Elliot has raised some pertinent questions about the continuing relevance of some basic Christian beliefs, given a narrative-historical understanding of the New Testament. They deserve a more substantial answer than I can provide right now, but here… ()
A. J. Derxsen appears to be a rather conservative, Reformed American blogger, so I’m a bit surprised he bothered to read and comment on my post “Who is Daniel’s son of man?” But he did, and I appreciate it, and here’s an attempt to address the… ( | 1 comment)
It’s a while since I’ve posted anything here. Been a bit too busy. So I thought I’d post this response to Elliot’s recent comment—just to keep the site ticking over. He has some good reflections on my defence of the historical reading of Jesus’… ( | 13 comments)
I did something like this a few years back—now updated (what are we to make of the Quiet Revival, etc.?) and better focused. It will be a six week series of online sessions on what I would basically describe here as a narrative-historical missional… ()
The question of Israel and the land—and the extent of the land—is very much on our minds these days. A while back, Ian Paul posed the question: “Does the State of Israel have a divine right to the land?” It’s a measured piece, and it got me… ()
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… ( | 2 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… ( | 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… ()
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… ( | 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… ( | 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,… ( | 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… ()
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… ()
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… ( | 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… ()
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… ()
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… ()
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… ()
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… ( | 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… ( | 4 comments)
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