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...
The kingdom of God as a means to an end
Why is the ‘kingdom of God’ such a tricky theological notion? In a group discussion on ‘Kingdom Theology” at the Christian Associates Global Connect recently we managed to talk for some time about the topic – it’s the core of the gospel, it’s here but it’s still to… ( | 6 comments)
TallSkinnyKiwi review of The Future of the People of God
I gave Andrew Jones a copy of The Future of the People of God at the Christian Associates Global Connect last week and he’s read and reviewed it already. It’s a very fair and perceptive evaluation – the remarks about the brevity of the final chapter are duly noted.Andrew also… ()
Rewriting the debate: resurrection and Romans
My friend Hilary has been reading The Future of the People of God and had a question about a paragraph on page 49. Since it has reference to one of the critical arguments of the book – that the parameters of Paul’s theology in the Letter are to be historically defined – I thought… ( | 5 comments)
Straws in the wind: why the emerging church still matters
Brian LePort (Near Emmaus) suggests, not unreasonably, that the more pertinent question is not whether the emergent church has a problem with the doctrine of a final judgment (see previous post) but whether the emergent church still exists. I have to say, I did wonder whether I should add a… ( | 3 comments)
Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?
A tweet from Andrew Jones (‘An original emerging church criticism: “Don’t conceive we crapper undergo Absolute Biblical Truth” ’) led me to Pastor and Author Bob DeWaay’s resolute and curiously robotic critique of the ‘Emergent Church’ on SO4J-TV. On one level the clip reinforces… ( | 8 comments)
Paul the maker of theatrical scenery?
Here’s an interesting thought. In The Hermeneutics of Doctrine (70), as part of a discussion on ‘Christian Doctrine as Dramatic Narrative’, Thiselton notes the argument of L.L. Welborn that ‘tentmaker’ is an unlikely translation of skēnopoios in Acts 18:3. The BDAG Greek… ( | 3 comments)
Blessing in microcosm
Michael Thompson correctly points out that the argument about blessing and righteousness and the Deuteronomic code would be helped if we kept in view the seminal statement in Genesis 12:3 that Israel would be blessed in order to be a blessing to the whole world. In other words, there are missional… ( | 8 comments)