Recent posts

Beware (other) paradigm shifts in Christian theology
Roger Olson discusses what he calls a “paradigm shift in Christian theology” in the modern era. The largely novel thesis is that Jesus is the full and perfect revelation of God. There is no other God “lurking behind Jesus with a different character, disposition, than the one revealed in the… ( | 9 comments)
God reigns, God returns, God redeems in history
I pointed out last week that in the standard “redemption in history” construal of the biblical narrative—as represented, for example, by Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission—all the history is found before Jesus. Nothing of… ( | 0 comments)
Mission and the “history of redemption”
Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People is methodologically one of the best books on a biblical theology of mission that I have come across. I will be recommending it in the workshops that Wes and I will be doing at the Communitas staff conference later this week. Wright argues… ( | 5 comments)
Every knee shall bow: the question about Jesus and God
The central claim of the New Testament regarding the risen Jesus is this: because he was faithful unto death in fulfilment of his mission to Israel, the God of Israel raised him from the dead and gave him the authority, which formerly belonged to God alone, to judge and rule over the nations—… ( | 32 comments)
The biblical story, part three
This is the third of three posts outlining the biblical narrative for the purpose of constructing a narrative theology for mission. The first part presented us with Israel as a new creation people called to worship and serve the living God, in the midst of hostile nations, over a long… ( | 2 comments)
The biblical story, part two
The Old Testament story left us with a two-part eschatological expectation. During a period of great historical crisis the God of Abraham would demonstrate his righteousness or rightness, first, by saving and restoring his servant people, and secondly, by establishing his own rule over the… ( | 3 comments)
The biblical story, part one
My friend Wes and I are running some workshops at the Communitas International staff conference this summer, aimed at helping leaders who do not necessarily have formal theological training instil in their communities a good grasp of how scripture informs church and mission. How do we do credible,… ( | 4 comments)
Does Jesus reveal to us what it means to be perfectly human?
Marc Cortez has written a book called ReSourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ. I haven’t read the book, but I know a man who has, and I propose to take issue with the central thesis of Cortez’s book on the strength of Owen Strachan’s… ( | 6 comments)
Blessed are those who mourn in Western Europe
Last month the Pew Research Centre published the results of a survey of the level of religious commitment of people in Western Europe who self-identify as Christians. The basic finding appears to be that people who call themselves “Christian” in Western Europe are less actively religious—less… ( | 1 comment)
Jörg Frey’s critique of the neutralisation of apocalyptic in Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God
Jörg Frey offers a useful critique of N.T. Wright’s understanding of Paul’s apocalyptic in his chapter in God and the Faithfulness of Paul—the massive response to NT Wright’s massive Paul and the Faithfulness of God.1 I was asked what I think about it, so here’s my brief… ( | 0 comments)
Alexandria and Antioch: a revised tale of two cities
I make the point frequently that there are two basic approaches to the interpretation of the Bible operative in the church today, a theologically determined method and a historically determined method. The church tends to regard the historical method as detrimental to orthodox belief and the… ( | 0 comments)
Noah—the guy who saved humanity by making wine
I’ve been reflecting on the flood story this week in preparation for a sermon on Noah as a risk-taker. This is not the content of the sermon, just some notes on the background narrative of Genesis 1-11.Theological readings of the Bible tend to isolate Genesis 1-3 as a foundational account of… ( | 8 comments)
Does Daniel say that the nations will “worship” the one like a son of man?
I am firmly of the view that in the symbology of Daniel 7 the “one like a son of man” who is brought to the throne of the Ancient of Days stands for the persecuted people of the saints of the Most High, in much the same way that the four beasts in the first part of the vision stand for malevolent… ( | 49 comments)
The resurrection of the just and the unjust in Daniel 12:2, and the horizons of New Testament eschatology
I think that the best way to understand New Testament eschatology is to organise the material according to three future horizons: i) a disastrous war against Rome, which would result in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple; ii) the overthrow of classical Greek-Roman paganism and the… ( | 3 comments)
Armageddon and the making of history
The relocation of the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has given airtime to a right-wing, fundamentalist-Zionist (I refuse to use the word “evangelical” in this context) eschatological narrative that regards this provocative endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as a big… ( | 5 comments)
Why didn’t Jesus just come out and say it: God is going to punish you with violent destruction?
If Jesus believed that the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, with massive loss of life, would be an act of deliberate divine punishment, why didn’t he say so explicitly? Why is it that so many of the sayings about judgment that I listed from Luke’s Gospel come in the form of parables… ( | 10 comments)
Did Jesus avoid proclaiming a “day of vengeance” against Israel in the synagogue in Nazareth?
It is sometimes argued by people who think that Jesus had no interest in violence that when he applied Isaiah 61:1-2 to himself in the synagogue in Nazareth, he deliberately stopped short of proclaiming judgment against Israel:And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled… ( | 39 comments)
The violence of Jesus in the temple: setting a bad example
I am generally a hesitant tweeter, but yesterday, in an idle moment, I tagged Derek Vreeland in a tweet suggesting that his republished Missio Alliance article asking “Did Jesus Really Usher in the Kingdom of God?” underplays the future aspect of the coming of the kingdom of God. He kindly… ( | 12 comments)
Death is swallowed up in victory. What? When? And has he misread the scriptures?
What does Paul mean when he says that “death is swallowed up in victory”? When will this happen? And has he made fair use of the Old Testament texts that he cites in support of his claim?Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15:50-57 that flesh and blood will not inherit the rule with Jesus at the… ( | 11 comments)
What does Paul mean by “The righteous shall live by faith”?
The question of the meaning of Habakkuk’s “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4) came up in a comment on a recent post about Romans. My argument is that when Paul quotes this line in Romans 1:17, he is using it more or less in the same way that Habakkuk intended it, as identifying a… ( | 6 comments)