The Bible for Normal People interview: Does the New Testament Predict the Future?

A little while back I did a Bible for Normal People podcast interview with Pete Enns and Jared Byas. The question addressed: “Does the New Testament Predict the Future?” It’s now available here. In case anyone listens to it and finds it all rather bewildering, here’s a rough overview of my argument about New Testament eschatology, with a few links to other posts to help fill out the picture.

Read time: 4 minutes

The eschatological horizons of David Bentley Hart’s universalism

David Bentley Hart thinks that we find in the New Testament “seemingly contrary eschatological expectations.” The discussion is found in the second meditation, on judgment, in his book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation.

He has listed a number of texts which, in his view, appear to “promise a final salvation of all persons and all things, and in the most unqualified terms.” One of the most important is the statement in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God “intends all human beings to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of truth,” which I considered in a recent post. But it must also be admitted that “Jesus speaks of a final judgment, and uses many metaphors to describe the unhappy lot of the condemned.” How are these two aspects—universal salvation and final condemnation—to be reconciled in a coherent theological system?

Read time: 8 minutes

In what sense was the kingdom of God “in the midst of” the Pharisees?

I don’t think that the “kingdom of God” is half as complicated or mysterious as people sometimes make it out to be. In the Synoptic Gospels, it has in view a future moment in time when Israel’s God will intervene in the history of his people to put things right—to punish sin, to defeat enemies, to restore faithfulness—and to establish a new government.

The idea is everywhere in the Old Testament prophets, but a simple example is the proclamation of good news to the ruins of Jerusalem that “Your God reigns”—or as the Targum puts it, “The kingdom of your God has been revealed.” YHWH is about to act decisively in the eyes of the nations to liberate his people from captivity, bring them back to the land, and restore the fortunes of the city (Is. 52:7-12).

Read time: 6 minutes

Questions about the death of Jesus

This post is a response to some questions put to me by a young Christian who is exploring his faith, as he puts it. He writes: “I’ve been absorbed in your blog for the past couple of hours as I haven’t seen anything like it. It’s very different, and I’m sure you can sympathize with any feelings of disorientation I have!” I’m quite pleased with that. Disorientation in not much more than two hours!

He’s certainly grasped the basic argument about Jesus’ saving death in that short time, and he wants to push back in a couple of places.

Read time: 7 minutes

Summarising Romans again: from individuals to groups to apocalyptic narrative

Pete Enns has an excellent Bible for Normal People podcast on Romans in which he “shares 10 things essential to understanding the book of Romans.” I wrote about this last year, but since Geoff Leslie asked about it, here’s a brief rerun.

Enns’ emphasis on the importance of groups gives a better account of the letter than Andrew Errington’s tweeted synopsis, which reads the text, in time-honoured fashion, as a treatise (or “tweet-ise”) on personal salvation and life under grace (except that, by some unexplained logic, in the end all Israel will be saved).

Read time: 7 minutes

Does God intend all people to be saved? The universalism of David Bentley Hart

The first thing to say about David Bentley Hart’s book, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation is that it takes as its point of departure the “Question of an Eternal Hell”. Immediately here, I think, we have the trouble with universalism. It has been devised as a solution to a theological problem, not a biblical problem.

Read time: 10 minutes

Paul’s letter to the Romans in 24 tweet size pieces

I’m impressed by Andrew Errington’s lively tweeted summary of the argument of Romans—so impressed, in fact, that I thought I’d try a narrative-historical version. It’s an excellent little exercise, given the complexity of the letter. It’s crucial for good interpretation to have a sense of the whole. And, of course, of the historical context.

I’ve put the two side-by-side here to highlight the differences of emphasis. Errington’s approach is more conventionally evangelical. He reads Romans as a treatise on the theme of salvation or justification on the basis of grace rather than of works.

Read time: 11 minutes