A narrative-historical approach brings into view the large-scale, national and civilisational events and processes that frame “theological” reflection. What it comes down to is that we cannot properly understand Jesus without taking into account the foreseen war against Rome, or understand the… (
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The standard evangelical response to the climate crisis is that the church should preach and practice creation care as a witness to the good news about Jesus. In that respect, in the words of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK, we should understand “climate change as a pivotal gospel issue of our… (
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We screened the People’s Emergency Briefing film in the week before this message, so the climate crisis loomed menacingly. In the film, Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous fame asks a good question: “What’s the matter with us?” What is the matter with us as a civilisation?There is no eco-… (
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For most of us, subjectively, the everyday experience of being human probably hasn’t changed very much, but we may be aware of a storm of questions blowing furiously outside the house, rattling the windows and loosening tiles. What does it mean to be male and female? What is a “normal” state of… (
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The consumption of the planet’s resources—food, land, natural materials, fossil fuels—and the failure to deal with the waste products are central characteristics of modern societies. Scientific progress, technological ingenuity, and cheap energy have produced a massive acceleration in consumption… (
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A couple of weeks back, I gave a short presentation at the SBL Global Virtual Meeting setting out the central argument about the opening lines of the Philippians Christ encomium from my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. This video is an improved… (
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I had a conversation last week with an old friend, Scott Lencke, about what I have been calling a “narrative-historical” approach to the reading of the Bible and of the New Testament in particular. Scott has made it available on his new podcast, or you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.He says… (
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I had a great chat with Sam Tideman recently, following up on a number of posts addressing questions raised in a debate between James White and Dale Tuggy asking “Is Jesus Yahweh?” A previous conversation with Sam addressed “The Preexistence of Christ and Narrative Historical Theology.” I would… (
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I did an interview last week with John Morehead, who directs Multifaith Matters. His organisation aims to provide support for individuals, churches, and organisations doing mission in a pluralistic religious context, so we talked about “narrative-historical approaches to the gospel, salvation, hell… (
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Mike Bird is one of the editors of the Studies in Early Christology series (Wipf & Stock), of which my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul is the first published title. Mike is prodigiously productive but he found time to interview me about the… (
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I recently did an interview with Sam Tideman for his Transfigured YouTube channel. It’s also available as a podcast.
Sam gave me a chance to present some of the ideas developed in my book on the question of whether Paul believed that Jesus had pre-existed his earthly life. But we also talked about… (
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This version of my little animated introduction to some of the key ideas in my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul has German subtitles provided by Helge Seekamp.
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This goes over much of the ground covered in the previous post introducing some of the core ideas in my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul, only this time with audio and moving pictures. Maybe some people will find the visualisation helpful. I’… (
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Earlier this week I had a stimulating online conversation with my friend Michael Cooper. Michael is a missiologist, and back in the day, when he used to hang out with Communitas, we spent long hours talking about scripture, narrative, history, and mission in the post-Christian western context. So… (
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I did this video podcast interview with Cliff Sekowe a few months back. Cliff is an amiable South African pastor and theologian who is keen to get scholars talking sensibly about some the intellectual challenges facing contemporary Christian faith. He had heard the podcast I did with Pete Enns and… (
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This is a quick one—an audio version of a post from 2018 on the doctrine of the second coming. Simply put, the evangelical church needs to choose between dogma and history, and I think we should choose history. For more on the argument about the judgment of the sheep and goats see this post. (
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Here’s another podcast in the “mission in post-Christian Europe” category. It’s an interview with Paul and Jordan Prins and Sheila Wittenberg about their Urban Monastics project. They have some really good things to say about cross-cultural mission in Western Europe, their reasons for starting an “… (
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I’ve got to know Rob Bavington through his connection with Communitas. He has been something of an accidental church-planter, first in Sweden for some years, now in Bradford. We talk about what he’s learned, what he’s learning, and some of the less obvious cross-cultural… (
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I’m planning to do the occasional podcast interview with people doing mission in the Western secular context. This is the first one. I’ve got to know Lynsey and Stuart Gilmour through Communitas and I love listening to them talk about who they are and what they do. They live in Stenhousemuir,… (
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This is the audio version of a recent post on my blog. There’s a lot going on in the world right now. Climate change and ecological destruction is relatively slow and longer term, but it is likely to constitute an existential crisis on an epochal, even geological, time scale. This podcast… (
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