Brian MacArevey picked up on a comment I made about the relationship between suffering and prosperity in my post on sonship and suffering in Romans and wondered out loud what I would make of a piece he had written about ‘eschatological blessing… ( | 22 comments)
Mike was preaching about sonship yesterday and the need for Christians to discover or claim for themselves the full blessings of having been adopted as sons. I have more sympathy for prosperity theology than is probably good for me, and I take quite… ()
This quotation from a book by J. Todd Billings called The Word of God for the People of God: an entryway to the theological interpretation of scripture rather effectively gets to the heart of the dilemma created by readings of the New… ()
Peter has reached the point of sheer exasperation in our discussion of the meaning of Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish virgins, so it is time to stop, apologize, and perhaps try to understand why it can be so difficult to reach agreement over… ( | 5 comments)
The main challenge of New Testament theology at the moment, as the church struggles more or less self-consciously to come to terms with its modern exile, is to tell and retell the story of which Jesus is part – to tell it both critically and… ()
What is the historical frame of reference of Jesus’ parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins? Tradition has taught us to read this as a story about a final consummation at the second coming of Jesus, at some uncertain point in our… ( | 5 comments)
For much of the last decade the tide of popular-level evangelical theology – by which I mean theology as it engages constructively with the life and mission of the church – has been moving strongly in an emerging direction. At least, that has been… ( | 2 comments)
This is why I don’t like systematic theologies. I picked up a copy of John M. Frame’s Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An introduction to systematic theology today – it’s amazing what you can find in Dubai, as long as it… ( | 5 comments)
In the discussion prompted by my post on ‘The parables of delay and the question of dual fulfilment’ paulf argued that it’s impossible to resolve the tension in Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse between the early references to the destruction of… ( | 11 comments)
The Biologos Foundation, which ‘addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life’, has come up with a statement of faith… ()
There has been a lot of debate recently about the contested identity of the evangelical movement in America. We have been aware for some time of the strength of the neo-Reformed reaction against the emerging movement. I wrote a piece a while back… ( | 2 comments)
In response to my comments on the fulfilment of prophecy it was suggested to me (by other channels) that while much of Matthew 24 can ‘with difficulty’ be made to fit exclusively into an AD 70 framework, the same cannot be said for the parables of… ( | 9 comments)
I have just come across an old and decidedly skimpy review by Kyle McDanell of The Coming of the Son of Man. Judging by the list of his favourite blogs I wouldn’t have expected Kyle to agree with the thesis of the book, but he is… ( | 7 comments)
Perhaps the central flaw in the Reformed reading of Romans – and why it generates such distorted definitions of key theological terms such as ‘wrath’, ‘salvation’, ‘righteousness’, ‘faith’ and ‘gospel’ – is that it sets out from the assumption that… ( | 4 comments)
The question of whether the early Christians were disappointed in their expectations regarding some calamitous end-of-the-world event crops up repeatedly both in academic and popular theologizing and continues to be a major factor in the modern… ( | 26 comments)
The aim behind church-planting traditionally has been to bring into existence new worshipping communities of people who believe in Jesus. Many of those people will already identify themselves as Christian; probably a much smaller number, if… ( | 6 comments)
I have always been somewhat in awe of the feisty visual and verbal rhetoric of the Pyromaniacs blog. I don’t go there very often – it’s the other side of town, it’s unfamiliar territory, I sense that I don’t belong there, I… ( | 4 comments)
I read Karen Armstrong’s biography of Muhammed while we were travelling in Iran recently and enjoyed it greatly. If we close our minds to the subsequent history of Islam and make allowances for the necessary realpolitik of the… ( | 3 comments)
My friend Wes recently sent me this quotation from Henri Nouwen:Real theological thinking, which is thinking with the mind of Christ, is hard to find in the practice of the ministry. Without solid theological reflection, future leaders will be… ( | 1 comment)
This post is a response to some questions raised by Benjamin Burch on Naznet. His remarks are part of a discussion of Brian McLaren’s recommendation of The Coming of the Son of Man and of the general interest of the emerging church in… ( | 4 comments)
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