 lecture course in the pen portrait of romanticism below. They'd spot that with good reason. The section is included as a summary, and for the benefit of those not fortunate enough to have taken that course, before turning to the illustrative material which is my own contribution.

Romanticism

Romanticism is a wide-ranging movement from (mainly) the first half of the nineteenth century. It influenced literature, art, architecture, philosophy, theology, politics and more.

A few weeks back, I found myself in a group where we were discussing whether weapons are intrinsically evil.

I often tell people that we need to listen to the gospel writers whenever we read the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke or John are teaching us something by recording the things they do. We need to let them do that. The words Jesus spoke within the gospels were spoken to other characters in the narrative, not to us directly. Our job is not to apply those words to us, but to ask what the gospel writer is wishing to communicate by recording those words in the setting they occur in.

A little while back, the Church of England's weekday lectionary spent some time in Hebrews 7 and Genesis 14. So it was, that I found myself trying to explain as simply as possible why the hard-to-pronounce character of Melchizedek is such good news to have in the Bible.