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Tim Keller gets a lot right but gets hell badly wrong Among the many responses to Kurt Willems’ defence of Rob Bell was a link to an undated article by Tim Keller on “The Importance of Hell” (thank you, Jake). Tim Keller is an outstanding pastor, but his argument about hell seems to be wrong in so many ways—exegetically, logically, theologically, psychologically, possibly even morally… but mainly exegetically. Much of the argument has been covered... (2nd Mar. 2011 | 57 comments)
Wright and the divinity of Jesus In order to distinguish his own approach from well-meaning but misguided attempts to prove that Jesus was divine, Wright argues in How God Became King - Getting to the heart of the Gospels that the Gospels do not aim to prove Jesus’ divinity; rather they presuppose it.The point… is not whether Jesus is God, but what God is doing in and through Jesus. What is this embodied God up to? (55)Does that... (4th May. 2012 | 110 comments)
Hell, The unbiblical doctrine of I set out a while back to write a general piece on the unbiblical doctrine of “hell” as part of a glossary or lexicon of key concepts but got side-tracked. Since then the brouhaha over Rob Bell’s book has prompted extensive reflection on the matter, and it now seems worth providing a rough summary of the position that I have argued for in a number of recent posts. Unfortunately, it has turned out... (17th Apr. 2011 | 58 comments)
A priest forever after the order of Melchizedek One of the arguments put forward by those who wish to find the divinity of Jesus under every stone is that as a “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 5:6; 6:20; 7:17) Jesus must have been both God and man. This is a misunderstanding of the argument in Hebrews, and I want to set out briefly why I think this is the case. There is a lot more in the discussion that I would like to... (12th Apr. 2012 | 72 comments)
What’s wrong with the “Romans Road” to salvation? Steven Opp is an evangelist. Remarkably, he has read my book The Future of the People of God—I imagine he is the only “evangelist” to have done so—and he wants to know whether the narrative-historical reading of Romans can be reconciled with traditional approaches to evangelism:I work in evangelism and so Romans, which is a key text in giving the Gospel, is important for me to understand.… I’m... (26th May. 2012 | 20 comments)
The message of the Bible in one sentence Dane Ortlund, Senior Editor at Crossway Books (Bible division) recently asked 25 scholars and pastors to sum up the “message of the Bible in one sentence”. You can read the contributions, some of which are really quite good exemplars of the genre, on his Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology blog. I have two rather contradictory reactions to it, one essentially postmodern, the other much more “modern”—or... (19th Jan. 2011 | 24 comments)
The narrative premise of a post-Christendom theology I regard myself as an evangelical, but the social and intellectual structures that have sustained and made sense of modern evangelicalism are disintegrating, and it is not at all clear that modern evangelicalism can or should survive their collapse. My broad aim as a theologian is to endeavour to renew the biblical framework within which a new, transposed ‘evangelical’ commitment might emerge,... (13th May. 2010 | 24 comments)
Did Jesus act as though he thought he were 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 cannot be counted as evidence that he was God; nor can his resurrection. Off the top of my head, I can... (29th Jun. 2010 | 56 comments)
Tim Challies' final arguments for the existence of hell Tim Challies’ final post on “The Holiness of God and the Existence of Hell” is a bit of a let-down. I was rather hoping that he would examine the biblical evidence for his doctrine of eternal conscious torment. I thought he might have considered how words like “wrath” and “Gehenna” and “Hades” are actually used in scripture—rather than in his particular modern-Reformed tradition. I was looking... (17th Aug. 2012 | 46 comments)
Kevin DeYoung, Rob Bell, and the argument about hell I said that I would come back to what Kevin DeYoung has to say about Rob Bell and hell. To his credit, DeYoung refrains from commenting on Rob Bell’s unpublished book Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and promises not to pick a fight over it when it eventually comes out. But he takes the opportunity, in the meantime, to remind us why we need a doctrine of... (28th Feb. 2011 | 22 comments)

At random...

Historical context for the New Testament I keep making the point that the New Testament is a situated theological engagement with the historical narrative of the people of God. As such it is a work both of memory and of imagination: it addresses the present in the light of what...
The true meaning of Luke’s Christmas, part 1 A couple of statements that I heard in church last week have stuck in my head (along with the tune of the little drummer boy, which I now can’t get rid of). The first was in a song by someone whose name I forget that was played during the...
The resurrection from the dead The death and resurrection of Jesus, locked together in a brief three-day period, constitute the defining moment of Christian belief. It is here that the light of God’s love for humanity burns most brightly through the dingy fabric of...