New Perspective
The fault line between the Reformed and the... er, post-Reformed?:
Everyone by now must have noticed that there is a large and unsightly crack running down the middle of that highly vocal and energetic sector of Western Christianity that thinks of itself in the broadest sense as “evangelical”. It is not the only fault line—Catholicism, Orthodoxy,...
(12 Jan. 2012)
Why my argument against the traditional doctrine of "hell" is not liberalism:
I want to take the opportunity provided by a rather vexed comment on my post Tim Keller gets a lot right but gets hell badly wrong to make it clear that my narrative-historical argument about “hell” has nothing to do with liberalism. Ryan kicks off with this rather rash...
(6 Aug. 2011)
Tim Gombis on the New Perspective (and why it doesn't go far enough):
The limitations of the New Perspective on Paul in its standard form can be illustrated from a piece by Tim Gombis. Tim strongly affirms the New Perspective and nicely expresses his bemusement over the “fear-mongering and hysteria” that the approach has generated in certain quarters. But...
(11 Jul. 2011)
Which way did he go? The coming of the Son of Man and the theology of crisis:
Two papers by the same person given at the SBL International Meeting in London this week cut across each other in a rather alarming fashion, in my view, creating a dangerous hermeneutical intersection, with the risk of a serious theological pile-up. Well, yes, that’s overstating it, but the...
(7 Jul. 2011)
History and theologies: schematization number 6:
Actually, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve attempted to schematize the relationship between history and theology. But I think it is central to the current theological task, so another attempt won’t go amiss. Modern evangelical theology is largely an abstraction. It is a very...
(29 Jun. 2011)
Whatever happened to the People of God?:
One of the ways in which emerging theologies have attempted to correct the individualistic bias of much modern Reformed and evangelical theology has been to stress the cosmic dimension to salvation. So, for example, J.R. Woodward, whom I greatly regret having missed when he passed through...
(29 May. 2011)
Theology and history and Jesus as the culmination of Israel's story:
For reasons which I won’t disclose, I have been working through a doctrine course of a distinctly Reformed hue. If the church is convinced that it needs such a thing as a “doctrine course”, Reformed or otherwise, then this is by no means a bad one. But for me it has highlighted...
(11 May. 2011)
Roger Olson and the definition of postconservative evangelicalism:
Roger Olson quotes what seems to me to be a not fully comprehensive definition of the category “postconservative evangelical” from a book by Steven B. Sherman called Revitalizing Theological Epistemology: Holistic Approaches to the Knowledge of God: Basically, they [...
(14 Apr. 2011)
A New Translation: The Earliest Christian Documents: AD 49-100:
Three converging thoughts…. First, the lead codices are presumably fake, but they raise an interesting hypothetical question, nevertheless: How different would our understanding of the earliest Christian texts be if we were now to stumble across them for the first time, with a hermeneutical...
(12 Apr. 2011)
The historical justification of the people of God by faithfulness:
Aaron Darrisaw has asked about Stephen Westerholm’s critique of the New Perspective on Paul. I don’t have access to Westerholm’s book at the moment (I’m sitting in Damascus airport), so I can’t comment directly on his analysis. However, I could have a bit of a...
(9 Apr. 2011)
