I’ve been preparing some material for a workshop on Theology and Future Church for a group of church planters, and as often happens, my mind ran off in a rather impractical direction. But the point is this. Too often practitioners look for a theology that will directly support or enhance or defend their practice—or discredit the practice of their opponents. What are we supposed to think about gay marriage? Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? How do we resolve the tension between evangelism and social action? And so on…. We have issues, pressing issues, and that’s where we want to start.

But that’s not what the New Testament is for. Not primarily. If at all. It’s not a reference book for twenty-first century missional praxis. It has no idea what life is like in the twenty-first century. It knows nothing about homosexual fidelity, Islam, or the ideological split between gospel and justice. It tells the story of how the people of God were transformed through the faithfulness of Jesus and how that transformation changed the ancient world. I think that New Testament studies at the moment is doing a marvellous job of helping us to understand the power of that story—and in a way that may be profoundly, though unconventionally, evangelical.

Paula Gooder talked about heaven at a Theos event last night in London, with passion, verve, an impressive grasp of the details (the gentleman behind me was certainly impressed), and a robust determination not to let theological tradition get in the way of honest biblical interpretation.

Her leading argument was that in the modern era the concept of heaven has been privatised, spiritualised and postponed. All that most people are interested in—if they’re interested at all—is whether they will go to heaven when they die and what it will be like when they get there. Gooder insisted that these are not biblical concerns. The New Testament has very little to say about people going to heaven when they die. In scripture heaven is the place where God dwells. It is a created space above the firmament, no more remote from the earth than it needs to be. It can be visited by people: Paul at least entertained the possibility that he, or somone known to him, had been caught up bodily to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2).

I have been closely following recent exchanges among a set of notable scholars regarding Mark’s christology. All good stuff, a model of civilised online debate. On one side we have those who argue that in subtle, ambiguous, indirect, and covert ways Mark presents Jesus as a figure who in some manner shares in the divine identity (Michael Bird, Chris Keith, Michael Kruger, Anthony Le Donne, Brant Pitre). On the other side are those who doubt it (James Crossley, Daniel Kirk, James McGrath, Dustin Smith, Joel Watts, Stephen Young). Some are not direct participants in the conversation but have been cited; and there are no doubt contributions out there, filling the void like dark matter, that I’ve overlooked. If I’ve mis-categorised anyone, let me know—I’m a little unclear where Crossley falls, for example. This is a partial overview of, and response to, the debate. Apologies for the length.

In a comment Peter asks about Acts 10:42: “So it seems you would say that Jesus’ role as judge of the living and the dead… already happened at the parousia (70 AD). Is this correct? If so, in what way did he judge the dead?” The main texts have to do with Peter—confusing, I know (Acts 10:42; 1 Pet. 4:5); but we can also bring Paul into the picture (Acts 17:30-31; Rom. 14:9-12; 2 Tim. 4:1). My contention is that this is not the language of a transcendent final judgment. The arguments have historical developments in view, though not just the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70.

I have been getting a kick out of Albert Schweitzer’s 1930 book The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. What’s so refreshing about the book is that Schweitzer attempts consistently to frame Paul’s thinking eschatologically. The book’s dated in many ways, and a lot of exegetical water has passed under numerous hermeneutical bridges since then, but it still has something to teach us.

He does not do justice to the missional-evangelical and political-religious dynamics which I think fundamentally explain the shape and purpose of Paul’s eschatology; and his insistence on using the term “mysticism” has probably been a stone of stumbling for many readers. But if we keep in mind that by mysticism he means the solidarity of the community of the Elect with Christ, who died and was raised, in the period leading up to the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom, then this metaphor of the spider’s web makes the point very well:

As the spider’s net is an admirably simple construction so long as it remains stretched between the threads which hold it in position, but becomes a hopeless tangle as soon as it is loosed from them; so the Pauline Mysticism is an admirably simple thing, so long as it is set in the framework of eschatology, but becomes a hopeless tangle as soon as it is cut loose from this. (140)

One of the most serious exegetical-hermeneutical-theological failings of modern evangelicalism has been to take soteriology out of eschatology, to disconnect the saying about the Son of Man giving his life as a ransom for many from the expectation that the Son of Man will be seen coming in glory on the clouds of heaven to the consternation of Caiaphas and the Council (Mk. 10:45; 14:61-64).

I would say that we should all go back to Schweitzer and start again. This statement requires careful reading, but it hits the nail on the head. Almost.

Foreign to our ideas as is the thought of Jesus’ atoning death as shaped by the eschatological idea of redemption, it is nevertheless both simple and profound. The atoning tribulation, which man was to suffer in order to obtain the forgiveness of sins, the future Messiah takes, by the gracious permission of God, upon Himself. How much more living and fruitful is this historically true version of Jesus’ thought, growing naturally as it does out of the universal attribution of atoning value to suffering, than the host of theological or untheological inventions which have been foisted upon Him! (A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 61-62)

In The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus Dale Allison argues for an apocalyptic Jesus—that is, for a Jesus whose mind was resolutely set on a cataclysmic and transformative event in a not-too-distant future. He thinks that the “shared hypothesis of Weiss and Schweitzer is not just tenable but compelling”. The argument is right, and I am firmly of the view that an evangelical reading of the Synoptic Gospels has to recover the apocalyptic dimension. The question, however, is what sort of impending cataclysmic and transformative event Jesus had in mind.

Like many scholars, Allison thinks that Jesus expected a final cosmic transformation:

he envisaged, as did many in his time and place, the advent, after suffering and persecution, of a great judgment, and after that a supernatural utopia, the kingdom of God, inhabited by the dead come back to life, to enjoy a world forever rid of evil and wholly ruled by God. Further, he thought that the night was far gone, the day at hand.