In past centuries, going to church was a deeply embedded part of how western society worked. But today, with so much emphasis on personal faith and opportunity to do community activities outside church, is there any point in being part of a religious group and meeting with people? We discover three key reasons: Support, Diversity and Magnifying.
To kick off a new series on Biblical themes, we look at 8 different ideas about the Kingdom of God. We find that both Jesus' statements about it and the expectations of his audience were deeply rooted in the Old Testament, Hebrew scriptures. This brings to life a tangible picture of what is involved but also something far greater and more universal than even the Jews expected!
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?