Moses is not a philosopher, he is a preacher. As he stands before the dust-ridden liberated Hebrew slaves on the verge of the new opportunities of Canaan these words are not precise philosophy, they are not a lecture on the nature of monotheism. These are the dying words of the passionate preacher, desperately calling his exodus community to continue the journey into freedom.

Moses pleads with the people arrayed before him to bind themselves to their deliverer, to devote themselves to this freedom loving Yahweh and to follow him alone before the attractions of the religions of Canaan steal their hearts. In the face of the alternative social, sexual and spiritual worldviews of the gods of the land, Moses is urgently trying to persuade them to follow the only one whose vision of life is an enduring and enjoyable freedom.

So Moses' voice swells as his final sermons are recorded in Deuteronomy. His plea is simple, "You won't find life like this anywhere else; who else is for the widow and orphan? Who else has laws of Jubilee like these? Who else wants to enshrine rest for all in your constitution? Who else is concerned for your rescue and safety? No one else. Yahweh, the Lord, is the only one, the only true source to the best of life. So bind yourselves to him, commit to his vision for society, don't exchange the land of promise for another land of prison."

Is that not the kind of preacher we need as the church in Ireland faces the varied competing worldviews encompassed around it?

By preacher I do not mean the common paranoid variety who find more and more tenuous ways of making any biblical text say one of three important but limited sermons they have on constant rotation: "Get Saved", "Read your Bible" and "Evangelise More" (fill in your own rotation for your particular preacher). The Bible has more to say than that.

I mean the preacher who can take a theological vision, a vision of God and people too vast for a lifetime of sermons and make the hair stand up on the back of our necks. A preacher who is not content with a secularised church; watching as faith is pushed into ever decreasing compartments. A preacher who can so articulate the breadth and depth of the Christian view of the universe that we find our place in business, in parenting, in politics, in global trade, in sexuality, in academic life and in everything else under God's sun.

A preacher who can remind us that the Christian view of all of life, is a life of promise not a life of prison, a life of deliverance and not deficiency.

Richard Johnston

The Centre's latest resource, Power and Providence: Studies on the Book of Esther is now available and is enclosed free with the upcoming edition of lion&lamb. However, it is also available online (click here) or by contacting Anna Rankin.

We are pleased to recommend "Christianity: the encounter with modern culture", a six week course by Prof. David Livingstone and Prof. Stephen Williams beginning in September at the Institute for Christian Training. For further details go to http://www.union.ac.uk/ctnet/culture.html