Confident: Why we can trust the Bible
“Last February and on into March, Mike Ovey and I each wrote a number of little blog posts responding to Steve Chalke’s article, ‘Restoring Confidence in the Bible’. We’ve reworked those posts, added some more material and discussion questions, and the result is a new little book published by Christian Focus and called, Confident: Why we can trust the Bible.
It’s not a finger-pointing, hand-wringing book (Steve Chalke isn’t mentioned at all). Rather it’s a book to encourage and equip Christians…”
– from Dan Strange at Oak Hill College in London. (Availability.)
Phillip Jensen on Anglican Evangelicalism
In the latest Preaching Matters video from St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, Phillip Jensen speaks about what it is to be an Evangelical Anglican.
In doing so, he explores the difference between ‘followers of Calvin’ and ‘followers of Calvinism’. (Mike Ovey responds here.)
The murders at Charlie Hebdo: are we really Charlie?
“It feels like we are at war. Doesn’t the flood of reaction to the mass murders at Charlie Hebdo, especially over recent days, look like a drawing-together before a common enemy? The ‘I am Charlie Hebdo’ mantra implies unanimity, a very clear sense of ‘us’: this was a war-crime by ‘them’ against all of ‘us’. …
But who is the ‘us’ and who is the ‘them’?…”
– Mike Ovey in London writes this opinion-piece on the Oak Hill blog.
A slippery Bible?
Adrian Reynolds (Proc Trust) on the discussion between Steve Chalke and Andrew Wilson, shown on Premier TV in the UK –
“This is actually a helpful episode, because Andrew draws out from Steve what he really thinks… This is liberalism and nothing more.”
Related:
- Steve Chalke or the repentant Rosaria? Whose religious experience? – Mike Ovey.
- Confidence in God and the word he has given us – Mark Thompson.
- Restoring Confidence In The Bible? Let’s Start With Confident Pastors, Seminary Professors and Church Leaders – Colin Adams.
Steve Chalke or the repentant Rosaria? Whose religious experience?
“Who’s the most unlikely convert you have ever met? Of course, given the ravages of sin in our hearts and minds any convert is nothing short of a miracle, a new creation that only the original creator can bring about. All the same, there are some whose place in life seems to make it especially hard to hear the gospel, and when someone in that position does become a Christian, one stands amazed at the power of God’s grace in encountering them and bringing them home to himself.”
– Mike Ovey at Oak Hill College asks whose religious experience counts.
Confidence in God and the word he has given us
“In the last few days Steve Chalke has done it again.
The 58 year old Baptist minister who pastors the Oasis Church in London is no stranger to controversy. He ignited a debate about penal substitution with his book (co-authored with Alan Mann), The Lost Message of Jesus in 2004. That book provoked a series of responses, the most substantial being Pierced for our Transgressions, edited by, amongst others, Dr Mike Ovey, the redoubtable Principal of Oak Hill College London. Then around this time last year, Chalke published in support of monogamous homosexual relationships with a two part article on ‘The Bible and Homosexuality’.
Now he has published an article questioning the truthfulness of everything in the Bible…”
– Moore College Principal Mark Thompson looks at Steve Chalke’s latest foray into controversy.
Extinction in a generation?
“Have a read of this report from the Daily Telegraph: ‘Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, warns Christianity “a generation away from extinction” in Britain. Clergy are now gripped by a “feeling of defeat”, congregations are worn down by “heaviness” while the public simply greets both with “rolled eyes and a yawn of boredom”, he said.’
Lord Carey goes on to say how in particular ‘we’ have let down young people and that we must deploy ministers to get children and youth back into church.
There’s much here to admire. Lord Carey may no longer be Archbishop of Canterbury, but it still takes courage for such an establishment figure to point out just how bad things are. But he’s quite right: Christianity is a generation away from extinction in the United Kingdom. This is something both very old and very new. Let me explain. …”
– Oak Hill College Principal Mike Ovey writes.
The Grace of God OR the world of the West?
“My first really significant encounter with worldwide Anglicanism came at theological college.
It was 1990 and an east African priest was on secondment with us. He preached in the college chapel. He posed a question. Which gospel, he asked, which gospel do you westerners want us to believe? The one you came with or the one you preach now? Which gospel? I was horrified, not because what he said was not true. I was horrified because it was true.
My east African brother’s question has nagged away at me ever since. But how has it come about that we have a different gospel now from the one we first preached. What is this difference between what we westerners say now and what we said then? …”
– Dr. Mike Ovey, Principal of Oak Hill College, speaking at a GAFCON Plenary session. Full text PDF from GAFCON. Watch it here, courtesy Anglican TV. (Photo: Stephen Sizer.)
See also:
Archbishop Peter Jensen – “GAFCON is a way of delivering friendship and unity” – Sunday 20th October – transcript (GAFCON) and video (Anglican TV).
Key UK conference planned for November
Reform and the Anglican Mission in England are organising a conference for Anglican evangelical leaders in November.
“ReNew will be a two day conference with the aim of advancing Anglican Evangelical ministries for the salvation of England.”
Speakers include Hugh Palmer, William Taylor, Richard Coekin, Mike Ovey and John Richardson. Details here.
Packer: Playing the Numbers Game
“I have found that churches, pastors, seminaries, and parachurch agencies throughout North America are mostly playing the numbers game—that is, defining success in terms of numbers of heads counted or added to those that were there before…”
– J. I Packer, via Justin Taylor.
Advent, tyranny and freedom
“‘Free Thine own from Satan’s tyranny.’ These words come from the much-loved Advent carol, ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’. We sing it most years, and it has always moved me. The Lord Jesus comes to set me free.
Tyranny, though. Doesn’t that sound a little odd?…”
– Mike Ovey writes at the Oak Hill blog.
Challenging equality Britain
“George Orwell’s famous allegory, Animal Farm, gave us the wry phrase, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’. It brought out the way that you could have all the talk about equality and rights, but that it actually worked out with inequalities and with favoured groups. In Animal Farm, you remember, it was the pigs who ended up more equal than others.
I suspect that is how many Christians are coming to think about equality Britain. It’s a Britain where comedians are feted for their ‘daring’ in taking on the Christian religion on national TV, while never quite having the bottle to dish out equal satire to the equally fervent Richard Dawkins. It’s a Britain where major human rights abuses against Christians in countries such as North Korea or Syria are not reported as such.
It’s a Britain where you pray with someone in hospital at your peril, in case some third party takes offence. It’s a Britain where a prime minister appears to be under the impression that he can change what constitutes marriage. I suspect many of us find ourselves both frustrated and bewildered. How did it come to this?…”
– Oak Hill Principal Mike Ovey writes in the latest issue of Oak Hill’s Commentary magazine – available as a 6.4MB PDF file. Download it for the many worthwhile articles.
Themelios 37.2
The latest issue of Themelios (issue 37.2) is now available as a free download from The Gospel Coalition.
It includes articles by Don Carson and Mike Ovey, and many book reviews (a review of Paul Barnett’s The Corinthian Question: Why Did the Church Oppose Paul? is among them.)
Getting the name right: revisionism
“By and large you don’t get too many Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on doors on the campus of a conservative evangelical theological college like ours. When they do, the odds are that the first question is, ‘What do you think is wrong with the world?’
It’s a searching question because it makes you try and boil down all your misgivings into as small a phrase as possible, preferably even a single word. It makes you focus. The short-hand answer is ‘sin’, and put less technically perhaps something like, ‘We have all loved ourselves at the expense of our love of God and of our neighbours.’
In a similar vein, Anglicans at the moment have to answer the question, ‘What do you think is wrong with the Anglican church worldwide?’ Because there’s a pretty widespread agreement something is. And while it is right to answer that question in terms of sin and a disordered love of self, it is also helpful to try and be a bit more specific…”
– Dr Mike Ovey at Oak Hill College in London reflects on last week’s address by Archbishop Eliud Wabukala at the FCA Leaders Conference.
The uniqueness and sufficiency of Christ
Dr Mike Ovey, Principal of Oak Hill College, preached on Hebrews 1:1-4 at the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans Conference in London this week.
Watch his most encouraging, edifying and challenging exposition – at the GAFCON website.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…