Richard Peers Quodcumque God made it grow: panickers, deniers and the future of the Church
James Alexander Cameron Stained Glass Attitudes Bad art in cathedrals
Jonathan Draper Afterthoughts Official: Steve Chalke is the Anti-Christ!
Archdruid Eileen Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley The Bible is a Library
Julianne Simpson John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog What price would you pay?
Ian Paul Psephizo How much are clergy worth?
Jeremy Pemberton OneBodyOneFaith Why we are in business, and why we need you
Thank you for the essay from R Peers.
In what way can the bible be considered anything else than ‘a library?” It is certainly not a connected narrative; beginning as it does with two quite different and somewhat conflicting creation stories. Nearly all the writers of the various books are ‘un-reliable narrators’ in one way or another. We have four gospel writers telling the same story very differently, one with no end and the fourth with (for this reader) no end in sight. Then we have prolix Paul, who would have needed a very good literary agent to get his stuff over the desk! On the plus side,… Read more »
Re: Peers’ citing of Goodhew’s essay, I was taken by the observation ‘[Cuthbert and Francis] are adored in a new-agey, ‘spiritual but not religious’ kind of way, but not remembered as the amazing evangelists that they were’. In other words, the ‘essence of their message’ has been taken out of the stale, out of date vessel in which it was contained (i.e. the Christian Church) and poured into a new receptacle which contains that essential message but stripped of its unfortunate cultural baggage. Why am I reminded uneasily of some of the claims of Fresh Expressions that the old form… Read more »
If the bible is only a library then we can all pack up and join a book club.
Reckoning with the sacred character of Holy Scripture in its totality, Irenaeus famously described it as a mosaic, whose pieces when properly assembled showed the face of the Great King Jesus Christ, but when not, a fox. In this he had the company of the great fathers of the church.