If the Bible is history, what are we supposed to do?

Austin asks: “How do we know what the creator God wants from us if the Scriptures are history for us and we’re not looking forward to ‘the day of Christ’? What are some practical ways of living this out? How do we interact with those of differing faiths?” Here is a quick list of practical things that we might do—an agenda for a renewed biblical (rather than cultural or political) evangelicalism, let us say. Let me know if I’ve missed anything important.

Read time: 2 minutes

The salvation of the Jews by the “Author of life”—not quite in the way you might think

Here’s an interesting question. What are we to understand by the phrase “Author of life” in the ESV translation of Acts 3:15? Since we would normally say that God as creator is the author of life, we might imagine that Peter is saying, in this very early defence of the apostolic witness, that Jesus is God. We would be wrong. But what’s interesting here is not the negative (Peter is not saying that Jesus is God) but the positive thought that emerges regarding how the saving impact of Jesus’ death was understood—at least, how Luke understood it to have been understood by the early Jewish-Christian movement.

Read time: 5 minutes

Testing times: a narrative framework for the renewal of the Western church

What I say is: a narrative theology ought to be able to account for the whole experience of the people of God, not just the beginning, middle, and end of it—creation and fall, redemption, final judgment. We may give some sort of priority to the early biblical sections of the narrative, but the story doesn’t stop with the events of the New Testament—even those future events which are foreseen in the New Testament. We are still part of that story, and so is our future.

Read time: 7 minutes

Another reason to think that Isaiah’s suffering servant is the generation of Jews which grew up in Babylon

Whoever finally redacted Isaiah 40-55 saw fit to insert or leave the passage about the suffering servant between a promise concerning the redemption of Jerusalem and the return of the exiles (Is. 52:1-12) and the assurance that the ruined city would be abundantly repopulated: “the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married” (Is. 54:1). It’s possible that the passage originally belonged to quite a different context, or to no context, but as things stand, we have to reckon, both historically and canonically, with its current location. It’s an integral part of the story of the exile and the return from exile.

Read time: 5 minutes

About whom does the prophet say this?

In the famous “servant song” of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 the prophet describes a person who has suffered punishment because of the sins of Israel, and whose sufferings have had some sort of redemptive effect:

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Is. 53:5–6; cf. 53:11-12)

Traditionally, this has been interpreted as a prophecy about Jesus, and the language of the passage is certainly applied to Jesus in the New Testament (e.g., Matt. 8:17; Jn. 12:38; Rom. 15:21; 1 Pet. 2:22-25).

Read time: 4 minutes

Who will recline at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven?

The Canaanite woman in Matthew’s story got the leftovers from the table at which the “children” of the household of Israel were being fed. She had no right to sit at the table, nor was any such right promised to her or her daughter; and it is clear that Jesus found her a distraction.

The earlier encounter with the centurion whose servant was sick is similar in many respects (Matt. 8:5-13). Like her he knows that as a Gentile he is unworthy to receive this Jewish miracle-worker into his house and has to argue his corner. The woman claims the right to pick up the crumbs from under the table; the centurion makes a persuasive case for healing at a distance. Both make a deep impression on Jesus and get what they came for.

Read time: 8 minutes

What did it mean to “see” the coming of the Son of Man in clouds?

When Jesus says that some people will “see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mk. 13:26), does he mean this literally—picking up on a recent comment? Does he expect people to look up to the sky and actually see a human figure descending to earth on a cloud, like Mary Poppins?

Read time: 6 minutes