We chat to author, Martha Sales, about her zany novel, The Enormous Tiny Experiment, and how a perfect world free from suffering is all but impossible. The conversation ranges from the New Atheists and questions about suffering to plate tectonics, go-karts and the universal existence of morality.
Exploring how churches were organised, we find ourselves discussing the significance of sharing the bread and cup of wine to remember Jesus. As in previous episodes, there are some similarities with churches today, but also some differences that are worth reflecting upon.
We investigate the many and varied Biblical images for the judgement and discuss whether we should think that any of those word-pictures and metaphors describe what will actually happen - or are they designed to teach us something else?
Paul chats to Mark Vincent, the author of a small book with big ambitions, entitled Life's Biggest Questions. They talk about how the book came about and step through some thoughts on those major questions - Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we headed?
Continuing a mini-series on themes from early church history, we look at Jesus' prediction that Christians might be persecuted for believing in him and how that unfolded over the first few centuries of the church. We discover how the church emerged from periods of persecution as a changed institution. Was that a good thing?
We finish our conversation discussing whether the text of the New Testament is reliable by diving into some examples of accidental copying mistakes as well as more deliberate changes that a scribe might make when copying texts.
In this two-part episode we begin a conversation about the discipline of Textual Criticism and what it can tell us about the New Testament that we read today. Is it reliable? How strong is the evidence behind it? Can we ever know how close it is to the original?
We kick off a new 3 part series on aspects of church history and start by exploring the Christian practice of baptism from the early church, through the Middle Ages and beyond. How and why does it change over time, and does it matter?
Ever wondered what it was like to be part of one of the earliest Christian communities in the 1st century church? Follow along with a thought experiment attempting to place a 21st century consciousness into the body of a 1st century Christian! We explore the where, when, what and how of a Christian gathering around 65AD, which builds towards a conversation about which aspects of Christianity should be protected from change, and where we should be flexible.
The meaning of life is the stuff of song lyrics. But it's also the big question of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. At first reading the author of this book seems to be concluding that life is meaningless, but there's more than meets the eye, all of which leads (surprise!) to Jesus and his resurrection.