My book has now been republished by Wipf & Stock.

From the back cover:

Tracing the powerful motif of the ‘coming of the Son of man’ from Daniel through to Revelation, Andrew Perriman provides thought-provoking ideas about eschatological narrative. What was it like to hear the biblical proclamation of this ‘coming’ for the first time in a cultural, political and religious context very different from our own? How did early Christians think about the imminence of the promised ‘day of the Lord’? What difference did this message make to how they thought, lived and spread the gospel message?

This book engages the minds of jaded twenty-first century postmoderns who have ‘heard it all before’. By seeing the fulfilment of much of New Testament apocalyptic in events of the first centuries, Perriman proposes that in some important sense we have moved beyond eschatology - into an age of renewed community and mission that is creational in its scope. The Coming of the Son of Man is important reading for those who want to engage in the debate concerning what church is - and will be.

In response to Peter’s post about the Evangelical Alliance statement of faith, I would suggest that this sort of statement is designed for a particular purpose and does it admirably. An organization like the EA needs to define a doctrinal position that is acceptable across the spectrum of evangelical churches in the UK and cannot really be criticized for not being sufficiently imaginative or radical. Having said that, I can’t help but take issue with most of the statements in one way or another - on the understanding that this is not simply a negative exercise, a mean-spirited swipe at mainstream evangelicalism. It reflects the fact that even these magisterial pronouncements are unavoidably part of a larger conversation. There are, in fact, some indications in it which betray a certain provisionality - I get the impression that there are issues that have not been fully thought through, background debates that have not been fully resolved.

The ‘emerging church’ project is an experiment in new forms of church. The question of what ‘church’ is, however, cannot be resolved sociologically or experimentally. Ultimately, a theological answer is required. This page was written to provide some preliminary reflection for the Future of the People of God conference with Tom Wright. It is an attempt to address some of the more theoretical questions that arise when Wright’s retelling of the story of Jesus, constructed on the basis of a critical-realist hermeneutic, is considered from a postmodern perspective.

Paul Seburn referred in another post to the ‘transmillennial’ view on New Testament eschatology. I thought it might be worth examining this separately. There’s a lot of material on the two sites I looked at (www.presence.tv and www.transmillennial.com), but I have limited my superficial comments to one introductory essay. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has strong views on the subject. Oh, and while we’re wondering exactly what happened to the future, a happy new year to everyone!

There is both a diachronic (historical) and a synchronic (a-historical, existential) dimension to the development of a theology for the emerging church. The argument has for the most part been developed synchronically in response to cultural and philosophical changes taking place both inside and outside the church. Biblical stories are treated as types and exemplars of general spiritual truths. The diachronic or historical dimension has been neglected. We do not understand well enough the historical-eschatological narrative that brings us to the point at which we may properly address the postmodern questions about identity, community, mission, truth, culture, and so on.

The analogy of the church as the temple of God is a familiar one (cf. 1 Cor.3:16-17; 1 Pet.2:5). It has usually been used, however, in an exclusivist sense: the church is the sanctuary at the heart of Herod’s temple, where legitimate Israel worships; everything outside the sanctuary is the world. 2 Cor.6:16-18 rather reinforces this position. It is worth recalling, however, that Herod’s temple included a large forecourt between the city and the sanctuary in which it was possible for Jews and Gentiles to mingle. This is not a new idea, but it may help us in our attempts to reconfigure the experience of being church for the purposes of emerging culture mission if we reintegrate the image of the Court of the Gentiles into our self-understanding. There would be a number of potential benefits.