The “West” is a complex civilisational phenomenon. It is pagan Europe converted to Christianity, divested of Eastern Orthodoxy, intellectually reinvigorated by the Renaissance, violently split between Protestantism and Catholicism, expanded by Colonisation, empowered and enriched by the Industrial… (
| 6 comments)
When do we talk about divine judgment? Not often. But the theme cuts right through the heartlands of the New Testament like a punishing Roman road (not that Roman road), from Mary’s Magnificat to the final judgment of all the dead in Revelation 20.There is only one way to walk this road… (
| 3 comments)
The two most important commandments, according to Jesus, are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37-40). Add to this his teaching about love for enemies, while perhaps quietly sidelining the… (
| 0 comments)
The standard argument about the “image of God” is that 1) humanity was created, male and female, “in the image, according to the likeness” of God; 2) this “image” somehow encapsulates the essential nature and dignity of humanity; 3) the image was broken or lost in the “fall”; 4) it was reinstated… (
| 4 comments)
We are probably stuck with the distinction between “church” and “mission.” I attend a church in Westbourne Grove. I work informally with a mission organisation. But in biblical terms there is something odd about our obsession with mission. The word occurs only four times in the… (
| 1 comment)
What we call “Christianity” is the religion of the formerly Christian West. It survives residually in both the historic and modern churches, and globally as a result of both historic and modern missionary expansion. It is defined by diverse, overlapping systems of belief and practice, which… (
| 2 comments)
At the Communitas staff conference in Malaga last week, there was a lot of discussion around two related topics: human sexuality and the surprising interest shown by young people in Christianity in the last few years, which sometimes goes under the label “quiet revival.”On the flight back, I… (
| 0 comments)
We will be doing some sessions on Philippians at the Communitas staff conference in Malaga next week. Here, by way of preparation, is a quick explanatory synopsis of the letter as a historical document, by which I mean that it emphasises the restricted outlook and experience of Paul and of… (
| 0 comments)
I have long held the view that Babylon the great in Revelation 17-18 is the city of Rome as the capital of a decadent imperial power. Jason Staples used to think the same, but in a recent Substack post he explains why he has adopted the minority position that the lurid and dissolute woman depicted… (
| 2 comments)
This is a half-baked response to someone who got in touch with some questions after reading Why the missional church must also be prophetic:One thing I’ve noticed, not only in your writing but across much of the missional literature I read, is that the insights can often feel quite abstract or… (
| 0 comments)
Given the importance that the Shema would acquire for Jewish religious practice in the rabbinic period and has had for christology among Pauline scholars in the last thirty years, it is remarkable that it is so rarely quoted or discussed, on its own terms, in the literature of second temple Judaism… (
| 0 comments)
The publication of a reconstructed “Hymn of Babylon” has been in the news. The text of the hymn has been assembled from a number of cuneiform tablets from the Sippar library with the help of AI. The hymn is incomplete; it would have been about 250 lines in length, roughly two-thirds has been… (
| 0 comments)
This is rewrite of a post from last year just to update the details, with some changes of perspective and emphasis. I’ll be honest. It’s in part a sneaky—but not unprincipled—way to get people to consider signing up for one or other of the programmes and projects that I’m involved in. Other… (
| 0 comments)
There seems to be a lot of talk these days about reversing the decline of the West as a formerly Christian civilisation. Here’s an example that I happened to come across. The aim of the UK-based Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is “to draw on our moral, cultural, economic, and spiritual… (
| 1 comment)
We don’t talk a lot about the “second death” in church, I know. At least, not in our church. I ended up down this rabbit hole—really, a small dead-end off the sprawling warren of New Testament apocalyptic thought—thanks to some helpful comments about the use of the expression in the Aramaic Targums… (
| 4 comments)
When Paul says that God put forward the death of Jesus as—in whatever sense—an “atonement” (Rom. 3:25), he has in mind specifically the salvation of the Jews. He is talking to Jews here, who are subject to the wrath of God (3:1-8); he has catalogued an extensive scriptural indictment … (
| 0 comments)
The Christ encomium in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually divided into two parts: humbling in 2:6-8 and exaltation in 2:9-11. But here I want to suggest that once it has become apparent to onlooking Greeks that Christ Jesus, for all his god-like wisdom and powers, was human, no more remarkable than a… (
| 0 comments)
The last time I wrote about Crispin Fletcher-Louis’ “monster book” The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, and Civic Virtues I got a ticking off for not having read the whole book. I have since ordered the whole book—all 954 pages of it—but it… (
| 3 comments)
There are three main interpretive paradigms for understanding Paul’s writings available today within mainstream, predominantly Protestant, scholarship. The diagram below names the paradigms, briefly notes the defining characteristics, and mentions some of the major exponents. It also highlights the… (
| 0 comments)
Here is the question. When Paul says, “for us one God the Father…, and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:6), are the terms “God… Lord” between them a reference to the shemaʿ: “Hear, Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 8:6 LXX*)?It has become a stock argument of those holding… (
| 7 comments)
Recent comments