Recent posts

The ends of the ages: church in the Anthropocene
Speaking at Davos last year, David Attenborough said, “The Holocene has ended. The Garden of Eden is no more.” He makes the point again in the compelling new Netflix documentary A Life on Our Planet. The juxtaposition of terms from two very different fields of discourse is intriguing. Can we do… ( | 2 comments)
What was Paul thinking when he wrote “Christ… the one being over all, God, blessed for the ages” (Rom. 9:5)?
Does Paul say that Christ is God in Romans 9:5? He speaks with candour about his anxiety regarding the future of Israel. He could wish himself “anathema from the Messiah” for the sake of his own race according to the flesh, of whom are “the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the… ( | 1 comment)
The shortfall in Christ’s sufferings: mystical union, messianic woes, the hardships of evangelism, or none of the above?
On The Gospel Coalition site Phil Thompson asks what Paul means when he says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24). How could anything be lacking in Christ’s… ( | 6 comments)
What happened to the promised land? It became the promised empire
Andrew Bunt provides a quick and lucid overview of the argument of Oren Martin’s book Bound for the Promised Land: The land promise in God’s redemptive plan (2015). I have not read the book. Martin thinks—assuming that Bunt has understood him correctly—that the land of Canaan was … ( | 0 comments)
Woke Church, heaven, and a slight problem with the great multi-ethnic multitude
I have been reading Eric Mason’s book Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice. It’s not the book I was expecting it to be. It’s an honest, heartfelt attempt, written from within the black community, to connect modern imperatives of racial… ( | 5 comments)
Which Lord shall we provoke to jealousy?
Following on from the discussion of whether Paul includes Jesus in the divine identity in 1 Corinthians 8:6, let’s consider the claim that Paul identifies Jesus with YHWH when he says, “Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy (parazēloumen)? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor. 10:22). Given… ( | 5 comments)
How Paul can proclaim one Lord Jesus Christ and not compromise Jewish monotheism
A lot of scholars think that Paul includes Jesus in the “divine identity” when he says that “for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ…” (1 Cor. 8:6). Richard Bauckham, for example, notes that it is now “commonly recognized” that Paul has generated here a Christianized version… ( | 14 comments)
Dissonance-reducing rationalisations of failed expectations in the early church. Or not
Matthew Hartke describes himself on Twitter as a “Post-Christian Bible nerd endlessly fascinated with the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity.” I had a bit of a debate with him a few years back in an Unbelievable podcast about whether Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. I have some… ( | 0 comments)
Getting the mission of the church “right”: the whole point of justification
Here are three missional challenges that the modern evangelical church needs urgently to get to grips with: 1) resist the extreme individualism and narcissism of western culture; 2) tell a compelling, up-to-date-and-beyond story about the living God, the communities that serve him in the name of… ( | 4 comments)
Did Paul think that women are more gullible than men?
Writing to Timothy, Paul (presumably) says that a woman should learn quietly in all submissiveness and not be allowed to teach and “exert influence over” (authentein) men because “Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and has come into… ( | 0 comments)
Make for yourselves friends of unrighteous mammon: the parable of the self-serving business manager
Jesus did not tell moral fables. He was not a purveyor of uplifting Christian allegories that transcend time and space. He was a prophet in the mould of Isaiah or Ezekiel, telling disturbing, and sometimes deliberately disorienting, stories about the imminent impact of the kingdom of God on first… ( | 0 comments)
So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you: the parable of the unforgiving slave
I rather overlooked the relevance of Jesus’ parable about an unforgiving slave in Matthew 18:23-35 for the recent debate about whether he interpreted the foreseen destruction of Jerusalem as God’s deliberate punishment of his people. When should we expect a day of the Lord? Why will Sodom and… ( | 3 comments)
What will happen to the lost sheep who take offence at being found?
Much of Jesus’ Galilean ministry centred on Capernaum, so it comes as something of a shock to hear him denounce the city in rather forthright terms while things still appear to be going well. Admittedly, a warning note is struck early on when the faith of the centurion is taken as an ominous sign… ( | 5 comments)
Why will Sodom and Gomorrah be present on the day of God’s judgment against Israel?
I have argued that a “day of the Lord” in biblical terms happens not at the end of history but in history. It is a day when the God of Israel steps in to “judge” or “put right” a bad situation—to punish impiety and injustice, to deliver his people from their enemies, to re-establish his… ( | 19 comments)
When should we expect a day of the Lord?
In the popular Christian mind any reference to the “day of the Lord” or the “day of judgment” is likely to be conceived in final terms, as a transcendent event at the end of history. So when Paul says to the men of Athens that God has “fixed a day on which he will judge the world” (Acts 17:31), it… ( | 18 comments)
Review: John Lennox, Where is God in a Coronavirus World?
Where is God in a Coronavirus World? is really a piece of old school—the old “school” of C.S. Lewis—apologetics reworked for the COVID-19 era. This slight and simple book “concentrates on the problem of natural evil,” John Lennox says. In a time of crisis we look for solace and hope. Where… ( | 2 comments)
“The Lord said to my lord….” Did Jesus indulge in prosopological exegesis of the Old Testament?
Jesus is teaching in the temple (Mk. 12:35-37). He poses a question: “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?” After all, David himself said in the Holy Spirit, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ Jesus has taken Psalm… ( | 0 comments)
Jesus and the empire to come
The letter to the Hebrews is a Jewish-Christian text, perhaps an exclusively Jewish-Christian text. At its theological core is the argument that Jesus has become their heavenly high priest. But he is a high priest “after the order of Melchizedek,” which means that he is not only a priest, he is… ( | 0 comments)
Is there such a thing as the “Cosmic Christ”?
I can understand why the idea of the “cosmic Christ” has come back into vogue. It is a corrective to the hyper-individualism of much modern theology—and indeed of much popular culture. It stretches Christian spirituality to encompass an eco-mysticism that is not merely pantheistic. Its association… ( | 4 comments)
Missional reflections on Olivier Roy’s Is Europe Christian?
We have an online Communitas “Thinklings” event coming up this week, spread over a few days, to consider the question of church and mission after the pandemic. Brian McLaren helped us launch this informal theological forum nearly 20 years ago, and we’ve kept it going fitfully. Never before online… ( | 0 comments)