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 life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).

To say that Jesus is “the only man who has ever chosen to be born” is faintly ridiculous even on high christological terms. The only possible New Testament support for it is the idea expressed in Philippians 2:6 that he did not grasp at a certain type of being equal to God or a god, my views on which can be found here.

3 comments | Read more...
Theology, narrative and history: how they work in practice
Following up on The battle between theology and history for the soul of the church: 24 antitheses, I want to clear up what looks to me like an area of confusion regarding the relationship between theology, narrative and history. In a couple of helpful comments Ted Grimsrud argues for what… ( | 2 comments)
The battle between theology and history for the soul of the church: 24 antitheses
I keep coming back to this. There are people out there in the church—perhaps not very many—who think more or less the same way that I do. We may not agree on the details or the degree, but we are oriented in roughly the same direction. But there are a lot of good people out there in the church who… ( | 32 comments)
Reading the Old Testament as a Christian
I am preparing a piece for a theological forum in a couple of weeks on reading the Old Testament as a Christian. I will probably make two main points. The first is that the traditional approach needs to be reversed. We usually read the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament: on the one… ( | 3 comments)
A missional understanding of justification by faith (by way of Isaiah)
Isaiah is on the defensive. He hears a word from the Lord and he has to speak it. He does not disobey, nor does he contradict God. As a result, he gets scourged, beaten, and spat upon. But he can endure all this abuse from unrighteous Israel because the Lord is his helper. He has not been disgraced… ( | 9 comments)
Eternal life and the story of Israel
I got a question from someone recently asking about the meaning of “eternal life” in the Gospels. He takes it that the expression “age to come” refers to the time after either the collapse of national Israel or the collapse of the pagan oikoumenē. That is also my view. But at the end of… ( | 8 comments)
What is the basis for the mission to the Gentiles?
As a thoroughly Gentile church we take the logic of a mission to the Gentiles for granted, but it’s not as obvious or inevitable as we might think. Jesus appears to have been almost entirely occupied with a mission to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6; 15:24; cf. Jer. 50:6)… ( | 9 comments)
Eschatology, mission and the theological formation of the church
I spent a day this week with a group of leaders from a network of churches in the UK who were discussing how best to teach theology across the movement. They went about it with a refreshing candour: “We have an anti-intellectual history—we need to embrace learning.” The discussion revolved around… ( | 7 comments)