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...
Some notes on Jesus as Son and Wisdom of God in Hebrews 1:1-4
Alex had a question about how Christ reveals God in texts like John 1:18, Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:3, where there seems to be more going on than the “kingdom” story about how Jesus became Lord and would judge and rule over Israel and the nations of the pagan oikoumenē or “empire… ( | 2 comments)
Beware (other) paradigm shifts in Christian theology
Roger Olson discusses what he calls a “paradigm shift in Christian theology” in the modern era. The largely novel thesis is that Jesus is the full and perfect revelation of God. There is no other God “lurking behind Jesus with a different character, disposition, than the one revealed in the… ( | 9 comments)
God reigns, God returns, God redeems in history
I pointed out last week that in the standard “redemption in history” construal of the biblical narrative—as represented, for example, by Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission—all the history is found before Jesus. Nothing of… ()
Mission and the “history of redemption”
Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People is methodologically one of the best books on a biblical theology of mission that I have come across. I will be recommending it in the workshops that Wes and I will be doing at the Communitas staff conference later this week. Wright argues… ( | 5 comments)
Every knee shall bow: the question about Jesus and God
The central claim of the New Testament regarding the risen Jesus is this: because he was faithful unto death in fulfilment of his mission to Israel, the God of Israel raised him from the dead and gave him the authority, which formerly belonged to God alone, to judge and rule over the nations—… ( | 36 comments)
The biblical story, part three
This is the third of three posts outlining the biblical narrative for the purpose of constructing a narrative theology for mission. The first part presented us with Israel as a new creation people called to worship and serve the living God, in the midst of hostile nations, over a long… ( | 2 comments)
The biblical story, part two
The Old Testament story left us with a two-part eschatological expectation. During a period of great historical crisis the God of Abraham would demonstrate his righteousness or rightness, first, by saving and restoring his servant people, and secondly, by establishing his own rule over the… ( | 3 comments)