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I was at a fairly mainstream but non-traditional Anglican Church in east London on Sunday—mostly singles and young families. We had a good, thoughtful, and well presented sermon about the offence taken by the people of Nazareth at the wisdom and mighty works of Jesus (Matt. 13:53-58). I tried not to take offence at it but failed.What was the offence?The argument was that the people were offended… (Read more...)
Ever wondered why the Jerusalem crowds turned against Jesus so abruptly—cheering him into the city at the start of the week, yelling for him to be crucified at the end of it? Lots of scholars think it all very improbable. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first some reflections on a hermeneutic that fuses narrative and history.The “historical” part of a narrative-historical hermeneutic means… (Read more...)
I saw this book in the Al-Faisal Museum for Arab-Islamic Art in Riyadh. It is described as a manuscript that sheds light on the “most important teaching methods employed by scholars and educators of Arab-Islamic civilization.” It’s not dated, but it’s going to be pretty old.The notice with it outlines four of these methods:1. The most important is “hearing”: “to document the books and collections… (Read more...)
Did Paul proclaim a universal gospel? “Of course he did,” you mutter. Or: “Of course he did, you nutter!” What use is a non-universal gospel?Well, on the train from Jeddah to Medina, I came across this paragraph in Neil Elliott’s Paul the Jew under Roman Rule: Collected Essays (2024):Indeed, Paul’s proclamation of Jesus as kyrios, the “lord of God’s empire,” relied heavily on… (Read more...)
According to the classic definition, an “evangelical” is a person who believes in and acts upon the “gospel”—in New Testament Greek the euangelion. As understood by evangelicals, the gospel is a statement about the significance of Jesus’ death on the cross: by his “blood” he made atonement for the sins of all people. The gospel is a believable message because it has been… (Read more...)