This is a knee-jerk, end-of-the-week, dogmaphobic, book-promoting (see below) reaction to a post on justification on the Zondervan Academic site that came up today on my news feed. The post, called simply “What is justification?”, is an adaptation of material from an online course on Romans by Douglas Moo.

Moo gives a classic Reformed exposition of the doctrine. The fundamental human problem is that we are estranged from God by sin. Justification is God’s response to that problem. When people respond in faith to the message of the gospel, which is that Jesus died for your sins, God declares them innocent or righteous, even though in reality they are nothing of the sort.

Barney, who is clearly still having a hard time focusing on his PhD studies, sent me a copy of an essay by Wolfhart Pannenberg to read. We will be discussing it tonight over a pint, so I’ve taken the opportunity to summarise it here and present some initial thoughts regarding its relevance for what I am calling the narrative-historical method. The essay is “The Crisis of the Scripture Principle”. It was delivered as a lecture on a number of occasions in the US in 1963 (so Americans understand the argument already) and is included in the collections of essays Basic Questions in Theology, Vol. 1.

He who asked what happens to us after death has also asked whether I believe in the immortality of the soul. The short answer is no. A slightly longer answer would go something like this….

It’s a generalisation—we always have to reckon with the extent to which Jewish thought was hellenised in the period—but I think it’s correct to say that the immortality of the soul was a Greek contribution to the history of Christian thought.

I happened to hear a point-blank sermon last Sunday about the judgment of God. The gist of it was that just as God punished sinful humanity long ago by means of a flood of water, he will again punish sinful humanity by means of a flood of fire. Come back next week for the good news.

One of the New Testament passages used in support of this dour message was Luke 17:20-37. The Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God will come. He tells them that it is not coming with signs to be observed; for “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you”.

Jesus then goes on to warn the disciples what to expect in the coming days (“The days are coming when you…”). The son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. As in the days of Noah and when Lot went out of Sodom, “on the day when the Son of Man is revealed” people will be caught out by the sudden calamitous turn of events. At that time, whoever seeks to preserve her life will lose it, whoever loses her life will keep it. Of two people in a bed, one will be taken, the other left. Of two women grinding grain, one will be taken, the other left.

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.