Why (and where) you should get some theological (by which I really mean biblical) education

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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Are the “gentiles” in Romans the lost tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel?
In some recent comments on a post about the salvation of “all Israel” Alfred encouraged me to look at the argument of Jason Staples that the “fulness of the nations” (Rom. 11:25) is a reference to the northern kingdom of Israel or Ephraim, and that the salvation of “all Israel” must consist in the… ( | 7 comments)
Brant Pitre on the Son of Man and Jesus’ divine identity
I have been working through Brant Pitre’s rather too methodical and, in my view, tendentious (I know, the pot calling the kettle black) Jesus and Divine Christology, in which he makes a case for reading divine identity into certain of the words and deeds of Jesus. ()
Why do you ask me about the good?
One of the supposed “riddles” discussed in the previous post was Jesus’ saying “No one is good except God alone.” In a comment, Gerard Jay makes the point that Matthew shifts the emphasis from the questionable goodness of Jesus to the unquestionable goodness of the Law—from the person to the action. ( | 1 comment)
Brant Pitre on the riddles of Jesus’ divinity
It is Brant Pitre’s argument in Jesus and Divine Christology that the intrinsic divinity of Jesus is revealed in the Gospels either through actions and events or through certain cryptic sayings. His divinity is a secret, a hidden reality, that may sometimes be glimpsed breaking through… ( | 3 comments)
The transfiguration of Jesus: what exactly is revealed?
The third “epiphany miracle,” after the two sea miracles, is the transfiguration or “metamorphoses” (metemorphēthē) of Jesus in the presence of Peter, James, and John, on the mountain. ()
What the walking on the water business is really all about
The second “epiphany miracle” discussed by Brant Pitre in his book Jesus and Divine Christology is Jesus walking on the water (Matt. 14:22-33; Mk. 6:45-52; Jn. 6:16-21). ( | 3 comments)
Brant Pitre on the epiphany miracles: the stilling of the storm
Chapter two of Jesus and Divine Christology is about the “epiphany miracles.” Brant Pitre states the main purpose of the chapter quite bluntly: it is to “demolish the modern scholarly myth… that Jesus is not depicted as divine in the Synoptic Gospels” (40).There are three such miracles:… ()