Recent posts

Eschatology, Anabaptism, and the end of Christendom
I have recently had a very interesting conversation by email with Jonas Lundström, who for a Swede writes remarkably good English, and Graham Old (Leaving Munster). It is partly about the substance of The Coming of the Son of Man and Re: Mission, and partly about the broader… ( | 0 comments)
Moving eschatological mountains?
These rudimentary comments were prompted by a conversation with Andrew Jones in Amsterdam about the eschatological significance of Jesus’ saying about moving mountains as it is found in connection with the cursing of the fig tree in Jerusalem (Mk. 11:23; Matt. 21:21) and the failure of the… ( | 0 comments)
Review of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change (part 2)
Everything Must Change (see the synopsis in the first part of this review) will be read by many as a challenge to the modern church to exchange an ineffectual and theologically suspect notion of what it means to be Christian for an ‘emerging’ understanding that offers a credible hope of… ( | 0 comments)
Review of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change (part 1)
It’s three months now since Brian McLaren’s latest book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope was released, and in the frenzied, web-driven world of emerging theology, three months is a long time. For all I know it’s not even his latest book any more… ( | 0 comments)
Re: Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church
I am pleased to say that my book has just been published by Paternoster in their ‘Faith in an Emerging Culture’ series. The book builds on the argument of The Coming of the Son of Man but broadens the scope of its historical-realist narrative to embrace an understanding of ‘mission’ that… ( | 0 comments)
I came not to invalidate the Law or the Prophets but to fulfil
Jesus explicitly attaches a temporal limit to the validity of the Torah: ‘until all things take place (panta genētai)’. The allusion to the new heaven and earth imagery of Isaiah 65:17; 66:22 points to an eschatological-historical crisis of judgment and restoration that is imagined as a… ( | 1 comment)
Not peace but a sword
When Jesus says that he has not come to bring peace to the land (not the ‘earth’ as in most translations) but a sword, he is speaking with the voice of the prophets. For example, Jeremiah 12:12: Upon all the bare heights in the desert destroyers have come, for the sword of the LORD… ( | 0 comments)
It is finished
There has been some discussion of Jesus’ statement ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30) in a couple of threads on Open Source Theology (‘Tetelestai (devolved)’ and ‘Tetelestai’). It has raised some important questions, and I want to set out a bit more carefully how I think the passage needs to be read.… ( | 0 comments)
What does the emerging church stand for?
Tim Leeson has initiated an interesting discussion about what the emerging church really stands for, which I think merits a stab at a more comprehensive and synthesizing response. The book Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger lists nine characteristics of emerging churches:… ( | 2 comments)
Killed and thrown into Gehenna
This saying presupposes the threat to their lives that the disciples would face when they announced the coming of the reign of God to Israel (cf. Matt. 10:27). If they are killed by the Jewish authorities because of their witness, they have nothing more to fear because God will watch over them (12:… ( | 1 comment)
The light of the world
The idea that Israel, as the servant of the Lord, would be a ‘light for the nations’ is found in Isaiah (42:6; 49:6; 60:3). The argument in these chapters is that YHWH will act justly with respect to his alienated people, delivering them from oppression, restoring them to wholeness, and by virtue… ( | 2 comments)
The salt of the earth
In the context of Jesus’ address to the community of renewed Israel it makes more sense to translate gē as ‘land’ than ‘earth’. The issue here is the role of the disciples in the eschatological transition from second temple Judaism under judgment to a restored people of the Spirit. The… ( | 0 comments)
Christ collectives
An article by Holland Cotter in The New York Times (‘Collectives blurring the lines of who makes modern art’) got me thinking about what the phenomenon of ‘art collectives’ might teach us about the nature and purpose of the church. An art collective represents the sort of fusion of community,… ( | 0 comments)
Getting frustrated by An Emergent Manifesto of Hope
I have been reading with some considerable frustration An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. The book describes itself on the back cover as: a coming together of divergent voices into a collection of writings that will bring you the latest thinking of the… ( | 0 comments)
The stone rejected by the builders
The comment about the stone rejected by the builders and the preceding parable are addressed to the ‘chief priests and the elders of the people’ (21:23), who question his authority to enact (through the events of his arrival in Jerusalem) the judgment and restoration of Israel. The parable is… ( | 0 comments)
One died for all
In a vigorous Fulcrum article entitled ‘The Cross and the Caricatures: a response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and a new volume entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions’, Tom Wright argues that in order to make sense of the idea of ‘penal substitution’ we must locate itwithin the biblical world,… ( | 1 comment)
In the regeneration
Jesus tells his disciples that in his kingdom, in the ‘regeneration’ of the people of God, ‘when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Matt. 19:28; cf. Lk. 22:30). ‘Regeneration’ is … ( | 0 comments)
What it means to be perfect
A man comes to Jesus and asks what good thing he must do to inherit the life of the age to come (not ‘eternal life’ in the traditional sense). Jesus tells him that in order to enter life he must keep the commandments. The man has done this. What is still lacking? Jesus tells him that if he would be… ( | 0 comments)
The gates of Hades will not prevail against it
This verse has often been used to support a theology of spiritual warfare. In fact, Jesus is saying something quite straightforward but crucial for the continuation of the community of believers and the success of the message that they proclaimed. 1. ‘Gates of hades’ (pulai hadou) is a… ( | 4 comments)
Who do men say that the Son of man is?
In 1998 Dr Andrew Overman discovered the ruins of a large Roman temple at Horbat Omrit. He believes that the temple was built by Herod in Caesarea Philippi to honour Augustus at the time when the emperor was coming to be worshipped as a living God. He suggests that the phrase ‘the son of living God… ( | 0 comments)