Recent posts

Jesus and the Capitol Hill mob
I’ve just listened to my friend Michael Cooper talking on the Ephesiology Podcast about the events in Washington last week and the lamentable state of American evangelicalism. He and his co-hosts have some sensible things to say, but I found myself in disagreement over one matter. I think they… ( | 10 comments)
Now available! Hell and Heaven in Narrative Perspective (second edition)
The question of whether the Bible teaches that the unsaved will suffer an eternity of conscious torment in the fires of hell after they die is not quite the hot topic it was a decade ago, when the first edition of this book came out, but it continues to trouble a great many people. For a growing… ( | 1 comment)
Progressive Christianity and the narrative-historical method
I noticed recently that in response to the question “What are your favorite progressive Christian resources on the Book of Revelation?” on Twitter, a friend recommended my book The Coming of the Son of Man or “Really anything by Andrew Perriman.” Thank you, friend! His tweet got two likes… ( | 9 comments)
A happy disappointing Christmas to everyone!
Here is a disappointing post to celebrate a disappointing Christmas—just a dreary list of previous Christmas posts. Something might pique your interest. I had neither the time nor the imagination to come up with a new piece. It’s even too cloudy and miserable here to get a sighting of the star of… ( | 1 comment)
What did Paul mean by the groaning of creation? Does the argument work today?
In our age of intense ecological anxiety, Paul’s sympathetic portrayal of creation as a suffering thing, yearning for liberation from its bondage to corruption (Rom. 8:19-22) has an obvious appeal. It’s a remarkable image, but how much modern theological weight can it bear? Can it support the sort… ( | 17 comments)
New Testament eschatological texts categorised by horizon
Jon Hallewell asks whether I have a list of scriptures that point to the first, second, and final horizons of New Testament eschatology. I do now. The diagram illustrates the three horizons model. I think that the narrative-historical method obliges us to read the New Testament on the… ( | 13 comments)
How beautiful on the mountains were the feet of Jesus
The SBL annual meeting is happening online this year, of course. In a highly stimulating and persuasive presentation yesterday David Burnett argued for revisiting the thesis of D.A.S. Ravens that Luke uses the story of the anointing of Jesus by a woman to portray him as the messenger of Isaiah 52:7… ( | 0 comments)
The narrative architecture of Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13
This is really just an appendix to the previous post on the two “ends” in Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13. I have summarised the development of thought, highlighting what seem to me to be the salient literary features, with a few brief observations at the end. The awkward translations are… ( | 0 comments)
Do we have two “ends” in Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse in Mark?
The question is a simple one. Does Jesus have one or two climactic events in mind when he speaks to his disciples about the future? Following on from his discussion of the “parable” of the sheep and goats, Ian Paul has posted a defence of Dick France’s two-stage reading of Jesus’ apocalyptic… ( | 1 comment)
How the context makes sense of the separation of the “sheep” and “goats” at the parousia
Ian Paul has written a good piece on the sheep and goats passage in Matthew 25. He notes, rightly in my view, that the “least of these” are not the poor in general, and that it is not good Christians and bad non-Christians who are separated at the judgment. He stresses the relevance of Daniel’s… ( | 15 comments)
More on the difference between “kingdom of God” and “shalom”
I’ve been greatly enjoying an intermittent conversation with Tim Peebles of the Anvil Trust about the relation between kingdom and new creation or shalom themes in scripture. We both have trouble getting our point across succinctly, so my response to his comments on the post about… ( | 0 comments)
How do we measure the effectiveness of the missional church? Part 2
The practical question that I’m trying to answer here is: how do we assess the effectiveness or validity of missional activity when the “product” is more qualitative than quantitative? Church growth models are proved effective if they result in larger churches or the multiplication of churches. The… ( | 2 comments)
The difference between “kingdom of God” and “shalom”
Prompted by an excellent podcast that I listened to yesterday discussing the relation between the kingdom of God and “shalom” in scripture, I want to look briefly at Isaiah 9:6-7. The passage speaks of the birth of a child who will sit on the throne of David, saying that “of the abundance of… ( | 2 comments)
How do we measure the effectiveness of the missional church? Part 1
I work with an international mission organisation called Communitas. We have a small presence in the UK, and if anyone wants to know more about us, please get in touch. This is the personal background for the question that I want to address in a couple of posts: how do we measure the … ( | 14 comments)
Jesus and Jonah at sea: what the disciples learned
The relevance of Psalm 107:28-29 for understanding Jesus’ imperious rebuke of the wind and waves is often noted: some went down to the sea in ships; the Lord “commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea”; they were terrified and cried out to the Lord, and he “made the… ( | 2 comments)
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)