The great Presbyterian buzz-word of the moment seems to be, ‘Christ, not tradition’, and like all buzz-words it has a modicum of truth.  No church can be content just to let things remain as they are.  At the very least we have to adapt to changing circumstances.  When Gaelic ceases to be the language of a community it must cease to be the language of worship.  When populations move from the countryside and spill into great industrial centres such as Glasgow and Dundee, the church must move with them.  When most church-members have to work nine-to-five, five days a week, Communion Services must be rescheduled accordingly.  And when the printing-press and the computer open up great new possibilities the church has to be quick to take advantage.

Posted 3 years ago by Donald Macleod

It’s often important to assure despondent Christians that Jesus himself sometimes plumbed the emotional depths.  But it’s equally important to guard against the opposite extreme, as if joy were a... Read more about 'Joy changes everything '...

Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

We live in a world where four-fifths of the population worship gods other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in such a world the Christian... Read more about 'Why is there religion? and why are there so many of them?'...

Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

In the present parlous and precarious state of British theology it’s hard to imagine a controversy suddenly erupting over the question whether within the eternal trinity the Son is subordinate... Read more about 'Subordinationism (out of the blue!)'...

Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

Few words in the Bible are better known or more often quoted than these, but for all their timelessness they were addressed to a very specific situation.  The demeanour and... Read more about 'Troubled by the Cross: a meditation on John 14.1 - 6 '...

Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

Probably the most distinctive tenet of Reformed theology is that ‘God did freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass’ (Westminster Confession, III, I).  The doctrine is often contemptuously dismissed,... Read more about 'Is everything foreordained?'...

Posted in Christian Doctrine; Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

According to The Marrow of Modern Divinity the Christian evangelist can say to every man, ‘I have good news for you.’  Does this include the news, ‘God loves you’?  Read more about 'Can we tell everyone, 'God loves you'?'...

Posted in Christian Doctrine; Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

The recent Report to the NHS in England by the Mental Health Taskforce has led to a sudden flurry of interest in mental illness by both the media and politicians, and the interest is to be warmly welcomed.  While serious psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia are relatively rare, few of us are exempt from such mental illnesses as anxiety and depression.  These obviously vary in seriousness, but for thousands of people they mean being plunged into a dark, bottomless despair from which, no matter how hard they try, no effort of their own can bring deliverance.  The mood lies beyond the reach of reason and argument, disables from all activity and in too many cases takes away even the will to live.

Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

Dark shadows fall over the closing pages of John’s Gospel. For our Lord himself, there is the shadow of the cross; for the disciples, the shadow of his imminent departure.  He is leaving them to return to the Father, and they are utterly distraught.  It is to this distress that Jesus addresses the words of John 16:7, ‘It is for your good that I am going away.  Unless I go, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.’

Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod

Martin Luther, whose tormented conscience and anguished thinking launched the Protestant Reformation, once remarked, ‘If the doctrine of justification is lost, the whole of Christian doctrine is lost.’  It is hardly surprising, then, that there is a voluminous Protestant literature on justification.  The doctrine of adoption, by contrast, has been largely neglected.  Yet the two are inseparably linked. 

Posted in Christian Doctrine; Posted 4 years ago by Donald Macleod