Theology
Why the world works.
Theology is simply thinking about God
God wouldn't need to think about himself - it is a mark of our createdness that we think about him.
One of the beliefs of Judaism and of Christianity is that God has not left us completely in the dark when it comes to thinking about him. He has helped us in several ways.
He has communicated to us already through scripture, through prophets, the created 'natural' world, and finally, through his Son, Jesus. And he communicates with us, through our prayer to him, and through his Spirit to our spirits in ways that will always be mysterious.
Feature Articles on Theology
Jesus lived and died. That is certain and no serious historian doubts it. That he died is equally certain from reliable historical texts and records. That he rose again is harder to prove, but the following facts convince me:
Here is a download of a short document which provides a brief comparison of all major religions.
This download includes:
- Buddism
- Hinduism
- Islam
- Christianity
I received an email from a person who had heard me speak somewhere, and I had mentioned that I saw Christianity as being “a reasonable faith”. I’ve printed part of his email below, and my answer to him as an attempt to answer a long question in a short way.
There are two aims to this article:
1. To provide an outline of the most common understandings of baptism;
2. To put forward my own understandings of what is a valid Biblical interpretation of an issue that is not crisply clear in Scripture.
This question is one of the oldest in the world. It is typically presented in these terms:
a) If God exists, he must be all-powerful,
b) If God were all-powerful, he would not allow pain and suffering to exist;
c) Pain and suffering do exist; therefore, there must either be no God, or he is not a good God.
C. S. Lewis provides a way of thinking about this that is really worth thinking about: If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. C. S. Lewis
This is an essential starting point, if you really want an answer to this question. We want a real and reliable answer to this question – not just wishful thinking.
What is prayer all about? How does it work? How could we ever be sure it was God that made a certain request come true? Is it all just wishful thinking?
Ever since I made my first pilgrimage in about 1989 to the grave of C. S. Lewis in the churchyard of Holy Trinity church in the outer Oxford suburb of Headington, I had been puzzled by the inscription on his gravestone: “Men must endure their going hence”.
It’s a fair question. Richard Dawkins is well-known for his comments on questions like this one. Here are just two of his comments: “There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic about it?”
I write from the perspective that everything that humans do is God's business. Writing poetry, running a multi-national business, kicking a football, having a prayer-meeting - all of it is open to God-talk. Everything may be touched with the holy and be better for it.
It is common to hear statements to the effect that “Faith and Science are fundamentally incompatible”.[1] Put into the language of ‘the man or woman in the street’: No sensible 21st century person, who has any knowledge of science, could possibly believe in God. Science has disproved God.
Any discussion about faith and science requires some careful definition before it can be useful. Both faith and science cover broad fields, and need to have their scope fairly and carefully defined.