Bible Links

I do not necessarily agree with or endorse everything on these websites, but I have listed them here as I believe that much of what they say is worth considering.

Word and Spirit

The Fellowship of Word and Spirit

FWS is a group of conservative, mainly Anglican, evangelicals who are trying to be biblical in their approach to issues such as the miraculous and spiritual gifts. They are not charismatics, but neither are they cessationist. Card-carrying charismatics will find them overly cautious, dry and academic. Convinced cessationists will be concerned by their acceptance of the miraculous, including the possibility of God speaking to his people today. Baptists like me will note the usual Anglican confusion about Christian initiation. Nevertheless this site makes a useful contribution to the debate. It could perhaps be regarded as the continuationist wing of the Proclamation Trust.

Adrian's Blog

Adrian Warnock is a member of a New Frontiers church in London. This can be regarded as perhaps the biblical wing of the charismatic movement. Its leader, Terry Virgo, is known more for his Bible teaching than his signs and wonders - which is as it should be. Adrian reports on conferences and interviews well-known Christian leaders from around the world. He wants to see sound Bible teaching and the Spirit's power co-existing in the local church. I have reservations about his views on apostleship (although they are less extreme than many charismatics) and I disagree with his stance on tongues (that all may use them privately), but his blog makes very interesting reading. Adrian's day job involves some form of medical research.

For What It's Worth

FWIW is the curious name of Mike Kendall's blog. Mike is the full-time pastor at SNEC - my local church. His blog tends to be quite introspective. He seems to read a lot of books, but I suppose I did when I was his age. Mike seems to be somewhere between 'cessationist' and 'open but very cautious'. Interestingly, Mike mentioned Adrian's blog to me just a couple of days after I found it myself.

David Pawson

David Pawson always seems to excite a strong response from people! He is firmly within the evangelical camp, but not in any particular party. Reformed people see him as Arminian, Zionist and far too charismatic. Many charismatics find him rather too biblical, as he asks awkward questions about some of their sillier ideas. Conservatives agree with his insistence on male leadership, while charismatics agree with his belief in a definite post-conversion experience of the Holy Spirit. He longs to see a biblical convergence of the conservative evangelical and charismatic worlds, and has published books on this (e.g. Fourth Wave). He makes you think, even when you disagree with him!

Tim Challies talks to Wayne Grudem, part 2

A Reformed cessationist blogger interviews one of the leading charismatic theologians. Grudem must be something of a challenge to Reformed cessationists because he is a careful biblical theologian and has written one of the most popular modern systematic theologies - many of them will have it on their bookshelf. He is 'sound' on all the issues which concern them, apart from the continuing work of the Spirit. In the interview he makes two claims which they won't like: the Puritans were continuationists, and cessationism usually arises from (lack of) experience rather than biblical conviction.

God and Science

Truth in Science

Truth in Science is an organisation promoting good science education in the UK. Their current focus is on the origin of life and its diversity. Part of what they do is to expose the false claims made by evolutionists, and correct the misrepresentation of alternative views. They believe, as I do, that evolutionism is bad science, which needs to be dishonestly (or ignorantly) presented in order to hide the problems. TiS advocate intelligent design as their favoured alternative.

Biblical Creation Society

BCS is a UK-based group which is unashamedly creationist. It appears to be a little more sober than some of its overseas cousins.

Christians in Science

CiS is a UK-based international organisation for Christians who work in the sciences, thus showing the folly of those who claim that faith and science do not mix. It proclaims God as creator, but appears not to have a fixed view on how he did it so I guess the membership will include both creationists and theistic evolutionists.

The Meyer article

Stephen C. Meyer wrote a review article for the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in which he demonstrated that existing naturalistic theories cannot explain the origin and rapid development (so-called Cambrian explosion) of information in living organisms. He proposed design as an alternative - this neatly explains the "appearance of design" which biologists admit. There was a huge fuss - essentially the evolutionary world said "you can't say that". The editor of the journal, evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, was placed under tremendous pressure and various rumours circulated about him. He did not agree with the article but, like the independent peer reviewers, felt that it had sufficient merit that it should be published so that the issue could be aired. This sad incident shows how most biologists seem to have given up the search for scientific truth, but instead are desperately casting around for some props to shore up the theory they already believe to be necessarily true. If you knock their props away they get very upset. The Congressional sub-committee report is very revealing - it finds evidence of widespread discrimination against those who dissent from the Darwinian consensus.

Does Richard Dawkins Exist?

Does the existence of a book require the existence of an author? This is the question explored by David Anderson (who, coincidentally, grew up in my current church). This tongue-in-cheek piece exhibits the problem at the core of atheistic evolution: how can information arise spontaneously? The scientific answer is that it cannot; indeed the amount of information in a pattern is related to how unlikely it is that the pattern arose spontaneously. Anderson is also responsible for BCSE: Revealed - a forensic examination of the credibility of a small pressure group - the self-styled 'British Centre for Science Education'.

Other Issues

Watercourses

Graham Kings is vicar of St Mary Islington and theological secretary of Fulcrum. This article appeared in Anvil, which appears to be the house journal of the Open Evangelicals. It makes a reasonable attempt to describe and characterise the three evangelical streams in Anglicanism: conservative, open and charismatic. It may help you understand why Christians, especially church leaders, sometimes do/say strange things: they may be merely following their favourite stream, and in that stream such things are considered normal. I am not an Anglican, but if I were I would sit somewhere between the conservative and charismatic streams, and finding fault with both of them. The open stream seems to me to lean too much towards liberalism, although it still has useful things to say.

Greg's Couch

Greg Johnson is an American Presbyterian based at the St. Louis Center for Christian Study. I have just stumbled across his site. Two particularly useful items on his site are some comments on legalism and quiet time guilt (the first time I have seen someone shoot this sacred cow) and one of the clearest accounts I have read on predestination and the glory of God. The latter is available in the form of MP3 audio files here.

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updated 3 Feb 2012: add link to Fulcrum article