Recent comments
Rodlie Ortiz commented on What is a missional church? And why I think Mark Driscoll is wrong
(09/02/2010 - 22:37)
Great post! I just stumbled upon your blog. I’m glad to find it. I’m just getting into all this missional lit stuff and I have a lot to learn. Thanks for your teaching!
paulf commented on The kingdom of God as a means to an end
(09/01/2010 - 17:56)
BTW, when I refer to Acts 1, I do not think that such an exchange actually took place. But I do think it reflects the views of the early followers of Jesus.
paulf commented on The kingdom of God as a means to an end
(09/01/2010 - 17:55)
Andrew:
You were going good there, but then it all fell apart at the end.
You are correct that modern christians have completely lost track of what the kingdom meant to Jesus and his listeners. You are right that Israel is crucial to the kingdom.
The kingdom to John the Baptizer and Jesus...
peter wilkinson commented on Response to Benjamin Burch on McLaren, Emergent, and The Coming of the Son of Man
(08/26/2010 - 10:05)
Yes, I missed the point Benjamin was making about the difference between what the historical Jesus (might have) thought or said, and how that has been redacted and altered in the gospel accounts (later Olivet discourse in particular). I can now see what he was saying.
I didn’t...
Andrew commented on Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
(08/26/2010 - 09:54)
Apart from the very unclear Rom. 9:5, Paul’s argument in Romans, I would suggest, presupposes only that the Jesus who suffered and died was raised and appointed Son of God in power (cf. Rom.1:1-4). The significance of ‘Son of God’ in this context is not that Jesus is God but that...
Hilary commented on Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
(08/26/2010 - 09:34)
I’m still thinking about your question, but maybe it has something to do with trinitarian theology, which I know you are posting about elsewhere. As far as Paul is concerned in Romans, was Jesus God or not? If he was God, then would his suffering and death not be also God’s suffering?...
Andrew commented on Response to Benjamin Burch on McLaren, Emergent, and The Coming of the Son of Man
(08/26/2010 - 08:17)
How different was Paul’s perspective? When I say his perspective was different, I mean more geographically (and therefore missionally) than theologically. I would argue that in biblical terms Paul’s ‘theology’ was entirely consistent with but an extension of Jesus’...
peter wilkinson commented on Response to Benjamin Burch on McLaren, Emergent, and The Coming of the Son of Man
(08/25/2010 - 13:53)
Just a few comments on some statements taken from Andrew’s response to Benjamin Burch:
“But I don’t see why there should be a problem in principle with exploring the possibility that the early Christian movement was more or less theologically coherent.”
- Does anyone say it wasn’t...
Benjamin Burch commented on Response to Benjamin Burch on McLaren, Emergent, and The Coming of the Son of Man
(08/25/2010 - 07:12)
Andrew,
Thanks for your interest and your interaction/response! I will read through it some more in the upcoming days. I have a flight to Chicago to catch in the morning, so that’ll get in my way a bit.
I wanted to let you know that I’ve not fully read your work...
Björn Wagner commented on Trinitarian theology and mission
(08/23/2010 - 21:22)
Dear Andrew,
thank you for your brilliant thoughts - I think they are valid and hold a lot of water. The retelling of the whole narrative and widening the Johannine Scope on the Trinity is exactly the goal we need to aim at, the foundation for our current situation, always having in mind that...
Andrew commented on Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
(08/21/2010 - 08:59)
I thought we were talking about the novelty of the resurrection rather than the novelty of the cross. The resurrection, I guess, would have been problematic for Paul only really because it was the resurrection of one who was rejected by official Judaism and crucified as a false messiah. But...
John commented on Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
(08/20/2010 - 20:01)
Paul traces it back to Abraham (Rom. 4:13). He believes – as Jesus believed – that Israel according to the flesh, the people of God qua nation, now faced destruction, condemned by the Law which should have set the Jews apart as a righteous people, as a benchmark of righteousness amidst the ...
Hilary commented on Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
(08/20/2010 - 16:53)
Andrew, thanks for your comments about my somewhat anachronistic use of the word ‘faith’ - I can see how this suggests an intellectual set of beliefs rather than a complete worldview or ‘various narratives by which Judaism sought to explain how the God of Israel was dealing with...
John commented on God wants to bless you! Or does he?
(08/19/2010 - 18:34)
The church in the New Testament is gifted by the Spirit to exist as close-knit prophetic communities that must negotiate the very difficult transition…if we are again on a journey, again in exile, again marginalized and constrained…
My own perspective on the vocational, missional call of the...
Andrew commented on God wants to bless you! Or does he?
(08/19/2010 - 14:12)
Good comments. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that the church – not least the charismatic church – has adopted a model of living by the Spirit that was developed originally to function within the narrow eschatological dimensions of the New Testament. The church in the New Testament is...
Björn Wagner commented on Bring back doctrine, all is forgiven
(08/16/2010 - 12:32)
Thanks for this insightful Post about Thiselton. I am just indulging myself in his earlier Hermeneutics and have to say: What I have read so far brings me to reconsider my understanding. What you summarize and describe here leads me even further toward the contextual “Sitz im Leben” of...
John commented on The narrative premise of a post-Christendom theology
(08/10/2010 - 20:39)
Wonderful stuff, Andrew.
ask what new paradigm, what new way of existing in the world, might emerge for the post-Christendom, post-imperial, post-modern church as it seeks to be loyal to the original calling in Abraham to be an authentic new creation.
Would you please consider...
John commented on Straws in the wind: why the emerging church still matters
(08/10/2010 - 17:18)
dismissed it as being missionally and theologically too restrictive, but I’m beginning to wonder if that is fair
I think many will take a fresh look at Pentecostalism over the next few years, Andrew. Coming from that background, I dismissed Western Pentecostalism but had the opportunity...
John commented on God wants to bless you! Or does he?
(08/10/2010 - 16:37)
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Andrew.
The appropriate missiological / theological backdrop to understanding “the blessing of God” is the new covenant, which itself can only be understood in the light of the narratives of the Abrahamic, Sinaic and Davidic covenants....
Andrew commented on Straws in the wind: why the emerging church still matters
(08/06/2010 - 09:21)
Others may see it differently, but I would have thought that what it means to be ‘missional’ is the main conversation happening in the churches in Europe.I agree with you about the global significance of Pentecostalism. I admit to having dismissed it as being missionally and...
Michael Thompson commented on Straws in the wind: why the emerging church still matters
(08/06/2010 - 00:45)
I think that your observations are much more right than wrong on this, most of my reservations coming on the difficulty of telling the future. On my side of the Atlantic there is talk of church becoming “missional” and I would be interested to hear if Europe has similar ...
peter wilkinson commented on Islam in America and the end of Christendom
(08/05/2010 - 22:17)
An item in last week’s New York Times drew a parallel between the proposed mosque at Ground Zero and some Carmelite nuns who, some time ago, wanted to set up a centre alongside the site of Auschwitz concentration camp to pray for the souls of those who died there. Jews, understandably,...
paulf commented on Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?
(08/04/2010 - 16:56)
One of the problems is that god’s acts of judgement contradict what we are taught about him.
For example, we hear in churches how god has unconditional love for humans. But if he had unconditional love for people, he would never torture or annihilate them. It is said god thinks of...
Richard commented on Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?
(08/03/2010 - 12:57)
Andrew,
Absolutely. Any restoration requires acknowledging/identifying the brokenness in the first place. Same as resetting a broken bone requires putting it back together, often a painful process. But that’s still a good distance from more traditional understandings of eternal condemnation...
Andrew commented on Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?
(08/03/2010 - 04:06)
Richard, it’s an excellent comment, and I agree that it would surprise both emergents and Reformed. However, I don’t really see how we can escape the element of condemnation for sin (Israel’s rebellion against YHWH, the pagan world’s idolatry, immorality and injustice)...
Richard commented on Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?
(08/02/2010 - 15:29)
I’ve long struggled with traditional conceptions of judgment and I’m inclined at this point to think that we’ve misdefined judgment in a very human way as opposed to a divine way (at least the divine according to the Hebrew scriptures). For instance, in commentary on john 12...
ScottL commented on Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?
(07/30/2010 - 21:25)
I, too, have struggled with the more ‘utopian’ perspective of some emergers/emergents, i.e., as presented in McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. It’s investing too much in humanity itself. I believe the church is the glorious bride Scripture points out, but the coming of...
Andrew commented on Blessing in microcosm
(07/29/2010 - 15:11)
So why do you want to hold on to ancient ideas of religion? Well, only because, as I said, it was part of the story that Jesus found himself in, and if we choose to identify with Jesus (for whatever reason), it has to be part of the story that we find ourselves in. It’s part of the...
paulf commented on Blessing in microcosm
(07/29/2010 - 14:51)
I think the liberal christian perspective (again, I thought that way for decades) in a sentence would be: “The bible story doesn’t make sense, but I trust it on faith.” :)
Of course I differentiate between modern and ancient. We don’t ascribe to ancient ideas...
Andrew commented on Blessing in microcosm
(07/29/2010 - 09:38)
I may have misunderstood your argument further back, but I was responding to what you said about randomness and the ‘larger sweep of history’. We always impose some sort of meaning on what we take to be a sequence of historical events – even ‘randomness’ is an explanation of...
