Recent posts

Penal substitutionary atonement and narrative theology
I can recommend an astute essay on the current state of the atonement debate by Jason Hood, who is scholar in residence at Christ UMC in Memphis.1 He makes two general points. The first – a matter of systematic theology – is that despite the sustained scholarly and sub-scholarly onslaught against… ( | 10 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: A better way of viewing the future?
It comes as no surprise that when McLaren comes to address the question of how a new kind of Christianity might view the future, he starts by describing a nightmarish populist account of the end-times deeply influenced by the Greco-Roman narrative. The dangers of a dispensationalist eschatology are… ( | 0 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the question about sexuality
The chapter in which Brian McLaren tackles the ‘sex question’ reaches the conclusion that a new kind of Christianity must get beyond the impasse of the modern church’s preoccupation with homosexuality and ‘begin to construct not just a more humane sexual ethic in particular, but a more honest… ( | 0 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: What Do We Do About the Church?
The second part of A New Kind of Christianity is called ‘Emerging and Exploring’: a number of mental doors have been opened in the first part of the book; now it is time to pass through and see what is on the other side. The sixth question is ‘What Do We Do About the Church?’ Most of our… ( | 2 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: What is the Gospel?
Brian McLaren thinks that traditional Protestantism has got the answer to the question ‘What is the Gospel?’ seriously wrong, and I agree with him. Clearly the gospel has something to do with things like atonement and justification and perhaps ‘penal substitution’, but they have been misleadingly… ( | 0 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the fourth question about Jesus
Question number four is ‘The Jesus Question’. The previous section had concluded with the slightly illogical assertion that our evolving understanding of God must terminate in Jesus as the Word of God. But McLaren recognizes that we still have to make it clear which Jesus we are talking about: ‘We… ( | 0 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the question about the violence of God
Brian McLaren asks, thirdly, ‘Is God Violent?’ We can eliminate the effects of the Greco-Roman distortion of the biblical narrative, we can read the Bible as a library rather than as a constitution, we can bring into the focus the stories of God as good creator, passionate liberator, and… ( | 4 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the second question
McLaren’s second question is ‘How Should the Bible Be Understood?’ He lists three broad reasons why we need a ‘new approach to the Bible’. First, fundamentalism in its various varieties has, to our repeated embarrassment, made the Bible an enemy of science; secondly, we do not have… ( | 0 comments)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the first question
The first question has to do with the overarching storyline of the Bible by which, consciously or otherwise, we make sense of Christian existence (33-45). The traditional plot, McLaren argues, has six elements: 1) humanity begins in the perfect condition of Eden; 2) we have fallen from that… ( | 1 comment)
In those days, after that tribulation...
Following the lengthy debate with Gustavo about Mark 13, I want to try to summarize what seem to me to be the main reasons for doubting that there is a fundamental shift in timeframe between Jesus’ prediction of events leading up to the desolation of the temple and the flight of the disciples left… ( | 0 comments)
The punishment of Jesus
I wonder if we’re right to be quite so leery of the punishment aspect of the cross. I guess a lot of it has to do with not wanting to attribute vindictiveness, cruelty to God. Jesus’ death was an anticipation of the punishment of Israel – I suggest in my book on Romans that in Romans 8:3,… ( | 0 comments)
Re-registering the coming of the Son of man
Gustavo Martin’s excellent (though rather technical) Biblica essay on ‘Procedural Register in the Olivet Discourse’ has prompted me to look again at the place of the ‘Son of man’ section in Jesus’ prediction of future events in Mark 13.Martin’s main argument is that there is a… ( | 10 comments)
The unfamiliar face of Jesus
There is a classic image of Jesus that has predominated in Christian artistic traditions – a tall figure with long wavy, almost effeminate hair (because he’s worth it!) and beard, sorrowful eyes, white robe, and the original Jesus sandals. We do not imagine that this representation amounts to… ( | 0 comments)
Review of the (proxy?) review of the response to the critique of the argument: Wright and the righteousness of God
The rambling Anglican Ordinand Jon Swales has drawn attention to a Themelios review of N.T. Wright’s Justification: Paul’s Vision and God’s Plan, which was Wright’s response to John Piper’s critique of his attack on the Reformed understanding of justification. It gets more… ( | 1 comment)
The death of James and the coming of the Son of man
The story of the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus, casts an interesting light on how the early church in Jerusalem understood its future. There are two accounts of his death which are difficult to reconcile, but it is in any case the narrative content that is of concern to us here rather… ( | 0 comments)
The killing of the Galileans and the collapse of the tower in Siloam
I mentioned this passage in the comment on Luke 13:22-24, but it is worth considering in its own right.First, as modern liberal interpreters we usually understand Jesus to be saying that the Galileans who died were not greater sinners than all other Galileans or that those who were crushed by the… ( | 1 comment)
Are those being saved few?
Jesus is asked by a man in the street whether it is true that only a few will be saved. The question highlights the centrality of the theme of judgment on Israel in Jesus’ teaching, as it is found in statements such as: ‘I came to cast fire upon the land’ and ‘Do not think that I have come to bring… ( | 7 comments)
Jew first, then Greek in Campbell’s The Deliverance of God
Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God is an extraordinary – and I think extraordinarily flawed – attempt to erase Justification Theory from Paul’s theology. It is a mammoth book to read, let alone attempt to review, in toto; and if it is a large enough wood to survey, it… ( | 0 comments)
Orthodoxy, creation and the judgment of God
My wife and I attended the Liturgy at the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in the depths of rural Essex yesterday. It was our second visit with our friend Olivera. I would describe it less as a service of worship in the way that most Catholics and Protestants would… ( | 0 comments)
Review: Davina Lopez, Apostle to the Conquered
Apostle to the Conquered: Reimagining Paul’s Mission, by Davina Lopez, is a good example of what has probably been the most significant turn that Pauline studies have taken following the New Perspective. As an overtly gender-critical analysis the book takes a step beyond the… ( | 1 comment)