The witness of scripture is not primarily to the personal relevance of God but to the political relevance of God. It has to do with the rule or kingdom of God in the world. Witness operates at large scale national-civilisational levels of narrative meaning sandwiched between cosmological-geological narratives and local-personal narratives. There we have our multi-storied theological universe.

The witness of the church today suffers, I think, from the fact that it has inverted this narrative structure. Theological priority is given overwhelmingly to the story of the individual who finds faith and lives it out in the context of a local church community. The cosmological story, at the outer reaches of the narrative spectrum, explains why this is important. We are all implicated in the disobedience of Adam and are in need of a redemption from outside—a Son sent into the world to die for the sins of humanity. But history is only the context in which people live out their faith in God.

Biblical faith is almost always forward-looking. It is as much about what may or may not happen in the future as it is about the knowledge and experience of the God of Israel in the here and now. It is, therefore, almost always either fearful or hopeful.

Abraham hoped that he would become the father of many nations (cf. Rom. 14:18). Moses led the people out of Egypt in hope of reaching the land promised to their fathers, though many feared—for good reason—that they would never get there. Israel hoped to have a powerful king, who would unite them, judge them, and lead them out to fight against their enemies (1 Sam. 8:19-20). As religious, moral, and political leadership failed, they began to fear the wrath of God. The exilic community hoped for a return to the land and restoration of Jerusalem, for a renewal of priesthood and kingship.

John Morehead had this to say about my “Is there only one way to heaven?” post, and I want to explore some thoughts in response to it:

…as you developed this piece, for me it lost theological momentum when you got to the section on how the early parts of the post connect to the question of Jesus and other religions. I do think that good arguments can be made for God revealing himself (the “God-consciousness” you refer to) among other religions. At the same time, I wonder how this accounts for Israel as a light to the nations, the proclamation of the one true God in their midst, and the “scandal of particularity” in Christianity.

Tim Challies wrote a short piece a couple of days back explaining why there is only one way to heaven. I had originally thought to discuss his argument in the recent post on Progressive Christianity under the final statement: “It does not claim that Christianity is the only valid or viable way to connect to God.” But there wasn’t space.

I’ve just listened to my friend Michael Cooper talking on the Ephesiology Podcast about the events in Washington last week and the lamentable state of American evangelicalism. He and his co-hosts have some sensible things to say, but I found myself in disagreement over one matter. I think they overstated the contradiction between the behaviour of the Capitol Hill mob and the methodology of the early Jesus movement—indeed, of Jesus himself.

The question of whether the Bible teaches that the unsaved will suffer an eternity of conscious torment in the fires of hell after they die is not quite the hot topic it was ten years ago, when the first edition of this book came out, but it continues to trouble a great many people. For a growing number of disillusioned “evangelicals” it’s all the reason they need finally to ditch the Bible as a compendium of antiquated, wrong-headed, and sometimes quite sinister claptrap.

I noticed recently that in response to the question “What are your favorite progressive Christian resources on the Book of Revelation?” on Twitter, a friend recommended my book The Coming of the Son of Man or “Really anything by Andrew Perriman.” Thank you, friend! His tweet got two likes, one of them by me. But I have often wondered about the appeal—or not—of my quite rigorously historical method to Progressive types.