Recent posts

Justification by faith (in the story of Israel and the nations)
The classic doctrine of justification is roughly that God declares righteous—and will declare righteous at the final judgment—the sinner who has faith in Jesus. There is nothing that we can do to make ourselves right with God—no works of any religious or moral “law”. The righteousness of… ( | 8 comments)
Judgment according to works: a flawed paradigm
I was hoping that at least one of the views expressed in [amazon:978-0310490333:inline], edited by Alan Stanley, would recognize that the theological problem looks very different—and frankly much less problematic—from a narrative-historical perspective… ( | 17 comments)
Some women and the story of God’s people, and a brief obituary
Elkanah had two wives. Peninnah has children, but Hannah has no children. Elkanah favours Hannah, but Peninnah “used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb”. At the temple in Shiloh Hannah prays that the Lord of hosts will look on the affliction of his… ( | 5 comments)
John Barton on biblical criticism and reading the Old Testament
I have found John Barton’s defence of “biblical criticism” as a fundamentally semantic or literary enterprise extremely helpful in clarifying what I mean by a narrative-historical hermeneutic. The biblical text relates, on the one hand, to how things really were, and it is the task of… ( | 11 comments)
Don Carson, kingdom, ethics and individual salvation
I managed to get an internet connection on the bus between Antakya (Antioch on the Orontes) and Tarsus and followed a link from Michael Bird to a Themelios article by Don Carson on “Kingdom, Ethics, and Individual Salvation”, republished on the Gospel Coalition site. It doesn’t seem an… ( | 9 comments)
Where should a statement of faith begin?
I was asked a while back by Brad Knight what I thought of this post by Roger Olson. Olson addresses the question:When composing a Christian statement of faith, a statement of faith for a Christian church, educational institution, whatever, what or whom should the first article be about? Where… ( | 3 comments)
Rocking the boat: Noah in narrative-historical perspective
Following the brilliantly intense Christian Associates staff conference in Budapest, my wife and I are spending a couple of weeks in eastern Turkey. Yesterday we went to see the remarkable rock structure, in the hills close to the border with Iran, that is believed by some to be the petrified… ( | 11 comments)
Evangelicals, historical criticism and the second coming
One of the most encouraging developments in evangelical thought in recent years has been the willingness of scholars to engage with scientific and historical criticism. I have recommended the work of Kenton Sparks and Peter Enns before. Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical… ( | 9 comments)
Making space for God in post-Christian Europe
I spent last week teaching at a church family camp in Belgium on the theme of “Making space for God in post-Christian Europe”. It was a great opportunity to think through, with a highly motivated but marginalized group of people, how a narrative-historical approach to the New Testament might help… ( | 8 comments)
Church as eschatological community (part 2)
This is the belated second part of my write up of a talk I gave at Community Church Harlesden a few weeks back. In part one I argued that what we find in the New Testament is not a generic or standard or universal definition of church but a definition of church as historically contextualized,… ( | 6 comments)
Where does authority lie? Peter Enns on historical criticism and evangelicalism
Peter Enns has written a clear, concise and sensible piece on the uneasy relationship between historical criticism and evangelicalism that I think is well worth reading. He notes the tensions between evangelicalism’s commitment to scripture as divine revelation and the proper task of… ( | 5 comments)
Three ways to put ourselves in the story
In response to my argument that what we have in the New Testament is a “narrative for the early churches as they confronted the frightening hegemony of classical paganism”, Evelyn asks, quite reasonably: “but then how can it serve as a narrative for us?” I will suggest here that… ( | 9 comments)
Would God have got excited about the conversion of Constantine?
Someone recently got in touch with some pertinent questions about my contention that the main trajectory of New Testament eschatology lands not at the end-of-the-world but firmly in the muddy battle-field of history, at the conversion of Rome. This is not just a question about New Testament… ( | 16 comments)
Does James preach the gospel?
It may sometimes appear that the narrative-historical approach to reading the New Testament throws up more questions than answers, but one point that I am pretty confident about is that what the modern evangelical world generally means by “gospel” is not what Jesus or Paul meant by “gospel”.Or… ( | 5 comments)
Creation, fall, redemption, and new creation is not much of a metanarrative
I came across this somewhat at random, but it illustrates a point. In an article on the role of theology on the Gordon Conwell website John Jefferson argues that a sound biblical theology is like the backbone in the human body—it provides “support, shape and stability to the Body of Christ”. In… ( | 7 comments)
Does the gospel first appear in Genesis 3:15?
Another good example of how theology gets read back into texts where it doesn’t belong is provided by the argument that the gospel first appears in Genesis 3:15. The singular “seed” of the woman, who will crush the head of the serpent, is taken to be a prophecy of the coming messiah. It… ( | 11 comments)
The Gospel Coalition gets the gospel back to front
A while back Daniel asked me what I thought of a Gospel Coalition video called "Did Jesus Preach the Gospel?" The question which John Piper, Tim Keller, and Don Carson address is basically this: Is Paul's gospel of justification by faith on the basis of Jesus' atoning death for the sins of the… ( | 24 comments)
Church as eschatological community (part 1)
I gave a talk last night at Community Church Harlesden on church as eschatological community. It was a little complicated, as you can see from this handout, so I promised to write up a summary. I'll do it in two parts. If you're not sure what "eschatology" means—or at least, what I mean by… ( | 3 comments)
Adam, original sin, and wrath against the Jew
At the THINK Conference last week Tom Wright made the interesting observation that Judaism shows very little interest in Adam and his original sin until after the destruction of the temple. With slightly different emphases the apocalyptic texts 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, written around AD 100, both make… ( | 18 comments)
The Lord said to my lord...
I have argued in a number of posts recently (see below) that the confession that Jesus is Lord is not the same as the confession that Jesus is God, and that we are likely to miss a critical part of New Testament teaching if we carelessly conflate the two. There is an eschatological or… ( | 55 comments)