Jn. 11:47-53 - The death of Jesus for the nation

Posted Tue, 21/04/2009 - 12:00 by andrew

Caiaphas argues, presumably from a position of quite pragmatic nationalism, that it is better to have Jesus killed than risk a popular uprising that would bring the wrath of Rome down upon their heads (cf. 11:48). John no doubt understood the cynicism of the argument, but attributed the foresight to the Holy Spirit: Jesus would die not only in order that the nation would not perish but also to gather in as one the scattered children of God. I think we have here at least an approximation to the historical kernel of the New Testament’s understanding of Jesus’ death: by having Jesus put to death, the Jewish authorities believed that they were saving the nation from itself.

After Christendom, before meltdown

Posted Mon, 30/03/2009 - 23:18 by andrew

The documents of the New Testament provided a specific eschatological framework for the formation of the early communities of Christ followers. They taught them, first, how to see themselves as a people of God reconstituted beyond the geographical, historical and theological boundaries of Judaism; and secondly, how fundamentally to overcome - from a position of weakness and dishonour - the opposition of Greek-Roman paganism, manifested supremely in the form of the cult of the emperor.

Questions about Re: Mission

Posted Tue, 17/03/2009 - 16:04 by andrew

I came across some comments posted by Patrick in a nice conversation about ‘the future of Christian eschatology’ on Jesus Creed, which capture the sort of problems that many people have with the thesis of both The Coming of the Son of Man and Re: Mission. Rather than clog up Scott McKnight’s elegant blog with my self-justification, I have addressed the main points here. This is Patrick’s complaint:

…I spent some time struggling through Andrew Perriman’s Re:Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church a while ago. As the title suggests he pushes his preterism so far that pretty well nothing in the Bible speaks to Christians today, we are ‘off the map’ in a post-Biblical age. Jesus never imagined Gentiles being added to the church; the kingdom has come and is no longer the hope of the church; the parousia has happened; even Phil 2:9-10 becomes a text fulfilled in the first century etc … I found this sort of radical historicism very destructive, it seemed to remove the Bible from the church - in contrast to N T Wright’s Surprised by Hope which seems to ‘balance’ historicism with the ‘not yet’ in a much more biblical and constructive way?

Visualizing biblical allusiveness

Posted Mon, 16/03/2009 - 16:32 by andrew

This beautiful rainbow image, which won an honourable mention in a National Geographic listing of Best Science Images of 2008, was created by Chris Harrison, a Ph. D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, and Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor from Hamburg. It is a visualization of 63,779 cross-references between chapters of the Bible that Römhild had identified. The 1,189 chapters are plotted along the horizontal axis, the length of each bar corresponding to the length of the chapter - Psalm 119 can be seen hanging well below the others.

Matt. 28:16-20 - The not so Great Commission

Posted Sat, 14/02/2009 - 19:23 by andrew

Reading Ed Stetzer’s reflections on the ‘meanings of missional’ from a year or so back provoked a familiar sense of bewilderment. How is it that five lengthy posts on the meaning of such terms as ‘missional’ and missio dei, plus a large number of appended comments from leading missional thinkers, can offer no more than the occasional passing reference to the biblical narrative? Why do missiologists so often at least appear to take scripture for granted? It seems to me that the idea of mission in the New Testament is not nearly as straightforward as we imagine it to be. The so-called ‘great commission’ is a good example.

Rom. 7:7-12 - The exploitation of the Law by sin

Posted Mon, 09/02/2009 - 20:23 by andrew

Before he will speak about the ‘newness of Spirit’, however, Paul drives from cover a question that appears to be lurking beneath his argument that the fruit of the Law-defined union was death. Does that not mean that the Law is sin? The conclusion cannot be entertained (Let it not be!), but the fact remains that in some sense it is the Law that has produced Israel’s state of wilful disobedience, with the resulting prospect of destruction (cf. 4:15; 5:20); and if that is the case, how can it be said that the Law is holy and righteous and good (7:12; cf. Ps. 19:8-9; 119:137)?

Colin Greene's response to Metavista review

Posted Tue, 03/02/2009 - 14:43 by andrew

Colin Greene has written a response to my review of Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination. It has been published on the Metavista blog, but I have been given permission to republish it here, for which I am very grateful.

Narrative-realism, Preterism, and the relevance of scripture

Posted Fri, 14/11/2008 - 16:37 by andrew

I recently came across - I guess my ears were burning - a brief discussion initiated by Stephen Murray about the difference between a ‘narrative-historical’ or ‘narrative-realist’ approach to biblical interpretation and classic Preterism. The question is pertinent, so I will attempt here to outline what I understand by a narrative-realist hermeneutic and how it compares with Preterism, with some final thoughts on how a historical reading can still provide the basis for a dynamic and transformative dependence on the living Word of God.

Rom. 7:1-6 - Discharged from the Law

Posted Wed, 05/11/2008 - 18:12 by andrew

This is the third of three ‘Do you not know?’ questions. The first two addressed the dilemma of sin and righteous: ‘Or do you not know (ē agnoeite) that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus into his death were baptized?’ (6:3); ‘Do you not know (ouk oidate) that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness?’ (6:16). Now Paul asks about the Law in a similar fashion: Or do you not know (ē agnoeite), brothers, …that the Law rules over the person for as much as the time of life?’

Critical Dutch review of The Coming of the Son of Man

Posted Sat, 01/11/2008 - 17:52 by andrew

My friend Dirk put me on to a review of my book The Coming of the Son of Man by Dr. Pieter Lalleman, who teaches New Testament at Spurgeon’s College in London. The review is in Dutch, so I have had to translate the main points of criticism as best I can. There is a rough summary of the argument of the book, in the course of which Lalleman, rather amusingly it seems to me, expresses his approval of Tom Wright as a biblical interpreter except with respect to what he has to say about the future, as though somehow eschatology can be disconnected from history: ‘Tom Wright is een geweldig goede Bijbeluitlegger en vrijwel alles wat hij schrijft is zeer de moeite waard. Alleen als het over de toekomst gaat, ben ik het absoluut met hem oneens.’ Then he presents four main objections to my thesis and some concluding remarks, which I will attempt to address here.

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