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78How confident can we be in reconstructions of the past?Think 12 (33): 17-23. 2013.When I purchased Verdict on Jesus: A New Statement of Evidence, published by SPCK in 2010, I hoped it would confront me with the very latest attempt to vindicate Christian doctrines. In fact the book turns out to be fundamentally a reissue of a very conservative apologetic work of that title, first published sixty years earlier by an Anglican – Leslie Badham, who later became Vicar of Windsor and chaplain to the Queen. Admittedly, he updated the book in 1971, and in 1983 his son, the Revd. Profe…Read more
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68Fifty years on from honest to God (1963) and objections to Christian belief (1963)Think 12 (35): 83-91. 2013.Bishop John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God was exceptionally successful. In the decade following its publication more than a million copies were sold in seventeen different languages. Robinson was aware that numerous awkward questions were being asked about traditional Christian beliefs, which it was no longer possible to ignore. His purpose was not so much to question traditional ideas of God as to suggest alternatives for those who found them unsatisfactory . He wanted to convince such persons …Read more
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68Miracles and the new testamentThink 9 (26): 43-59. 2010.C.S. Lewis, the scholar of English mediaeval and Renaissance literature who died in 1963 and is still widely respected as a Christian apologist, complained that academic biblical scholars simply assume that miracles cannot have occurred in the fashion reported in the New Testament. In a lecture quoted by A.I.C. Heron 1 , he said: ‘The canon “If miraculous, unhistorical” is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it.’ In fact, as John Kent retorted, they did not…Read more
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52Cults of personalityThink 13 (37): 13-17. 2014.The nineteenth century saw frequent appeals to the idea of a redeemer personality, a heroic leader – musings which culminated in the cults devoted to Hitler and Stalin. This article shows that the self-assertion of leaders can stimulate the self-abasement of the followers on whom they depend (and vice versa), and discusses in what circumstances such an interplay becomes dominant in a society, and with what advantages and disadvantages for it
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44How destructive of traditional Christian beliefs is historical criticism of the bible today conceded to be?Think 10 (29): 91-109. 2011.Many theologians accept that it is not plausible to dismiss what is called the ‘higher criticism’ altogether, but try to limit its efficacy. This article discusses a number of their ways of doing so
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25The uptake of technologies designed to influence medication safety in Canadian hospitalsJournal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 14 (1): 27-35. 2008.
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Jesús, Historicity ofIn T. Flynn (ed.), The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Prometheus. pp. 449. 2007.
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