The term “polycrisis” gets used a lot these days to name a peculiar consequence of globalisation: the collision of expanding systems in shock—energy, climate, geo-politics, finance, etc., with AI accelerating the chaos—in a confined planetary space.

The world has reached some sort of tipping point, which may or may not prove to be catastrophic but which arguably signals the irreversible transition from an age during which humanity has flourished within the natural order to an age of human domination over the natural order. This new age is often called the Anthropocene, though ironically the dominance of the anthropos is already being threatened by an AI insurgency. Serves us right!

The church also has to navigate this difficult transition—these birth pains of a new and very uncertain age.

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If we think that the resurrection of Jesus is the climactic event in the testimony of the early church, constituting the triumph of life over death for all humanity, we are missing the point.At the beginning of an extensive discussion of resurrection, Paul recapitulates the “gospel” which he had… ( | 3 comments)
In a fourth piece on the kingdom of God, Joel Green argues that the kingdom of God is a “master lens through which the nature of reality is disclosed and by which all rival accounts of reality are measured.” It is not a doctrine, it is a way of seeing. That sounds like a very modern notion. Is it… ()
In his rather short third post on the kingdom of God, Joel Green begins by asking what we can learn about God’s royal rule by examining how the expression is used in the Gospels. He summarises the various contexts: the kingdom of God is entered, proclaimed, possessed, has drawn near, etc. Then he… ()
This is a rather technical examination of Jason Staples’ argument in Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites that when Paul speaks of Israel as “vessels of wrath,” he does not mean that the people are are the objects of God’s wrath; rather they are… ()
Joel Green’s second post on the kingdom of God begins with an excellent thought attributed to Marianne Meye Thompson: Jesus did not bring the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God brought Jesus. Very good! ()
Joel Green is doing a series of posts on the kingdom of God on Substack. He has some good things to say about how narrative works, but his argument about the kingdom of God doesn’t escape the gravitational pull of planet theology. I will summarise his posts and try to show where and why and… ()
In Romans 9:4-5 Paul lists the several prerogatives of his own people, the Jews, the last being that from them is “the messiah according to the flesh.” Then comes this clause: “the one being over all God blessed forever, amen.”Here we have the christological crux.Do we put a period after “according… ( | 2 comments)