Donald Hagner’s book How New is the New Testament? First Century Judaism and the Emergence of Christianity is coming to epitomise, in my view, evangelicalism’s sad failure of nerve when it comes to the interpretation of the New Testament’s outlook on the future. As a historian Hagner is fully aware of the “national-political” dimension to the story about Jesus as it is told in the Synoptic Gospels. But as an evangelical he feels obliged to divert interpretation in the direction of traditional eschatological scenarios. His treatment of Peter’s sermon in Solomon’s Portico, following the healing of the lame man in the name of the crucified Jesus, exhibits the same flaws as his attempt to frame the disciples’ question about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel in Acts 1:6 (56-57).

In a section in his chapter on Luke in his book How New is the New Testament?, Hagner sets out an “interpretive dilemma” (41-45). He has gone through the opening chapters of Luke and noted that we find in the infancy stories both “strong motifs of continuity with the language of the OT and Second Temple Judaism” and a radical discontinuity caused by the announcement of the fulfilment of these promises in the birth of Jesus.

He then notes a “puzzling aspect to much of the material exhibiting this continuity”. A good part of it has to do with promises of a “specifically national-political kind, pertaining to the nation Israel per se”. Hagner asks: “In what sense are these expectations truly fulfilled in the coming of Christ?”

Sitting by a pool in Phnom Penh I’ve just picked up Donald Hagner’s book How New is the New Testament? I find much of his work very useful, but I’m expecting to end up some way further in the direction of “the New Testament is not new” than he is. We’ll see.

The opening paragraph sets the scene effectively, but it immediately raises a number of questions, which I will mention briefly:

Among the several paradigm-shifting changes in NT scholarship over the past century, none is more important than the new positive emphasis on Judaism as a religion of grace—a change that has begun to erase the common perception of Judaism as the antithesis of Christianity. Rather than having opposing theologies, Jews and Christians are now increasing perceived as members of the same family of faith, albeit different branches.

The Jesus of the Gospels is not the Jesus of our modern theologies, including proudly Jesus-centred, modern evangelicalism. This saying about the righteous shining like the sun in the kingdom of the Father could, I suppose, be adapted without too much difficulty to a mainstream evangelical message—as a way of speaking about the redeemed in heaven perhaps. But only if we ignore the context. The first century Jesus, who knew the scriptures and who spoke the language of Jewish apocalypticism, did not have in mind “saved” non-Jewish people basking in the glory of God in heaven when he said this. But this is the only Jesus known to us, so it’s about time evangelicals worked out what to do with him.

At the end of the age, Jesus says, the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom “all stumbling blocks and those doing lawlessness” (my translation) and throw them into the furnace, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:41-43).

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.

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.