Why I think Brian Zahnd’s discussion of Jesus, the Church, the Bible, and Christianity is outdated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 Secondly, it is an outdated analysis of “Christianity”: it deals with problems of the past, not of the future.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...
Ancient text and modern reader: a simple hermeneutical model
Here is a simple model that captures what seem to me to be the three basic constructive hermeneutical options that we have for describing how the ancient text of scripture speaks to the modern (committed) reader. There is the common understanding that the Bible as sacred text or “Word of God”… ( | 2 comments)
The salvation of humanity or the salvation of Israel?
Paul’s statement in Romans 3:21-26 that the future justification of God has been revealed in anticipation in the present time through the faithfulness of Jesus for all who believe is clearly of central importance for our understanding of “salvation” in Paul. Discussion has… ()
Douglas Campbell and the right(eous)ness of God
Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God is a highly polemical argument about the nature of salvation and the character of God. It is polemical inasmuch as it is driven from the outset by a rigorous opposition to what Campbell calls “Justification theory”—the argument that salvation… ( | 13 comments)
Post-Christendom and the global church
A substantial gain to be had from reading the New Testament narratively rather than simply theologically is that the approach allows us to describe a meaningful continuity between the outlook of the New Testament and the subsequent history of the people of God. So, for… ( | 1 comment)
How does scripture speak to the world?
The Bible is a formative text for the people of God. I have argued that it is formative primarily in a narrative or diachronic sense—that is, it speaks to the church today by narrating a critical period, a determinative trajectory, in the historical development of the people. It begins… ( | 6 comments)
Do you rob temples? The Fulvia scam
This is a fascinating exegetical insight. Douglas Campbell notes the relevance of a passage in Josephus’ Antiquities for understanding Paul’s otherwise rather odd complaint regarding a Jew who claims to be a teacher of the Law but who steals, commits adultery, and robs temples (… ( | 2 comments)
The prophetic relationship of the people of God to the “land”
One of the questions that came out of the recent discussion of the Beatitudes has to do with the place of the land in the eschatological restoration of the people of God. I suggested that Jesus’ promise to the “meek” was that they would inherit not the “earth” but the “land”—gē can mean “… ( | 6 comments)