Why Jesus? Which Jesus?

The little book Why Jesus? is part of the materials for the Alpha Course. In it, Nicky Gumbel writes:

Jesus is the only man who has ever chosen to be born, and he is one of the few who has chosen to die. He said that the entire reason for his coming was to die for us. He came ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).

To say that Jesus is “the only man who has ever chosen to be born” is faintly ridiculous even on high christological terms. The only possible New Testament support for it is the idea expressed in Philippians 2:6 that he did not grasp at a certain type of being equal to God or a god, my views on which can be found here.

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Same-sex same solution (simplified). And what was James on about?
Ian Paul, who is a staunch defender of the traditional view, thinks that my modest proposal regarding the relevance of the deliberations of the Jerusalem Council for the seemingly intractable controversy over same-sex unions is a “bizarre misreading of the narrative”. My sense is rather that he has… ( | 5 comments)
Same-sex same solution? Does the Jerusalem Council suggest a way forward?
Some years back I wrote a book called Speaking of Women: Interpreting Paul. I took the view that both sides of the debate at the time were misreading Paul in their pursuit of polemical advantage, but I came down nevertheless on the egalitarian side of the fence. I think that male headship… ( | 9 comments)
Jesus is Lord (still)
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Someone got in touch asking about the interpretation of John’s vision of a rider on a white horse and the war against “the beast and the kings of the earth” in Revelation 19:11-21.What does Revelation 19 and the rider on the white horse defeating the beast, false prophet, and other kings represent… ( | 1 comment)
Same-sex same old story?
The narrative-historical approach recognises that the biblical story works on different levels. Modern (evangelical) theologies tend to highlight the universal story of the individual person who is a sinner in need of salvation, etc. More recently greater attention has been given to an overarching… ( | 4 comments)
Kingdom and mission: a pants classification
I mentioned before the distinction that Scot McKnight makes in his Kingdom Conspiracy book between a “pleated pants” view of kingdom as the redemptive activity of God and a “skinny jeans” view of the kingdom as social activism in which the church may be more of a hindrance than a help… ()
Paul’s parable of the olive tree
In Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church Scot McKnight takes aim at two broad misconceptions of what the kingdom of God is: the “skinny jeans” reduction of kingdom to social activism, and the more conventionally religious “pleated pants” approach… ( | 12 comments)