Top posts of the last year

I haven’t done this before, but it seems a cheap and cheerful way to bring the year to an end. I got the idea from Brian LePort at Near Emmaus. It’s an inexact exercise. I know which posts received the most hits over the last year, but obviously those which went into the vineyard early have earned more than those which went in late. So what follows is more a personal selection from among the most popular posts with one or two later ones artificially bumped up the order—such is grace. Happy New Year!

Jesus and God

The most popular post over the last year by some distance was Jesus as Lord in Mark. I argued that the claim made by Mark’s Gospel was not that Jesus is God but that Jesus is Lord—and that these are not merely equivalent statements. I had made the same point in an earlier piece: Jesus is God or Jesus is Lord? How we construct the divinity of Jesus from the New Testament texts has been one of the most controversial topics on this site.

The coming of the Son of Man

Eschatology is an important part of my general thesis because it tells us how Jesus and his early followers saw the narrative of the people of God stretching into the future. History didn’t stop with the resurrection. In The coming of the Son of Man: theology or history? I took issue with Bill Mounce’s defence of the standard evangelical reading of Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse.

The gospel

In The Gospel Coalition gets the gospel back to front I suggested that current Reformed theology works backwards from Reformation theology to Paul to the cross to the gospel, and therefore gets the New Testament wrong. A narrative-historical approach reads forwards from the story of Israel to the gospel of the kingdom to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection to Paul—and then leaves us wondering what to do with it today. An evangelical theology for the age to come still has to ask: What must a person believe in order to be saved?

Theology and history

On the subject of the relation between theology and history, The battle between theology and history for the soul of the church: 24 antitheses generated quite a lot of interest, as did a follow-up attempt to define Some rough and ready “rules” for doing a narrative-historical reading of the New Testament.

Justification by faith

The dispute over justification by faith remains a major flashpoint in this battle: Wright and White on the “righteousness of God” in was followed by More on the righteousness of God and the justification of believers and then, more recently, Judgment according to works: a flawed paradigm.

Adam and sin

I made a small narrative-historical contribution to the debate over Adam and human origins and was delighted that Peter Enns took note of it: Adam, original sin, and wrath against the Jew.

Rob Bell

And just to maintain a semblance of even-handedness, a critique of Rob Bell scored reasonably well: Rob Bell: What we don’t talk about when we talk about God.