David has provided a very nice commentary on my previous post about the resurrection of Jesus on the third day. He has made it clear that he gets the main contention about the historical framing: “Too often we read the New Testament as if it dropped out of the sky rather than emerging from a real story, rooted in Israel and moving outward into the world.” But he pushes back at a number of points. He insists that the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament is treated not merely as a moment in Jewish history but as an event of universal human significance. I have highlighted his main concerns and responded.
I want to take the opportunity provided by a rather vexed comment on my post Tim Keller gets a lot right but gets hell badly wrong to make it clear that my narrative-historical argument about “hell” has nothing to do with liberalism. Ryan kicks off with this rather rash assertion… ( | 33 comments)
Rob Bell takes the view in Love Wins that in Jesus’ day Gehenna was the “city dump”: “There was a fire there, burning constantly to consume the trash.” It is a metaphor for the terrible consequences of rejecting “the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us”. But in particular… ( | 23 comments)
I have just received a review copy of a book by Brian Jones called Hell is Real (But I Hate to Admit It), published by David C. Cook—an excellent title, though I hate to admit it. The book also starts with one of the most gripping opening stories that I have come across. I am usually… ( | 11 comments)
On this blog and in the books I have written in the last few years I have argued for an evangelical self-understanding that expresses its fidelity to scripture by means of what I think is most usefully classified as a narrative-historical hermeneutic. What I mean by this is that… ( | 1 comment)
I sent Peter Leithart a copy of The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom because I felt that it offers an interesting New Testament preface to his book Defending Constantine. Peter has now reviewed the book… ( | 4 comments)
Is the Bible a collection of historical texts stuck in the past? Is it a sacred text that transcends and overrules its historical origins? Or do we somehow have to hold these two perspectives in tension?
By and large, historical-critical approaches to biblical interpretation… ( | 10 comments)
There was an interview with a Lutheran priest on the radio this morning from the cathedral in Oslo. He spoke of how he had preached the peace of Christ every week… and then described the dreadful shock of learning that the bombing and killings had been carried out not by radical… ( | 5 comments)
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