I have been puzzling over Romans 9:5—a notorious interpretive crux, as scholars like to say. Is this a rare place in the New Testament where it is stated that Jesus is God? This is how the ESV takes it:

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

Or should the final clause be read as a separate doxology, as in the RSV: “God who is over all be blessed for ever”? It all comes down to where we put the periods and commas. Be warned. This is not a post for the fainthearted.

Scot McKnight argues that historical Jesus studies must start from the premise that the “church either got Jesus wrong or said too much”, that the “real” Jesus of the historians and the theologized Jesus of the church cannot be reconciled, and that historical Jesus studies are of no use to the church because the church already knows what it believes about Jesus. His conclusion is:

If the church opts for the historical Jesus, it must choose to disregard the canonical Jesus for a reconstruction of Jesus on the basis of historical methods.

I have the opportunity to do some teaching on discipleship later in the week at a Christian Associates staff conference in Scotland. This rather lengthy piece is part of my preparation. I have tried to outline how I see discipleship functioning in scripture, with particular attention given to the relation between discipleship and narrative. No one will be surprised by that. Interestingly, the word “disciple” is confined almost entirely to the Gospels and Acts. It occurs once in Isaiah (in the ESV), however, which turns out to be quite a good place to start. 

I think I would be right in saying that much “missional” theory these days accepts that in our post-Christendom and post-modern cultural context there is likely to be a significant transitional period between first serious exposure to the “gospel” and conversion. People don’t simply get saved. They set out on a journey. This seems to me to be true to the extent that, in many instances, we have to reckon with large numbers of people—communities almost in their own right—who are attracted to Christ, even to the life of the church, but who remain fundamentally uncommitted.

In the New Testament context these were the “God-fearers”—Gentiles who were drawn to the ethical monotheism of synagogue Judaism but for whom it was a step too far to become proselytes. We would probably call them “seekers”, and we get frustrated with them after a while because they never seem to want to find what they are looking for.

Who is the father in the parable of the prodigal son? We mostly take it for granted, of course, that the father is God and that the central point of the story is that God forgives the repentant sinner. I have pointed out before that this is not a story about personal salvation by grace rather than by works—the younger son rejoins a family which still includes the older hard-working son; and I recommend reading this post in conjunction with the earlier one. But on a bumpy flight down to the south of France a couple of days ago I began to think there may also be grounds for questioning the traditional attribution of paternity. I can’t check the details of the argument at the moment, but I will sketch here my reasons for suspecting that the father is not God but Abraham.

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting when I offered to review Kester Brewin’s [amazon 978-0955981371 inline]. Probably something that spoke rather more directly to the “emerging church” than this book does. Kester is a “teacher, popular blogger, and pioneering alt.worship fire-starter based in London, England”. He was one of the people behind the now defunct Vaux, and he has written a couple of other books—The Complex Christ, which I have somewhere, and Other, which I don’t. I sense he’s not quite my sort of “emerging church”—I imagine he would regard me as too evangelical. But I would like to meet him one day. Who knows.

Robin Parry has a lively review of Hellbound: The Movie on his Theological Scribbles blog. According to Robin the "focus was primarily versions of eternal torment vs. versions of universalism". Annihilationism, which I would have expected to have entered the ring as the main challenger to the reigning traditional view, apparently doesn't get much of a look in. Robin's assessment may simply reflect his personal bias. Or it may point to the fact that Universalism really is coming to be viewed as the leading alternative to the pernicious and unbiblical doctrine of eternal conscious torment.