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(how to tell the biblical story
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God reigns, God returns, God redeems in history

Thu, 16/08/2018 - 18:47 | Andrew Perriman

I pointed out last week that in the standard “redemption in history” construal of the biblical narrative—as represented, for example, by Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission—all the history is found before Jesus. Nothing of significance happens between Pentecost and new creation. Perhaps this defect is repaired elsewhere in the book, you may wonder. Sadly not. The only chapter that sheds any further light on how Wright understands the narrative after Jesus is chapter 11: “People who proclaim the gospel of Christ”; and what we find here is fully consistent with the diagram.

7 Aug 2018
Mission and the “history of redemption”

Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People is methodologically one of the best books on a biblical theology of mission that I have come across. I will be recommending it in the workshops that Wes and I will be doing at the Communitas staff conference later this week. Wright argues that mission...
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31 Jul 2018
Every knee shall bow: the question about Jesus and God

The central claim of the New Testament regarding the risen Jesus is this: because he was faithful unto death in fulfilment of his mission to Israel, the God of Israel raised him from the dead and gave him the authority, which formerly belonged to God alone, to judge and rule over the nations—meaning, at least in...
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26 Jul 2018
The biblical story, part three

This is the third of three posts outlining the biblical narrative for the purpose of constructing a narrative theology for mission. The first part presented us with Israel as a new creation people called to worship and serve the living God, in the midst of hostile nations, over a long period of time. That...
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17 Jul 2018
The biblical story, part two

The Old Testament story left us with a two-part eschatological expectation. During a period of great historical crisis the God of Abraham would demonstrate his righteousness or rightness, first, by saving and restoring his servant people, and secondly, by establishing his own rule over the nations in place of the...
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11 Jul 2018
The biblical story, part one

My friend Wes and I are running some workshops at the Communitas International staff conference this summer, aimed at helping leaders who do not necessarily have formal theological training instil in their communities a good grasp of how scripture informs church and mission. How do we do credible, practical...
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4 Jul 2018
Does Jesus reveal to us what it means to be perfectly human?

Marc Cortez has written a book called ReSourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ. I haven’t read the book, but I know a man who has, and I propose to take issue with the central thesis of Cortez’s book on the strength of Owen Strachan’s mostly...
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26 Jun 2018
Blessed are those who mourn in Western Europe

Last month the Pew Research Centre published the results of a survey of the level of religious commitment of people in Western Europe who self-identify as Christians. The basic finding appears to be that people who call themselves “Christian” in Western Europe are less actively religious—less likely to go to church...
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20 Jun 2018
Jörg Frey’s critique of the neutralisation of apocalyptic in Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God

Jörg Frey offers a useful critique of N.T. Wright’s understanding of Paul’s apocalyptic in his chapter in God and the Faithfulness of Paul—the massive response to NT Wright’s massive Paul and the Faithfulness of God.1 I was asked what I think...
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