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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Two papers by the same person given at the SBL International Meeting in London this week cut across each other in a rather alarming fashion, in my view, creating a dangerous hermeneutical intersection, with the risk of a serious theological pile-up. Well, yes, that’s overstating it, but the… ()
I hope it’s not too immodest to draw attention to a review of my book The Future of the People of God by Matthew Montonini that begins: ()
Actually, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve attempted to schematize the relationship between history and theology. But I think it is central to the current theological task, so another attempt won’t go amiss. Modern evangelical theology is largely an abstraction. It is a very… ( | 8 comments)
I will be at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in London next week. First time to go to one of these things. I will be presenting a paper in the Paul and Pauline Literature section on Monday afternoon on “Sibylline Oracles and the Judgment of the Greeks”, but the other… ( | 6 comments)
There are a number of well known “misreadings” of prophecy in the New Testament, where the writer, in his enthusiasm to prove that Jesus is Israel’s messiah, appears to have found a meaning in the text that simply is not there—rather as a magician pulls a rabbit out of an empty hat. It’… ( | 4 comments)
Phil Wood, who writes an Anabaptist blog from the UK, made this comment yesterday in response to The Church is dead?: I was talking a little while ago with a friend who has a senior role in an American Mennonite Conference. We had a long discussion when I said that in Britain we were… ( | 8 comments)
In a post on Out of Ur Skye Jethani discusses reports of the decline of the Southern Baptist Convention and of the evangelical church in North America more generally: “50 churches are closing every week, church attendance is not keeping pace with population growth, and the average age of church… ( | 1 comment)