This week’s articles in The Guardian’s Comment is free belief section include:
Mark Vernon Is Christianity compatible with wealth? “The Christian tradition is not anti-money. Rather, it is excess and luxury that pose the spiritual problems.”
Giles Fraser Bethlehem’s church of the punch-up. “The latest brawl between Armenian and Orthodox monks in Bethlehem is a product of Christianity’s romance with buildings.”
Pope Benedict XVI Europe’s crisis of faith “In hard times, Europe could learn much from Africa’s joyful passion for faith.”
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes in The Independent that Christianity deserves better worshippers.
“Too many are like Cameron, part-time Christians of convenience who use religion as a weapon.”
N T Wright writes for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about Suspending scepticism: History and the Virgin Birth and in response Andrew McGowan writes about Greeks Bearing (Christmas) Gifts.
Posted by Peter Owen on Saturday, 31 December 2011 at 11:00am GMT | TrackBackI find little comfort in N.T. Wright's 'learned' thesis on the unlikelihood of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. To speculate on the unreliability of the Gospel narrative of Matthew and Luke - because of the possibility of a tainting from the pagan/Greek culture - is to do precisely what he is accusing the writers of these gospel stories of doing: trying to explain a mystical reality; while, in Wright's case, introducing rationalistic doubt.
Quite a surprising supposition for such a noted Evangelical theologian. However, I suspect his dismissal of the traditional catholic view might be partly as a result of his distaste for the biblical celebration of the role of the BVM.
Fr. Andrew McGowan, of Melbourne, offers a much more incarnational view of the whole matter.
Posted by: Father Ron Smith on Sunday, 1 January 2012 at 8:58am GMTNow,after this, Tom Wright will be able to say that there are no biblical case against same-sex loving and relating.
Posted by: Laurence Roberts on Sunday, 1 January 2012 at 8:56pm GMTIf Africa gets much more joyfully passionate for faith, there'll be no Africans left!
I'm not surprised, though, that Ratzinger would consider witch-hunts, mob violence, and political and tribal hostility to be valid expressions of Christian faith. They *are* at least as Christian as anything the Vatican has ever produced.
Posted by: MarkBrunson on Tuesday, 3 January 2012 at 6:52am GMT