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?”
My wife thinks this is rather heavy reading for Easter, so be warned….The doctrine of “penal substitutionary atonement”—the idea that God punished Jesus on Good Friday in our place—divides Christians: some find it theologically profound, others find it morally repugnant. My argument has been—… ()
A popular text for people who would like to think that in the end all people will be saved is the assertion in Colossians 1:19-20 that through Christ God was pleased to “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” Steve Chalke, for… ( | 1 comment)
Enough of Steve Chalke’s book, let’s get back to coronavirus. How do we talk about it theologically? Or, as Baptist theologian and ethicist Roger Olson asks, “Where is God in this pandemic?”Coronavirus is not one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse—that was a very different future, from a very… ( | 2 comments)
Enough of the pandemic, let’s get back to Steve Chalke’s book The Lost Message of Paul. Chalke is a somewhat post-evangelical leader in the UK with excellent credentials. In this book he is using the “new perspectives” on Paul that have emerged in New Testament scholarship in recent… ( | 2 comments)
Tom Wright has written an Ideas piece for Time Magazine in which he argues that Christianity is not supposed to give answers about the coronavirus.It’s our rationalist culture, he says, that needs a reason for everything, and it’s rather “silly” to ask whether the pandemic is a punishment or… ( | 9 comments)
I made the comment in part 1 of this review of Steve Chalke’s The Lost Message of Paul that he has worked hard to integrate recent New Testament scholarship into his analysis of Paul but that in the end his personal judgment as a post-evangelical pastor gets the better of him. That started… ( | 1 comment)
Ich habe bisher nur eine Person gehört – ein junger New Yorker, der im Fernsehen interviewt wurde –, die das Wort “apokalyptisch” im Zusammenhang mit der COVID-19-Pandemie verwendet. Ich denke, dass wir in der Regel sehr pragmatisch vorgehen. Aber es ist noch zu früh, und in dem Maße, wie die Zahl… ()
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