Elliot has raised some pertinent questions about the continuing relevance of some basic Christian beliefs, given a narrative-historical understanding of the New Testament. They deserve a more substantial answer than I can provide right now, but here’s an outline of how I think we may manage the tension between continuity and change. A recent post on “A revised missional theology” covers some of the ground. You could also have a look at this three part series, though it may be a bit dated now: “The narrative-historical reading of the New Testament: what’s in it for me?”
Probably, for most people interested in biblical studies, “historicism” is a bad word, associated either with a positivist historical-critical methodology that hammers the theological life out of a text or with a certain mode of nineteenth century German historical idealism that culminated in the… ( | 4 comments)
I did a couple of podcast episodes recently with David Capes for The Stone Chapel Podcasts, talking about my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. ()
It is easy to visualise the traditional interpretation of Philippians 2:6-11 as a downward parabola or u-bend: Christ existed in heaven from eternity “in the form of God”; he descended into the world, becoming man and dying on the cross; then he is raised from the dead and restored to his position… ( | 13 comments)
This is a dull, and frankly unnecessary, technical note on the genitive construction with a preposition en morphēi theou (ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ) in Philippians 2:6. I’ve had to look at this a bit more closely following a rather disjointed conversation with someone on Twitter who had different… ( | 12 comments)
John Baumberger has a question about my translation of en morphē theou in Philippians 2:6 as “in the form of a god.” He takes issue with the indefinite construction on a couple of grounds:1. The word theos ‘without the definite article almost always refers to God himself (and not… ( | 10 comments)
The famous passage about Christ in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually described as a “hymn,” and is usually taken to celebrate the inverted parabola of Christ’s descent from heaven, his incarnation as man, the nadir of his death on the cross, followed by his return to heaven and exaltation to a position… ( | 15 comments)
Just for the sake of completeness, here is one final visual representation of the two-part significance of Easter. It’s now getting a bit overloaded, I know—two storylines, four landing points, and an unexpected back-reference to the flood; but I don’t want to give the impression that history has… ()
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