Manz, formerly one of Zwingli’s closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.

Human logic may be rationally adequate, but it is also existentially deficient. Faith declares that there is more than this – not contradicting, but transcending reason.

Lewis helps us to appreciate that apologetics need not take the form of deductive argument. Instead, apologetics can be an invitation to step into the Christian way of seeing things, and explore how things look when seen from its standpoint. Lewis’s approach says, “Try seeing things this way!” If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into sharpest focus?

One of the great themes of the Christian Bible is that, whenever God asks us to do something for him, he gives us the gifts we need to do it. Knowing us for what we are, he equips us for what he wants us to do.

A careful study of the court records of the northern English city of Durham suggests that “you” had replaced “thou” as the normal form of address in spoken English by about 1575.

More serious was the misprint in an edition of 1631, which rendered Exodus 20:14 as follows: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” The omission of the word “not” was speedily corrected, but not before this had caused some consternation among the Bible’s readers. Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the printers of this “Wicked Bible” – as it came to be known – were fined severely for this unfortunate lapse.

Atheism, I began to realize, rested on a less-than-satisfactory evidential basis. The arguments that had once seemed bold, decisive, and conclusive increasingly turned out to be circular, tentative, and uncertain.

It’s the difference between utility and virtue. Many policy makers now think of education in functional terms. It’s about learning skills that will help students find employment – such as using a word processor or spreadsheet. Yet what about helping people to figure out the meaning of life? Or become good people? Or make a difference to others? Is education for a stage in life, completed once we find jobs, or should it be a lifelong pursuit?

For Tolkien, a myth is a story that conveys “fundamental things” – in other words, that tries to tell us about the deeper structure of things. The best myths, he argues, are not deliberately constructed falsehoods, but are rather tales woven by people to capture the echoes of deeper truths. Myths.

Christianity brings to fulfilment and completion imperfect and partial insights about reality, scattered abroad in human culture. Tolkien gave Lewis a lens, a way of seeing things, which.