Joel Green on the kingdom of God, part 4

In a fourth piece on the kingdom of God, Joel Green argues that the kingdom of God is a “master lens through which the nature of reality is disclosed and by which all rival accounts of reality are measured.” It is not a doctrine, it is a way of seeing. That sounds like a very modern notion. Is it likely to help us understand the biblical concept better? I don’t think so. Hermeneutically speaking, I think it’s moving us in the wrong direction.

1. The kingdom of God, Green says, is not a topic within theology but a “theological hermeneutic,” a way of seeing and interpreting the world. It tells us “who the principal actor in history is, what kind of ruler he is, what he is doing in the world, and therefore how human beings are to locate themselves within that world.”

Read more...
Thom Stark on the coming of the Son of Man: the Bible gets it right, Jesus gets it wrong?
Thom Stark’s book The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When it Gets God Wrong is an attack on the doctrine of inerrancy—or perhaps better, an attempt to reframe the problem of biblical errancy. In chapter 8, which is the only chapter I’ve read so far, he argues that Jesus… ( | 9 comments)
Some notes on Jesus, Constantine, and violence
I have addressed the troubling longer term historical implications of my reading of the New Testament in a number of posts, some of which are listed below. But the question has come up again, so here’s another go at outlining a response to the charge that Constantine and Christendom were a very… ( | 15 comments)
Why the narrative-historical method is not a suppression of theology
In a new comment on an old post entitled “The battle between theology and history for the soul of the church: 24 antitheses” Matthew makes a sensible observation about the theological process. It comes, I guess, in response to the tendency I have to polarise “theology” and “history” as… ()
Podcast: Should we “water down” the doctrine of the Second Coming?
This is a quick one—an audio version of a post from 2018 on the doctrine of the second coming. Simply put, the evangelical church needs to choose between dogma and history, and I think we should choose history. For more on the argument about the judgment of the sheep and goats see this post. ()
What is the chief end of man? Why the Westminster Catechism gets it wrong
If the “chief end of man” is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, as the Westminster Catechism asserts in its opening clause, why is there no mention of this in the creation narratives? Eh? Humanity is created, as male and female, and is instructed to fill the earth, subdue it, and assert… ()
The feeding of the five thousand sheep without a shepherd
In Mark 6 Jesus sends the twelve out in pairs to call people to repentance, cast out demons, and heal the sick (Mk. 6:7-13). Perhaps because of their mission, the name of Jesus becomes widely known. Herod hears about it, and he comes to the conclusion that John the Baptist has been raised from the… ( | 3 comments)
Mission and evangelism in the secular West
Stefan Paas is a Dutch missiologist. Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society (2019) is a modified English version of a book originally published in Dutch. It is his attempt to answer the “big question” that logically precedes any missiological enquiry, namely, “… ( | 2 comments)