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)
Trinitarian theology and mission
Another Xchange session at the Christian Associates Summer Connect (see also The kingdom of God as a means to an end) attempted to address the relevance (or otherwise) of Trinitarian theology for mission. This was a tough one. The different forms of Trinitarian theology that are...
(23 Aug. 2010)
Euangelion (briefly) on The Future of the People of God
Some brief, non-analytical but very gratifying comments (let’s be honest) on The Future of the People of God from Joel Willitts at Euangelion, including the following:Wow! Read that again. And again. Read it several times. Surely wiser words have rarely been spoken in contemporary...
(21 Aug. 2010)
The kingdom of God as a means to an end
Why is the ‘kingdom of God’ such a tricky theological notion? In a group discussion on ‘Kingdom Theology” at the Christian Associates Global Connect recently we managed to talk for some time about the topic – it’s the core of the gospel, it’s here but...
(20 Aug. 2010)
TallSkinnyKiwi review of The Future of the People of God
I gave Andrew Jones a copy of The Future of the People of God at the Christian Associates Global Connect last week and he’s read and reviewed it already. It’s a very fair and perceptive evaluation – the remarks about the brevity of the final chapter are duly noted.Andrew also notes...
(19 Aug. 2010)
Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
My friend Hilary has been reading The Future of the People of God and had a question about a paragraph on page 49. Since it has reference one of the critical arguments of the book – that the parameters of Paul’s theology in the Letter are to be historically defined – I thought perhaps it...
(19 Aug. 2010)
Straws in the wind: why the emerging church still matters
Brian LePort (Near Emmaus) suggests, not unreasonably, that the more pertinent question is not whether the emergent church has a problem with the doctrine of a final judgment (see previous post) but whether the emergent church still exists. I have to say, I did wonder whether I should add a...
(31 Jul. 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)
Paul the maker of theatrical scenery?
Here’s an interesting thought. In The Hermeneutics of Doctrine (70), as part of a discussion on ‘Christian Doctrine as Dramatic Narrative’, Thiselton notes the argument of L.L. Welborn that ‘tentmaker’ is an unlikely translation of skēnopoios in Acts 18:3. The BDAG...
(28 Jul. 2010)
Blessing in microcosm
Michael Thompson correctly points out that the argument about blessing and righteousness and the Deuteronomic code would be helped if we kept in view the seminal statement in Genesis 12:3 that Israel would be blessed in order to be a blessing to the whole world. In other words, there are missional...
(27 Jul. 2010)
God wants to bless you! Or does he?
I like the church that we go to. I like its exuberance and energy and robust conviction that God is a living, dynamic, transformative, communicating, healing presence in the midst of the community. But you have to wonder about the hermeneutics sometimes. We were told this last Friday in what...
(26 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)
Islam in America and the end of Christendom
There has been a lot of fuss in the news recently about opposition to the construction of mosques in the US – from Temecula Valley to Ground Zero. The most notable piece of micro-rhetoric has been Sarah Palin’s anguished tweet regarding the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural...
(24 Jul. 2010)
Bring back doctrine, all is forgiven
Anthony Thiselton’s hefty book (649 pages) The Hermeneutics of Doctrine is persuading me to reconsider my instinctive distrust of a mode of theological discourse that suffers from many of the intellectual shortcomings of modern rationalism and is very often at odds with biblical...
(22 Jul. 2010)
The Future of the People of God available on Amazon.com
My book The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom has just become available at Amazon.com. Backcover information about the book can be found in this post.
(19 Jul. 2010)
Is Christianity really any good for the world?
Daniel Kirk asks a great question: Is Christianity really any good for the world? ‘Is the world a better place because of our allegiance to Christ? Or are all the moves toward making the world a better place done by others and baptized by us?’ What prompted the soul-searching was the...
(15 Jul. 2010)
The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom
I have just noticed that The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom is now available on the Wipf and Stock website. I haven’t actually got my own hands on a copy yet, but one should be winging its way to Dubai right now. There’s a...
(13 Jul. 2010)
The coming of a ‘new world order’: why Jesus wasn’t wrong
I had set out to respond rather briefly to some remarks made by paulf in a comment on my “The kingdom of God: not ‘now and not yet’” post, but in the excitement that response has swollen to the proportions of a whole new post. Paulf stated: The imminent kindgom of God,...
(13 Jul. 2010)
David Fitch, Hirsch and Frost, and the de-ecclesiologization of mission
David Fitch has posted a series of articles presenting a thoughtful and constructive critique of the emerging/missional church. He looks at Peter Rollins’ deconstructionist approach to scripture and warns that it risks de-incarnationalizing the Word of God; he raises concerns about Brian...
(12 Jul. 2010)
The kingdom of God: not ‘now and not yet’
It is a commonplace of Reformed and evangelical theology that the kingdom of God is ‘now and not yet’. In one sense it has already arrived; in another sense it hasn’t. According to Wikipedia the argument goes back to the Princeton Calvinist theologian Gerhardus Vos. Some sort of...
(11 Jul. 2010)
Matt. 24:13-14 - Will preaching the gospel to all the nations trigger the end?
Although apocalyptic enthusiasm has abated somewhat in recent years as the church has looked for ways to shore up its earthly credibility and relevance, you still occasionally hear the argument put forward that once the gospel of salvation through personal faith in Jesus has been preached to all...
(11 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)
Jesus past and present
I have been engaged in a very constructive conversation with Derek Flood about ‘Penal substitution and the OT narrative of judgment’. My argument has been roughly that in order to understand who Jesus was, what his intentions were, and in this particular case how his suffering might be...
(29 Jun. 2010)
Did Jesus act as though he thought he was God?
Following my post on the question of whether Jesus claimed to be God it was (indirectly) suggested to me that Jesus may have communicated his sense of divine identity through his actions rather than through his words. Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, Jesus’ miracles in themselves...
(29 Jun. 2010)
Did Jesus claim to be God?
In his little book Is God a Delusion? Nicky Gumble (‘the pioneer of the Alpha course’) addresses Richard Dawkins’ claim that ‘There’s no good, historical evidence that Jesus ever thought he was divine’ (79-80, 127-131). It’s an old debate, of course, and...
(27 Jun. 2010)
Theology and the interpretation of Isaiah 53
I have, for some time, had a bee in my bonnet about the penal substitutionary atonement debate. There are those, on the one hand, who think it sits right at the indigestible core of a sound understanding of the atoning significance of Jesus’ death; and there are those, on the other, who think...
(21 Jun. 2010)
Shooting holes in the Son of man thesis
Following some discussion on James McGrath’s blog about the thesis of The Coming of the Son of Man, Antonio Jerez has promised to shoot the book full of holes some time in the not too distant future. To facilitate this act of wanton destruction I have copied below an initial criticism made by...
(3 Jun. 2010)
Putting the theological cart before the biblical horse
Stephen Fowl has written a very enjoyable, lively, lucid, little book about hermeneutics called Theological Interpretation of Scripture (2009). But I’m having a hard time accepting some of the implications of his central argument, which is that priority should be given to theology (...
(25 May. 2010)
Acts 1:9-11 - The going and coming of Jesus with the clouds of heaven
After reading a lively discussion about the ascension on James McGrath’s blog, it occurred to me that we are too quick as rationalist moderns to latch on to the question of what actually or literally or scientifically happened and can easily omit to ask what Luke understood the meaning of the...
(23 May. 2010)
Man-made life and the remaking of worlds
The J. Craig Venter Institute has announced that it has successfully created the first living cell by means of man-made genetic instructions. Venter told The Times: It is our final triumph. This is the first synthetic cell. It’s the first time we have started with information in a computer, used...
(21 May. 2010)
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