For my part, I am not impressed by any fine “experiences” that people may have. I am not very interested in the state of their soul or their spiritual barometers. All that has to be submitted to as searching a test as we can make, the test of conformity with God’s Word, in our case of course, pre-eminently with Jesus Christ himself. That of course cuts both ways. It cuts against the folk that are all emotion and no motion.... Read more

Commenting on Rev. 11.8 Kingsley Barrett says this: Sodom means sin. It has given its name to a particularly unpleasant perversion of human functions. I was interested to see in Tuesday’s Times a paragraph noting the publication of a new book demonstrating that “homosexuality, adultery, beastiality, and fornication are all explicitly and consistently repudiated throughout the Bible.” What a sign of our times that it should be necessary to write such a book! As if anyone could be in any... Read more

Theology is right if it starts with Jesus; it is wrong if it starts anywhere else. The first, but not the second of these statements is, I know, an oversimplification; it is possible to start with Jesus and take many turnings on the way. But it will not do….it is still true that people start their theology in strange places and build it up on foundations other than Jesus. There are professional theologians who do it. It is sadder when... Read more

Year by year, when our Church membership numbers are published, there is one particularly distressing column. We do not mourn those who have died, they have been promoted to the Church Triumphant. We are not unduly concerned about the trickle which is described as having gone to other Churches. We regret their folly, but we cannot think them really lost. The real grieving figure is that of the thousands who have simply “ceased to be members.” Some people say they... Read more

The Church lives by the Word of God, that is why theology is ministerium verbi divini. I suspect we are in danger of forgetting among our many interests the creative and renewing power of the Word of God; that the sermon is the means of the real presence of Christ. Of course I am not speaking of religious and moral chats. I am speaking of the manifestation of the living Word through the spoken word from the written word in... Read more

No loveless person will ever really grow up. Love means giving yourself away to others. And the only way to find yourself is to give yourself away. The person who has only lived within the narrow world of his own acquisitive nature, who has never known the laughter and the tears of self-forgetfulness, is a narrow selfish child, who has missed and will go on missing the deep and mature experience of life. C.K. Barrett Read more

Let me be practical about this. When I am oppressed by the burden of sin, what I need is not the best available theology of forgiveness. What I need is forgiveness itself, to be forgiven. When I am unable to see my way forward, to cope with the problems of life and death, I do not need a great piece of moral theology, what I need is the power of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When I... Read more

But the trouble comes when a human being becomes so devoted to the exercise of his gifts that he becomes their slave. He no longer rules his environment, his environment rules him. This is the real fault of a permissive society. How many a young man and a young woman thought that sex would be fun, and went on and on until they found themselves the slaves of it, always having to seek for some new twist, some new position... Read more

Being a Christian imposes no limits on your curiosity. Rather it should stimulate it. Some people seem to think that for Christians there are doors marked “Danger: No Admittance.” You mustn’t examine this or that lest it imperil your faith. There are no such restrictions. For one thing, a faith that won’t stand up to investigation and truth is a faith not worth having, and for another a Christian who believes that he lives in his Father’s house has every... Read more

It has been said that religion is what human beings do with their solitariness, but Christian religion is not what people do with anything. It is what God does with us.— C.K. Barrett Read more