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Mike Morrell prompted me initially to respond to Kevin Beck’s This Book Will Change Your World, and has now posted some thought-provoking comments. Since they mainly have to do with the thesis of Re: Mission, a new post seems in order. His basic argument, if I have understood him correctly, is that while there is something appealing to the postmodern about the emphasis on the narrative particularity of biblical truth, there is still something that “points to a certain cosmic or larger scope of inclusion of all humanity in the blessings of God, not just a subset called ‘the people of God’”.

William Cheriegate asked me to expand on the following remark in my post on Transmillennialism – not least for the benefit of those who ‘grew up in the midst of a conquering American “christian” empire’:

To my mind, the Bible has lower expectations about the nature of the impact of the people of God on the world around it.

The expansion has become something of a story in its own right, a summary of how I think the biblical narrative situates us in the world, shapes our calling as a distinct people of God, and sets the scope of our expectations and ambitions.

I read Kevin Beck’s This Book Will Change Your World in response to some gentle and persistent prompting from Mike Morrell. As Mike observes, there are some interesting similarities and some distinct differences between Kevin’s exposition of Transmillenialism and the thesis of The Coming of the Son of Man and of Re: Mission. Some of the issues raised were addressed a few years ago in a post on Transmillennialism™ on Open Source Theology. I won’t go into great detail here but will list some of the thoughts that came to mind as I read the book, which hopefully will help to clarify the main points of agreement and disagreement.

I have started reading Emmanuel Katongole’s A Future for Africa: Critical Essays in Christian Social Imagination as preparation for the Amahoro conference in Johannesburg in a couple of weeks. Katongole is a Catholic priest from Uganda who is now associate professor of theology at Duke Divinity School and co-director of its Center of Reconciliation.

His broad argument, as stated in the introduction, is that what Africa needs to overcome its various intractable social problems – ‘poverty, violence, instability, tribalism, and so forth’ – is not more good advice, not ‘abstract principles and recommendations’, but a new imagination. Christian ethics for Africa has been so preoccupied – understandably – with the ‘search for realistic and pragmatic considerations and solutions’ that it has failed to grasp the fact that the problems are ‘wired within the imaginative landscape of Africa’.

I’ve just been listening to what strikes me as an excellent introductory podcast on eschatology by Martin Scott - a nice example of how a rethinking of eschatology along narrative-historical lines has the potential for generating good new theological syntheses. It caught my eye because Martin lists The Coming of the Son of Man as a ‘provocative’ influence on his thinking alongside NT Wright and Open Theology. But he rather spoils the effect, from my point of view, by concluding that I have presented ‘such a strong fulfilment in the events of AD 70 that you’re left wondering if he proposes an actual parousia at all’.