Why I think Brian Zahnd’s discussion of Jesus, the Church, the Bible, and Christianity is outdated

In a Substack post, Brian Zahnd looks at four key theological “entities” and warns of the “theological mischief” that happens when the “critical distinction” between them is not properly respected. The Church, the Bible, and the religion of Christianity are all good and important things, but not as good and important as Jesus. “The moment we try to nudge the Church or the Bible or Christianity toward equality with Christ we are headed down a theological path that leads to confusion and real-life trouble.”

My objection to this sort of analysis is two-fold. First, it relies on a flawed understanding of the categories if they are meant to be fundamentally biblical and not the product of later theological rationalisation. Secondly, it is an outdated analysis of “Christianity”: it deals with problems of the past, not of the future.

Read more...
The historical justification of the people of God by faithfulness
Aaron Darrisaw has asked about Stephen Westerholm’s critique of the New Perspective on Paul. I don’t have access to Westerholm’s book at the moment (I’m sitting in Damascus airport), so I can’t comment directly on his analysis. However, I could have a bit of a… ( | 5 comments)
Another introduction to the New Perspective on Paul
Evangelical theology—that is, theology as it endeavours to ground the identity and purpose of the church today in the teaching of the New Testament about Jesus—has arrived at a fork in the road. There is the broad road of the Reformed paradigm and its derivatives, which leads to obsolescence, and… ( | 5 comments)
Apocalyptic realism and deliverance from the coming wrath
I have been involved in an interesting conversation (much of which is in German) at peregrinatio regarding the meaning of Paul’s statement in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 that the believers would be delivered “from the wrath to come”. My view is that this verse has reference to a … ( | 9 comments)
The smoke of their torment
I suggested recently in a discussion about the supposed “hell” passages in the New Testament that Revelation 14:9-11 is arguably the “only passage in the whole of scripture that speaks of an endless torment of ordinary people”. The language and context of the passage, however, make it abundantly… ( | 6 comments)
Kenton Sparks: historical criticism and the virgin birth
I find this strange. Kenton Sparks (God’s Word in Human Words) is happy to accept the possibility that not all the miracle stories in the Bible actually happened. He also thinks it quite likely that some of the miraculous events related are only partly historical. Since there is… ( | 26 comments)
Strange but true: sealed Christian books found by Bedouin
Some years ago I proposed a thought experiment as a way of grasping something of the strangeness of scripture: It makes for an interesting thought experiment to consider what would have happened if the early Jewish Christians had been driven from Jerusalem into the desert. What if, under threat of… ( | 6 comments)
The “Canaanite genocide” and the so-called “gospel of love”
There’s an important section in Kenton Sparks’ God’s Word in Human Words in which he discusses how we might discern positive “trajectories” that may enable us to reach moral or theological conclusions beyond—or perhaps even in contradiction to—explicit affirmations in… ( | 4 comments)