Tim Farron resigned yesterday as leader of the Liberal Democrats because the conflict between his evangelical faith and the values of a progressive liberal party had become unmanageable. His official statement can be read here.

During the election campaign he had struggled in particular to explain his position on gay rights. Under media interrogation he insisted that he supported “equality under law, equal dignity and that includes people whatever their sexuality”. But he clearly also felt bound to maintain some awkward private religious opinions that were at odds with his political convictions.

To take my mind off the gloomy prospect of prolonged political chaos that we’ve woken up to here in the UK, I thought I’d write a quick response to the following question that was put to me—just to get things in perspective:

If I understand what you’ve written on your blog correctly, ​the eschatalogical horizon toward which the NT looks was fulfilled at Constantine. What does that do for our eschatalogical hope today? What “horizon” do we have to live for?

My argument here and in my books (see below) is that in the New Testament there are three narratively distinct eschatological horizons.

In yesterday’s post I touched on the parable of the vineyard in The Shepherd of Hermas Parable 5 as an early instance of an adoptionist christology. Mark Edwards drew my attention to a ZNTW article by Bogdan Bucur, which argues for a non-adoptionist reading of the parable and its interpretation.

This is all a bit of a digression, but it makes for an interesting exercise in interpretation and provides some insight into one strand of early Christian thought. The Shepherd is usually dated late first century / early second century.

One of the critical points at which a narrative-historical method and post-Christendom mission intersect, in my view, is the confession of Jesus as Lord. To say that Jesus is Lord is not the same as saying that Jesus is God, contrary to the arguments of many who support an early high christology. It means only that God has delegated or devolved the authority to judge and rule over Israel and the nations from heaven, which otherwise was his prerogative alone, to the “Son” who had faithfully fulfilled his mission to Israel. For a pre-existence christology we have to look to the Wisdom/Logos motif, not to the language of sonship.

I happened this morning upon a short video in which the highly regarded New Testament scholar Ben Witherington talks about the fate of people who do not hear the gospel. He asks the question: Isn’t it inherently unfair that people should be damned simply because they haven’t had an opportunity to hear the gospel?

There are two main parts to his answer.

First, he argues from Romans 1 that the reality and power of God is evident in all his creation, so every single person knows the truth of God, but people have exchanged the truth for a lie. This means that people will be held accountable for what they know and for what they do with what they know. It is not the case that a person is “lost” because he or she has not heard the gospel.

Following my “Stories about Jesus: how they fit together, and what he means for us today” post a couple of months back, a missionary friend got in touch wondering what this all meant for the “job of the missionary” in the secular Western context. My typical way of answering this sort of question is to spend so long reviewing the biblical narrative that there is little space left at the end to consider the practical implications—I’m not much of a missiologist. This post will be no different, but in my defence I will argue—as a non-missiologist—that telling the story of the creator God as a matter of history is, in fact, the primary task of the missionary in the secular Western context.

I’m afraid I missed it, but yesterday was Ascension Day. Dang. Ian Paul, however, reposted a good piece making the important point that whereas John’s Gospel makes the crucifixion the climax of Jesus’ ministry, the New Testament as a whole pursues the narrative through the resurrection to the ascension and exaltation of Jesus. We often miss this emphasis because our tradition downplays it and because we don’t read carefully. Quite!