Welcome to my website
Trying to see the world from a Christian perspective
This Blog
I only write occasionally here now, as you will see. However, there is an archive of over 2,000 posts which I’ve made over the last 20+ years, which are all still accessible.
Latest Posts
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Waiting Over
Just a very quick update to announce that the baby we have been waiting for… has finally arrived! Our daughter, Lydia Jean Sacre, was born yesterday at 9:26AM weighing 7lb11oz. We can’t believe how blessed we are to have such a beautiful baby girl, what a gift! Praise God. At some point I may write…
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The New Term… and the waiting game
As I think I mentioned last time, term started at Oak Hill last week. The first three days were spent doing various intro events, meeting lots of people and generally being busy! As of tomorrow evening we will have completed one full week of lectures. This term I am studying the Doctrine of God; General…
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The Story of the Jews
One of the things which interests me about modern-day Judaism is how different it is from my understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures (i.e. the Jewish Bible or the Christian Old Testament). Given that Christians and Jews have so much shared Scripture (most of the Bible – 75% or thereabouts – is the Hebrew Scriptures) –…
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Welcome to the New Orthodoxy…
… but, to borrow from The Who, it’s not the same as the old orthodoxy. I’ve just read a very interesting article called “The Unhappy Fate of Optional Orthodoxy” (only the top half of the page is the article in question; the rest is a collation of shorter pieces. H/T John Richardson via Facebook for…
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Before the Storm…
The last three weekends have been pretty busy for us – we’ve been up in Colchester (or thereabouts) for various reasons! We had a great time seeing friends and family and generally catching up with people. However, as of yesterday Mrs Phil is 37 weeks pregnant – which means that, if the baby is born…
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Biblical Ethics and Sexuality
A couple of times lately I mentioned to people that I’d try to write something vaguely coherent about the Bible and sexuality – in particular about homosexual relationships. Were the Bible writers simply writing within their culture? Now that attitudes to sexuality are changing, can Christian attitudes change with it? I’ve been putting off writing…
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Modern Worship Songs
A thought struck me the other day: it seems that there are a lot more decent modern worship songs out there at the moment than there were around ten years ago. I’ve not always been a fan of modern Christian music, but it does seem that the game has been kicked up a notch of…
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Hate Speech
A few days ago, I tweeted a link to an article on the Spectator: “Revd Dr Alan Clifford’s ‘homophobic’ comments referred to the CPS” (it might be worthwhile reading the article for some background), and I noted that it had worrying implications for free speech. Anyway, someone replied to me on Twitter this morning and…
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Does God LOL?
For my birthday, I was given a copy of “Does God LOL” – a collection of brief thoughts by various people working in the field of comedy about the subject of God and humour. I actually found it a fascinating read! The book is, as you would expect from a compendium of different people’s thoughts,…
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A Dreaded Sunny Day at Highgate Cemetery
Today Mrs Phil and I went down to Highgate Cemetery to have a look round. (The title of this post, by the way, is a reference to “Cemetry Gates” by The Smiths). Although you can’t get into the West cemetery without going on a tour (and there were no tours today), we had a look round…