The groaning of creation

We screened the People’s Emergency Briefing film in the week before this message, so the climate crisis loomed menacingly. In the film, Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous fame asks a good question: “What’s the matter with us?” What is the matter with us as a civilisation?

There is no eco-crisis in the New Testament, but we often read Romans 8:19-21 as an expression of Paul’s conviction that the whole of creation will eventually be set free from the consequences of the fall of humanity.

I think that misses the historical point.

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More on the rich man and Lazarus and the question of “hell”
I have suggested in The Coming of the Son of Man and on this blog that the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 is not intended to provide factual information about the afterlife but rather belongs to Jesus’ critique of a complacent elite in Israel that served mammon rather… ( | 9 comments)
Is David Fitch right that God is making the world right?
Having just read Frank Viola’s Beyond Evangelicalism, I thought I ought to take a look at David Fitch’s more solidly analytical, and much less succinctly titled, [amazon:978-1606086841:inline].The leading argument of the book is that the narrowly focused conversionism… ( | 8 comments)
Should we still love our enemies?
Chris asks a straightforward and pertinent question in response to my general argument that a narrative-historical hermeneutic, which necessarily brings into the foreground of our reading the contextual factors that restrict the New Testament’s frame of reference, may still be formative for… ( | 10 comments)
At the risk of repeating myself...
I have been goaded, against my better judgment, into responding to Peter Wilkinson’s persistent complaint that I have not answered the five points that he raised against the narrative-historical reading that I have been determinedly advocating here. His arguments have to do not so much with… ( | 14 comments)
What was God's "eternal purpose"?
I recently argued that Frank Viola’s definition of “beyond evangelical” captures some important, healthy emphases but does not do justice to the “narrated existence of the people of God”. Frank’s response was that the narrative component comes under the fourth note of the “eternal… ( | 9 comments)
Is the promise of the narrative-historical approach real or illusory?
I'm participating in a small forum on, among other things, critical realism somewhere in the damp, green depths of the English countryside at the moment. Critical realism can be addressed from different angles, but one major area of relevance for Christian preachers, teachers, and theologians is… ( | 5 comments)
Bebbington, Viola, and the redefinition of evangelicalism
The British historian David Bebbington is usually credited with devising the standard definition of evangelicalism. I came across it again today in Frank Viola’s compilation of blog posts [amazon:B008A80EA0:inline]. Viola very briefly summarizes Bebbington’s definition in order to… ( | 5 comments)