Crumbs from the Table

It was at Antioch that those scattered in the persecution after the murder of Stephen "spoke to Greeks also" and many believed. It was an Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.   By the 300s, Antioch was established as a major centre for the Christian faith. When, at the Council of Nicea in 325, particular cities and bishops were identified as having a "place of honour" with wider jurisdiction over other bishoprics (canon 6 of the Council of Nicea), the top four were Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem (later, Constantinople was identified as second).  In the early centuries, the classes for new converts (catechetical schools) morphed into centres for Christian thought, sometimes compared to modern-day universities. There were catechetical schools at Alexandria, and at Antioch.  The school of Antioch has become associated with a plain interpretation of Scripture and also with the teachings of Nestorius, condemned at the 431 council of Ephesus....

At church we are coming to the end of a series in the gospel of Matthew on the "kingdom", arguably the key theme is Jesus' preaching. Before embarking on this series, after many years in ministry, I had a working definition of "kingdom" which went something like this: "The kingdom of God/heaven is the saving rule or reign of God in the lives of people through the person of Jesus Christ."  While there is much that is true in the working definition above, most particularly the centrality of Christ's person (without him there is no kingdom), I do now think this definition could be misleading in suggesting that the kingdom is now, when the consistent teaching of the Lord and his Apostles is that the kingdom is future; the "kingdom of God" is virtually synonymous with " the age to come ".  It is something of a commonplace that the kingdom is not a place. It might however be true to say that the kingdom *is* a time (namely the age to ...