Is Christ the federal head of a new humanity?

In an article on the TGC website, N. Gray Sutanto puts forward twelve theses that answer the pressing question: “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” These theses, which are drawn from Sutanto’s book For Us and for Our Salvation, are reckoned to be foundational for a Christian anthropology—well, specifically for a “biblical and Reformed-catholic theological anthropology,” which is asking for trouble.

The question is an important one in an age when the old andrarchal, heteronormative paradigm has been abandoned, when social media is reconfiguring the grid of human identities, when technological advances are engendering nightmarish dreams either of a super-humanism or of the collapse of civilisation as we know it, or of both.

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Why Jesus? First impressions…
Immediately after his baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit to re-enact Israel’s journey through the wilderness. He is not “tempted” by the “tempter” but “tested” (peirasthēnai) by the “tester” (ho peirazōn), just as God led Israel in the wilderness “so that he might distress you… ()
One damned civilisation after another: against the widening of God’s mercy
In their revision of Richard Hays’ formerly negative stance on same-sex relationships (see the chapter on homosexuality in The Moral Vision of the New Testament), Christopher Hays and his father claim to have found in scripture a progressive “widening” of the field of God’s mercy. “… ()
Why Jesus? The Son sent to rebellious Israel
Discussing Robert P. Jones’ book Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy, David Smith writes in the Guardian:Faced with shrinking numbers and cultural marginalisation, white evangelicalism embraced not spiritual renewal, but existential panic—… ()
Why Jesus? Which Jesus?
The little book Why Jesus? is part of the materials for the Alpha Course. In it, Nicky Gumbel writes:Jesus is the only man who has ever chosen to be born, and he is one of the few who has chosen to die. He said that the entire reason for his coming was to die for us. He came ‘to give his… ( | 3 comments)
The Spirit of prophecy and renewal
Westbourne Grove Church, which I help to lead, is part of the Forge Sphere of churches in the south of England, which used to be part of Salt & Light, which is a network of “neocharismatic Evangelical” churches associated with the British New Church Movement. ()
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus and the tale of Khamwas and Si-Osire
This is really just for fun. I was wondering whether to preach about wealth inequality next Sunday, but this is as far as I got. Jesus tells a quite elaborate story about an unnamed rich man and a poor man called Lazarus. One early manuscript gives the rich man the name Neuēs. ()
BNTS conference presentation: In the Form of One of the Pagan Gods
I was at the British New Testament Society conference this week, held at the magnificent St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in Ireland. This is the paper that I presented in the Divine Christology in Paul’s Letters session. It is a slightly updated summary of my argument in In… ( | 1 comment)