Why ask, Can Pope Francis be saved (from himself)? I noticed a series of X/Tweets a couple of days ago [below], highlighting something Francis has said in Singapore (a melting pot place of faiths) about all ways leading to God. 1. The statement as cited is pretty unnuanced around Christianity being one way rather than the way or the highway into which other faiths are feeder roads. 2. Edward Feser, a sharp (and Catholic) critic of "sloppy" Catholic thinking raises the question whether Francis has spoken correctly in accordance with doctrine. 3. A respondent cites the Catechism in defence of Fr ..read more

On Thursday night last week we held a Diocesan service - A Liturgy of Lament - in our Transitional Cathedral. The text of the Liturgy is here. This post is intentionally not a reflection on the whole of the service nor on responses to the service, save to see that many people commented to me on how moved they were by it. One aspect of the service to be reflected on here: a small group worked care-fully and creatively on the content of the service. The following readings were chosen. Psalm 13 Lamentations 5:1, 14-22 (Prior to a Litany of Confession)  Isaiah 58:5-11 (in the second part of t ..read more

I am still learning how to be wise. On Friday I went away for a three day weekend, Friday night to Sunday at El Rancho, Waikanae for The Abbey, a national Anglican youth leaders and young adults event, and then onto Auckland for a night (family) and day (various appointments) trip. I thought I could put a decent out of office message on my email and travel lightly electronically - including no laptop. My (less than wise) bad. A stretch of important emails threaded into my Inbox including some attached documents to read - challenging when no laptop on hand! Also, tricky to post a blog post per ..read more

 "You be the judge!" A few posts ago I engaged with a question or two re modern translations - plethora thereof - and upgrades of. Today I note a post from the wonderful ETC blog - Evangelical Textual Criticism - on the NRSVUE - NRSV Update Edition. I had thought the NRSVUE was the NRSVUE taken in an even more inclusive direction re language. There is more going on, as Peter Gurry in this post makes clear. Excerpt: "In light of the emphasis on textual criticism, I wondered what changes I could find. This is just from my spot-checking, mind you. I haven’t found a list of changes anywh ..read more

In another world of conversation recently, the question came up, in my words, Why didn't evangelical historians see ahead and predict the emergence of Trump and evangelical support for him? There are some obvious answers about that: historians look back not forward; history never repeats itself exactly; since when was it a moral indictment on an historian to not also be a clairvoyant?! A simple case in point involves Trump himself in the past month or so: suppose you had predicted ten or twenty years ago that a Trump would burst onto the US political scene and [many] evangelicals would swoon a ..read more

Quite a bit is going on in my world. Yes, everyone kindly asks me about how I am in the midst of the newest chapter in the story of our Cathedral's Reinstatement (title of the current chapter, "How the Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Hit A Large Block On the Way to Completion aka Lack of Funds Underlined By the NZ Government Saying No"). See here for latest Press article and there will be more media interest this Tuesday. But this is a hugely interesting time to be alive, as a citizen of the world and as a theologically-interested citizen of heaven. For instance, in a world falling apart ..read more

With all the usual caveats about commenting on the affairs of another church (my own church is hardly perfect, what do I know when looking from a distance, that sort of thing) I wonder if some comment is in order about developments in the CofE right now. The reasonable concern from a Down Under perspective being that the CofE is just a tad more important than any other province to the Communion as a whole because the ABC is the Primate of All England AND the Primus Inter Pares among the bishops of the Communion. If England goes ... This is my potted version of developments: In recent year ..read more

On Saturday we had a diocesan ordinand service in the Transitional Cathedral and it was a privilege to ordain two people to the diaconate, one of whom happens to be my wife! Teresa's story of call in ministry is her story to tell and I am not going to tell it here. But there were some features of the ordination service which I observed, so I will write about them! Incidentally they are features of many if not all ordination services, so while yesterday was a very special day, I am not here reporting on something unique. First, ordination services bring a lot of people together who might not ot ..read more

A recent visit to a local Christian bookshop is one provocation for this post. Another is reading Peter Simpson's Colin McCahon: Is This the Promised Land? Vol. 2 1960-1987 (Auckland University Press, 2020) on NZ’s (arguably) greatest artist, Colin McCahon, and seeing the impact the New English Bible translation made on him and his religious paintings. Taking the bookshop first: I am bewildered by two observations looking at the Bible section of the bookshop.  1. The available Bibles are dominated by (i) fairly recent translations published by North American publishers and ..read more

Continuing from last week ... BJ = Beyond Justification and CDP = its authors Douglas Campbell and Jon DePue and JT = Justification Theory: In the end I think I have two big questions about BJ (aside from anything else I raised last week): 1. Is it plausible to read Romans and Galatians as a debate between Paul and one of more Jewish Christians distorting the gospel (rather than a debate between Paul and the Judaism or Judaisms of his day)? 2. Is there a difference between the God of retributive justice (wrongdoing deserves punishment) and the God of love? 1. There is an intriguing possibility ..read more