Eschatology
Response to Benjamin Burch on McLaren, Emergent, and The Coming of the Son of Man:
This post is a response to some questions raised by Benjamin Burch on Naznet. His remarks are part of a discussion of Brian McLaren’s recommendation of The Coming of the Son of Man and of the general interest of the emerging church in Preterist, Transmillenialist, or in my case Historical-...
(24 Aug. 2010)
Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?:
A tweet from Andrew Jones (‘An original emerging church criticism: “Don’t conceive we crapper undergo Absolute Biblical Truth”’) led me to Pastor and Author Bob DeWaay’s resolute and curiously robotic critique of the ‘Emergent Church’ on SO4J-TV. On...
(29 Jul. 2010)
Dunn, Hurtado, and the worship of Jesus:
There should be a copy of J.D.G. Dunn’s Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? waiting for me when I next get back to the UK. In the meantime, I have been reading Larry Hurtado’s polemical essay-length review of the book, which contributes to the ongoing and mostly courteous...
(25 Jul. 2010)
In self-defence:
What is it about theology – or perhaps, what is it about human intellectual activity generally – that makes it so hard for us to listen to each other well, read carefully what others have written, and restate each other’s views accurately? And then, what is it that makes us so cross,...
(8 Jul. 2010)
Did St. Paul Go to Heaven When He Died? Reconciling Bockmuehl and Wright...:
Here is a good reason for taking seriously the thesis of The Coming of the Son of Man: New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church: it offers a neat, cogent and historically meaningful way of reconciling the conflicting views of Markus Bockmuehl and NT Wright, though admittedly in a manner...
(28 Apr. 2010)
The death of James and the coming of the Son of man:
The story of the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus, casts an interesting light on how the early church in Jerusalem understood its future. There are two accounts of his death which are difficult to reconcile, but it is in any case the narrative content that is of concern to us here rather...
(23 Nov. 2009)
Jew first, then Greek in Campbell's The Deliverance of God:
Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God is an extraordinary – and I think extraordinarily flawed – attempt to erase Justification Theory from Paul’s theology. It is a mammoth book to read, let alone attempt to review, in toto; and if it is a large enough wood to survey, it is also extremely...
(10 Nov. 2009)
Jesus and the Hell Houses:
An article by Lucy Broadbent in today’s Times Magazine describes the current Hell House phenomenon and its impact on teenagers. Churches such as Trinity Church in Dallas present shocking tableaux of classroom massacres, date rape, abortions (with real theatrical blood and pieces of real meat...
(31 Oct. 2009)
The future of the New Testament and the Sibylline Oracles:
My argument in both The Coming of the Son of Man and Re: Mission is that New Testament eschatology – that is, the interest that the New Testament has in critical future events – can for the most part be mapped against a historical narrative that interprets, first, the destruction of Jerusalem and...
(11 Sep. 2009)
On Transmillennialism and Kevin Beck's This Book Will Change Your World:
I read Kevin Beck’s This Book Will Change Your World in response to some gentle and persistent prompting from Mike Morrell. As Mike observes, there are some interesting similarities and some distinct differences between Kevin’s exposition of Transmillenialism and the thesis of The...
(26 May. 2009)
