Biblical hermeneutics and the destabilising of the world

“It is a conviction of the church,” Matthew Malcolm writes in From Hermeneutics to Exegesis, “that it shares the same redemptive-historical location as the first recipients of the New Testament documents” (61). That is an important observation, but I think that the conviction is misguided, on three counts: 1) what the New Testament is about centrally is not redemption but “kingdom”; 2) the kingdom argument determines not a location primarily but a moment in time; and 3) we do not share that moment in time.

Read time: 7 minutes

“Image of God” as eco-theological premise?

I argued in the previous post that the injunction to subdue the earth and rule over all living creatures in Genesis 1:26-28 cannot be construed in helpful modern terms as environmental stewardship or creation care. The language consistently evokes contexts of enslavement, violent suppression of opposition, and judgment; it foreshadows a state of conflict between weak and vulnerable humanity and dangerous and powerful nature. Humanity was to be fruitful, multiply, fill and subdue the earth, and have dominion over living creatures in the same way that the Israelites would subdue the land of Canaan (Num. 32:29; Josh. 18:1), overcome their enemies, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the land.

Read time: 9 minutes

A mistake to let them subdue the earth and have dominion over it?

There is an argument that the Bible is partly to blame for the current environmental crisis because humanity was instructed from the get-go to subdue the earth and have dominion over all living creatures (Gen. 1:26-28). The historian Lynn White famously argued in a 1967 article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” that Christianity, the most anthropocentric of religions, introduced the idea of humanity’s absolute right to subjugate the natural world and “made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.”

Against this slander, Christian apologists insist that we have been created in the image of God and entrusted with the task of conserving and stewarding natural resources; there is no biblical mandate for unrestrained consumption and destruction. Insofar as this is meant as a reading of the creation story, however, it appears to rest on flimsy grounds.

Read time: 6 minutes

New book coming soon: In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul

I have a new book coming out with Wipf & Stock before the end of the year. It’s called In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. It looks like it will be the first in a new series of Studies in Early Christology, edited by Michael Bird, Scott Harrower, and David Capes. I take that as an honour.

Read time: 3 minutes

Ten things the church can learn about missions from a narrative-historical perspective

I follow the output of the Gospel Coalition site on the look out for material that I can use to illustrate the differences between, in this case, conservative theological readings of the New Testament and a narrative-historical reading. I do the same, naturally, for liberal-progressive thinkers, who are no more and no less at fault than their conservative counterparts in this respect. It feels a bit like trolling, but I doubt anyone notices. And my intentions are good. Here I pick on an article by Eckhard J.

Read time: 9 minutes

How to pray the prayer of Jabez

There’s an odd little story about a man called Jabez lodged in the middle of the twenty-three verses that make up the list of the descendants of Judah in 1 Chronicles 4. It was made very famous twenty years ago by Bruce Wilkinson’s best-selling book The Prayer of Jabez, which exposed a fair degree of overlap between evangelical spirituality and the Word of Faith movement. I wrote in my book on prosperity theology:

Read time: 8 minutes