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.

So no surprise that the Forge summer camp at beautiful Ashburnham Place in East Sussex had some serious charismatic energy to it, boosted by rumours of a “quiet revival.”

Read more...
The politics of Jesus: why did he not condemn the imperial oppressor?
In a lengthy Theopolis essay entitled “Pentecost and the Gift of a New Politics,” Alastair Roberts asks why Jesus had so little to say about the evil empire in their midst. “Jesus declares the coming of the kingdom of God: should not such a kingdom have involved, at a bare minimum, the defeat… ( | 4 comments)
Paul and 4QMMT: works, faith, and justification
Matthew Thiessen says that to understand the historical Paul we must relocate him in the world of first century Judaism, and here’s a book that does just that: Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Maston, eds. Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism (2015).… ()
Paul’s former life in “Judaism”—whatever that was
Matthew Thiessen is keen to demonstrate that “Paul did not convert from an established religion called Judaism to a new religion called Christianity” (A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles, 57). We can agree on that. His conversion was to a radical allegiance… ( | 7 comments)
Matthew Thiessen on the Jewish Paul: should we choose against readings that are harmful to others?
In the introduction to his book A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles (2023), Matthew Thiessen says that his broad aim is to present a reading of Paul that does not perpetuate an old “Christian” or “Lutheran” view of Judaism as “inferior or even pernicious, something left… ( | 1 comment)
Two parables of a net: how Habakkuk helps us to understand Jesus
Jesus’ parable of the net in Matthew 13:47-50 is commonly read as a parable of indiscriminate inclusion: both good and bad people may come into the kingdom. For example, Hagner writes with respect to the phrase “fish of every kind”: The exaggerated inclusiveness of this… ()
Crucified for blasphemy
Why did the Jewish authorities hand Jesus over to Rome for crucifixion? It cannot have been because he was judged to have been a false prophet, a deceiver of the people, opposed to Torah, opposed to the temple, or even a messianic pretender. On the last point, Brant Pitre quotes the Spanish… ()
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)