We come back to preaching, but are all preachers ministers? Is ordination just a matter of full time vs. part time? What is a call to preach? Again this year I sat in a candidates review and wondered about myself. This even longer ago. I think I believed the Christian faith is true and if true it must be proclaimed and that the fundamental form of proclaiming was preaching. And I believe this now, but it’s nothing like Exod. 3... Read more
I am not satisfied. Perhaps it is your fault! You asked for a continuation of the Conference of 1983, and that is something I wished to pursue. It was this very theme I started in 1983. I now borrow Hans Kung’s title On Being a Christian but his line of thinking. I urged you to look at his great book, but have delayed rereading it. The intellectual is not the only aspect of being a Christian. I will treat the... Read more
There is an obvious pretext for this subject. But we don’t need a lot to make it relevant, as we are all aware of it, especially preachers. But a good deal of uneasiness is what brought this subject out into the open. My talk or discussion starter, and I hope a response that will be profitable. Note the double title– a statement and a question. Both are important. First of all, there are problems in theology. Anyone who thinks it... Read more
The common debt that all Christians, including Catholics share to Luther, is that the man existed, and had an effect on all history, and on the story of the whole church. This means telling some of the story. He was born in 1483, the son of a miner who prospered, and could afford to send his son to good schools. He was a bright boy and had the usual schooling with much Latin at Magdeburg and Eisenach. He did University... Read more
Here is the description on Amazon for this 300 or so page book which came out in 2023….. “From Ken Jennings comes a hilarious travel guide to the afterlife, exploring to die for destinations from literature, mythology, and pop culture. Ever wonder which circles of Dante’s Inferno have the nicest accommodations? Where’s the best place to grab a bite to eat in the ancient Egyptian underworld? How does one dress like a local in the heavenly palace of Hinduism’s Lord... Read more
A lecture given at the Catholic College at Ushaw outside Durham on 1/15/85. That college closed in 2011 due to lack of seminary students. Auditur et altera pars. This will bring us near to the point. Fridensaal at Munster: Treaty of Westphalia ends the 30 years war between Catholics and Protestant. How should they treat each other– ‘Listening’ is a much better way. I was asked by your superior– What difference does it make to a non-Catholic lecturer like me... Read more
A lecture given in Hexham in 1985. In general these lectures seem to almost all come from the period shortly after Kingsley retired from his University post at the University of Durham in the Theology Department in 1982. Explaining the call to preach has turned out to be more difficult than I thought. To illustrate the difficulty, two proposition: 1) Faculties– do not preach unless you have to; 2) at Cambridge, what you must ask is whether you have a... Read more
What’s the reason for this subject? We are still living in the 15th century, and it has not everywhere been observed. And we are celebrating a church anniversary and we are a church of the Reformation. I am not so much telling the story as drawing out lessons, but some of the story must be told. Luther was born in 1483, son of a miner. Luther’s home was a good but cold one. There was pride in the brilliant and... Read more
A sermon given at Bowburn 1984 A great event. No doubt we all know what we mean. But is it rightly stated? Let me be clear. Many timely and important have been and will be said. I do not question still less contradict them, but a series of puzzles such as this mus provoke questions. And this I am doing. Not on my own account, I start from two texts. Col. 2.14f.– the charge which stood against us with its... Read more
My doctor father at the end of the 1970s was C.K. Barrett, at the time the most highly regarded Methodist NT scholar in the world. Here he is in 2013 next to a lecture theater in the new building at Durham University. His daughter Penelope gave me all his sermon notes which I got published in four volumes, 3 with Cascade under the title Luminescence, and one with Abingdon Press. What also came with them was a small notebook in... Read more
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