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.

Read more...
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)
From New Perspective to missional praxis: plotting the tensions
I have come across a number of people recently who, in their different ways, appear to agree that the future of evangelicalism lies ideally in a convergence of the New Perspective and emerging-missional forms of church. The question has been, though, whether such a convergence has any… ( | 8 comments)
What is lacking of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh
This verse was alluded to briefly by Peter Wilkinson in a comment relating to the place of suffering in Paul’s thought. My view is that the suffering of the early church, culminating potentially in a death like Jesus’, plays a much more important and limiting part in his theology than we… ( | 3 comments)
Today you will be with me in paradise
With all the depressing talk of hell recently it seems a good idea to turn our minds in a more positive direction and give some thought to what the alternative might be. My view is that the New Testament does not make “heaven” the normal destination for those who are saved. What we have is… ( | 22 comments)
Why evangelical biblical scholars are so hesitant about accepting historical-critical conclusions
As a (moderately) good postmodern—and as a student of literature rather than of history—I have tended to avoid many of the problems raised by historical-criticism regarding the factual integrity and coherence of the Bible. The reason is that I think that the more interesting and more… ( | 15 comments)