Marginal Christianity

A hundred years ago conservative Christians put out “Five Fundamentals of Faith” in response to the “liberalism” invading America from Germany. These fundamentals constituted an effort to justify the historical reality of Christianity against the attacks of historical critical biblical study.   We live a time of change, uncertainty, and transformation. A hundred years (more or less) seems a good time to re-visit the Fundamentals.   So much has changed culturally, historically, and theologically that there seems little more than historical interest in re-visiting them. Yet, since we are in a period of change and transformation in our time as the church was a century ago, a look at what “fundamentals” might be and mean in our time seems in order. The “Fundamentals” a century ago claimed and reasserted the historical reality of five pillars of the Christian Faith:   the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the historical reality of hi...

Friday, 22 June 2012 On the virgin birth: or, why it's better to say the creed than to criticise it Ben Myers (http://www.faith-theology.com/2012/06/on-virgin-birth-or-why-its-better-to.html) I got an email from someone the other day about a post I wrote (seven years ago!) where I cast aspersions on the "historical" value of the New Testament's virgin birth narratives. I sent a reply email, and since I felt ashamed when I read that old post, I thought I'd reproduce my reply here: Barth's famous discussion of the virgin birth is in Church Dogmatics I/2, the section on 'The Miracle of Christmas'. Barth always insists that acts of divine revelation are 'not historical'. But he doesn't mean they never happened. All he means is that revelation is a unique event, an act of God. It's not part of the normal historical sequence, it doesn't belong to a chain of cause-and-effect, and so there's no use trying to verify or disprove i...