Elucidations

  If there is a controversial figure in Christianity beyond Jesus himself it is his mother Mary. I have found people who love her more than Jesus, people hostile to her as a distraction to faith and people who cannot understand the fuss about her. Mary rides on controversies about authority in the church, the nature of prayer and the experience of the supernatural. Shedding light on her is about opening closed doors between Catholic and Protestant and windows to the breeze of the Spirit of truth linked to Mary. Sally came to see me because she could only pray to Mary. She knew as a Christian she should pray to Jesus but guilt about her son’s marriage breakdown prevented her. She felt Jesus was angry with her so it was better to go to Mary. In ministering to her I discovered something of a culture alien to me in which the saints rather than Jesus are go-betweens with God. Meeting Sally confirmed prejudice instilled in me about Catholics being on the wrong track about Mary as I was asked

  There is no proof of Christ’s resurrection, only strong evidence. That is the case for any past event. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus stems from the faith of the church and an accumulation of evidence. In past ages its significance was limited to proving the divinity of Christ so that his birth was the incarnation of God and his suffering the overcoming of sin and death. Nowadays Christ’s resurrection is seen as more central than confirmatory both to the church’s transformational dynamic and to apologetics, the reasoned defence or ‘apologia’ of Christian faith. Christianity stands or falls on the event which has a documented history whilst being a metaphysical (‘beyond the natural’) event with significance beyond history.  Defending the resurrection we sail ‘between the Scylla of critical pedantry and the Charybdis of vaguely religious psychology’ (Rowan Williams). If we make the establishing of the empty tomb narratives our goal that can reduce to pedantry because it is not the