The latest issue of Crucible, published by the Australian Evangelical Alliance, is now available online here, with the below articles (abstracts included, where available):
The Cauldron: peer reviewed articles
Conrad Parsons
Is God as Good as We Think?
C.S. Lewis discussed the presence of pain, evil and suffering in his book The Problem of Pain. In the face of evil, he affirmed his view that God is ‘good,’ that is, people are able to recognize God using their natural understanding of what constitutes goodness. However, in July 1960 Joy Davidman, the wife of C. S. Lewis, died of bone cancer. Lewis kept a journal immediately following Joy’s death and those reflections were the basis of his book A Grief Observed. In that small book, Lewis expressed anger towards God and questioned whether God is as good as he thinks. Today the question is still asked by many people: “Is God as good as we think?”
Robert Tilley
The Birth of Ideology: Genesis and the Origins of Self-Deception
In this article the ideological foundations of modern biblical criticism (MBC) are explored. Using historical interpretations of Genesis as his foil – the author shapes an argument that posits the credibility of the Bible’s self-authenticating message, over against the self-deceptive fictions of Modern and post-modern constructions of reality. Drawing on Marxist theories of society, power and the human person, the author renders the possibility that the argument of Genesis is designed to countermand and indeed expose the ideologies of its day; a function that remains relevant for our own time. The adoption of the metaphor of sight as a recurring motif throughout the article suggests the possibility that Modern and post-modern readings of the Bible are blind to other dimensions of existence which are necessary for authentic human existence. Against such blindness, the author juxtaposes the possibility of human self-awareness in the presence of God, and therefore the biblical text which reads us.
The Test-tube: ministry resources
Len Hjalmarson
Learning to Navigate in Missional Waters
What do we do when our maps stop working? How do we locate ourselves, and then find the way forward? Eddie Gibbs offers us the clue: when maps stop working, we train navigators. Navigation is both an old skill and an ancient metaphor. The Greek word means pilot, helmsman, or guide, and was used to speak of spiritual direction. When a ship is entering a harbor universal knowledge is no longer adequate, local knowledge becomes critical. We begin practicing the skills of kubernetes, skills that represent a response to adaptive challenges. Some of these practices are:
• create a context where problems invoke possibilities
• find or create rituals that invoke memory (an internal location)
• initiate and convene conversations that shift peoples experience – help people ask new questions and then like a poet give them new language
• value and affirm process, get comfortable with mystery
• value experimentation and risk, cultivate generosity
• listen and pay attention
Stuart Devenish
An Elegy for Saints Passed
Ross Morgan
Sustainable Spirituality: The Discipline Of Lectio Divina
Brian Edgar
God in the Dock: C.S. Lewis as Public Theologian
In 1970 forty eight of C.S.Lewis’ essays were published under the title God in the Dock: essays on theology and ethics. This paper discusses the ministry that C.S. Lewis exercised in terms of him being a “public theologian”, an “ordinary intellectual”, a “cultural analyst” and as a “committed believer”. His “ministry of the mind” is seen as an evangelical ministry and it is related to the needs of the present day.
The Filter: book reviews
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