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?”
This is a brief addendum to the earlier post this week about the two meanings of Easter. A bit of an exchange on Facebook suggested to me that modern theologies of Easter are a striking inversion of what we find in the New Testament. I have tried to represent this graphically.
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We think of Easter week as one story: entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Last Supper, arrest and trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. Liturgical performance, with a convenient hiatus between Palm Sunday and the long East weekend, reinforces the point. But I will suggest here that it is actually… ()
The current issue of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly includes my article “When the Fullness of the Time Came: Apocalyptic and Narrative Context in Galatians.” It’s only available to subscribers for the time being—and, of course, in libraries—but here’s the abstract and a brief overview of… ( | 2 comments)
I was almost persuaded the other night, sitting outside a pub in Glasgow with some Communitas friends, that the story about Jesus inviting himself into the house of Zacchaeus has been widely misunderstood. The suggestion was that Zacchaeus was all along a righteous tax collector, who… ()
Thanks to James McGrath, I’ve been fretting a bit more over the “fishers of people” saying in Mark 1:17 and Matthew 4:19. In his commentary, Hagner decides in the end that it “refers in a general way to the work of the new disciples, who are now to be concerned with drawing men and women into the… ( | 4 comments)
I was asked whether there is any connection between the condemnation of lust in Matthew 5:27-30 and what is said about marriage in Jeremiah 16. I suggested in the last post that the sayings in the Sermon on the Mount about being thrown into Gehenna are Jesus’ reworking of the prophet’s denunciation… ( | 2 comments)
Ron got in touch to say that he’s persuaded by the argument that Gehenna in Matthew stands for a historical judgment. He can see how this makes good sense of the sayings about anger, hypocrisy, retaliation, and love of enemies, which presuppose a context of conflict and violence. But how is looking… ()
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