I don’t deal with this in the book, but I’m wondering whether the retrospective argument about the pre-existence of the exalted Christ gains a polemically heightened character in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107/108).

This is a German translation of “In the form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul: what the book is about and why.” With many thanks to Helge Seekamp.

My book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul has been available for a little while now, from the publisher and other major sources, both in print and as an ebook (Nook, Kindle).

I am coming to think that the current mainstream view regarding “image of God” in Genesis 1:26-27 is mistaken. The consensus is that behind the expression is the idea that God is king, that he rules the cosmos, and that he has delegated some part of that benign and constructive rule to men and women, created in his image and after his likeness. This has been put to good use for eco-theological purposes: humans should responsibly “steward” the created order on behalf of the divine sovereign.

Looking around for discussion of a theology of climate crisis, I came across a brief summary of the work of Gijsbert van den Brink, University Research Chair for Theology and Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

“It is a conviction of the church,” Matthew Malcolm writes in From Hermeneutics to Exegesis, “that it shares the same redemptive-historical location as the first recipients of the New Testament documents” (61). That is an important observation, but I think that the conviction is misguided, on three counts: 1) what the New Testament is about centrally is not redemption but “kingdom”; 2) the kingdom argument determines not a location primarily but a moment in time; and 3) we do not share that moment in time.