My wife and I attended the Liturgy at the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in the depths of rural Essex yesterday. It was our second visit with our friend Olivera. I would describe it less as a service of worship in the way that most Catholics and Protestants would understand it, more as an intimate drama in the round acted by monks and priests in the midst of the audience. Since most of the Liturgy is in Greek, there is plenty of time for reflection.

In the book shop afterwards I picked up a copy of Encounter, by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Flicking through, I came across the following paragraph, from an address given at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition and All Saints in 1991. Rather than buy the book, I took a picture of the page…

Apostle to the Conquered: Reimagining Paul’s Mission, by Davina Lopez, is a good example of what has probably been the most significant turn that Pauline studies have taken following the New Perspective.

An article by Lucy Broadbent in today’s Times Magazine describes the current Hell House phenomenon and its impact on teenagers. Churches such as Trinity Church in Dallas present shocking tableaux of classroom massacres, date rape, abortions (with real theatrical blood and pieces of real meat), suicide, child molestation, and drink-driving accidents. The kids arrive expecting a jolly evening of Halloween-style entertainment, I suppose; and they leave traumatized – strangers cling to each other in tears, one girl passes out, another sobs convulsively on the grass.

My argument in both The Coming of the Son of Man and Re: Mission is that New Testament eschatology – that is, the interest that the New Testament has in critical future events – can for the most part be mapped against a historical narrative that interprets, first, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70 and, secondly, the eventual defeat of Greek-Roman paganism as critical events through which both YHWH and the early suffering church are justified and vindicated. This two-part vindication constitutes, in effect, the parousia event, when the church that has remained faithful to Christ under intense pressure, both from apostate Judaism and from paganism, will be rewarded – raised, exalted with Christ to reign with him throughout the coming ages.

The war in America between Emergents and Reformed is a depressing business. A recent piece by Greg Gilbert on the 9Marks blog (Not Just Important, Not Even Just VERY Important. "Of FIRST Importance.") expresses satisfaction that defensive measures taken against the insurgents have 'effectively cut the legs out from under "emergent" theology, considered as a system'. But the basis for this confidence seems rather flimsy.

Reading through John Piper’s response to N.T. Wright, The Future of Justification (see also Piper’s objections to Wright’s ‘good news’), and not having much of a background in Reformed theology, I found myself repeatedly asking where the idea that the real moral righteousness of God is imputed to those who are in Christ actually comes from.