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How does the New Testament predict the future?

Sat, 09/18/2021 - 15:54

I did this video podcast interview with Cliff Sekowe a few months back. Cliff is an amiable South African pastor and theologian who is keen to get scholars talking sensibly about some the intellectual challenges facing contemporary Christian faith. He had heard the podcast I did with Pete Enns and couldn’t think of a better title. So we talked about how and why the New Testament predicts the future. But check out the other videos too, including Amy-Jill Levine, Jon Levenson, and John Walton. By the way, I am not a professor, just a humble Associate Research Fellow at the London School of Theology.

Who will be taken? Who will be left behind? Darn it, we’re all too late anyway!
This really is a bit of a puzzle. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says concerning the hour and day of God’s judgment of Israel and the concomitant vindication of the Son of Man that it will be as in the days of Noah. In the midst of life catastrophe will come (Matt. 24:36-39). At the parousia of… (2 Sep 2021 | 2 comments)
Resurrection in the Old Testament: literal or metaphorical?
The early apostolic testimony was that Jesus was “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). So the standard belief has been that the resurrection of the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament—somewhere, it’s never quite clear where, probably in the prophets… (28 Aug 2021 | 0 comments)
Thom Stark on the coming of the Son of Man: the Bible gets it right, Jesus gets it wrong?
Thom Stark’s book The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When it Gets God Wrong is an attack on the doctrine of inerrancy—or perhaps better, an attempt to reframe the problem of biblical errancy. In chapter 8, which is the only chapter I’ve read so far, he argues that Jesus… (16 Aug 2021 | 9 comments)
Some notes on Jesus, Constantine, and violence
I have addressed the troubling longer term historical implications of my reading of the New Testament in a number of posts, some of which are listed below. But the question has come up again, so here’s another go at outlining a response to the charge that Constantine and Christendom were a very… (5 Aug 2021 | 13 comments)
Why the narrative-historical method is not a suppression of theology
In a new comment on an old post entitled “The battle between theology and history for the soul of the church: 24 antitheses” Matthew makes a sensible observation about the theological process. It comes, I guess, in response to the tendency I have to polarise “theology” and “history” as… (3 Aug 2021 | 0 comments)
Podcast: Should we “water down” the doctrine of the Second Coming?
This is a quick one—an audio version of a post from 2018 on the doctrine of the second coming. Simply put, the evangelical church needs to choose between dogma and history, and I think we should choose history. For more on the argument about the judgment of the sheep and goats see this post. (1 Aug 2021 | 0 comments)
What is the chief end of man? Why the Westminster Catechism gets it wrong
If the “chief end of man” is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, as the Westminster Catechism asserts in its opening clause, why is there no mention of this in the creation narratives? Eh? Humanity is created, as male and female, and is instructed to fill the earth, subdue it, and assert… (27 Jul 2021 | 0 comments)