When somebody says to me, I don’t believe in God, my first response is, Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Almost always, it’s the God of supernatural theism.
What’s it all about, Alfie? Its lyrics are not particularly profound, but the question has stayed with me. What’s it all about? What’s life all about? What’s Christianity all about? What’s salvation a...
What was going on at the time? What were the circumstances that the author addressed? What did the author’s words and allusions mean in their ancient historical and literary setting? Without context,...
We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it...
We do not think that Jesus thought that the purpose of his life, his vocation, was his death. His purpose was what he was doing as a healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement initiator. His...
We can now see that the fundamental difference between those divergent visions of earth’s final kingdom is not about ends, but about means. The imperial kingdom of Rome—and this may indeed apply to an...
Two statements about the nature of the gospels are crucial for grasping the historical task: (1) They are a developing tradition. (2) They are a mixture of history remembered and history metaphorized.
Thus, a fifth stroke in the sketch. Jesus was a first-century Jewish prophet announcing the kingdom of God, believing that this kingdom was inaugurated with his own work, summoning others to join him...
This relationship with God, and all that flows from it, are the purpose of the Christian life. The invitation of the Christian gospel is to enter into that relationship in which our healing and wholen...
This picture, I believe, makes very good sense historically. Jesus’ critique of his contemporaries was critique from within; his summons was not to abandon Judaism and try something else, but to becom...
Theological controversies over the centuries have sometimes been treated as if they were really important even though they were also often arcane. For instance, a Trinitarian conflict split the Wester...
The risen Jesus opens up the meaning of scripture. The risen Jesus is known in the sharing of bread. The risen Jesus journeys with us, whether we know it or not. There are moments in which we do come...
The point: only a small minority of Christians and for only a brief period of time have taught biblical inerrancy and the sole authority of the Bible. So how and why has it become orthodox Christianit...
The human products of bread and wine become a means of grace, earthen vessels whereby the sacred becomes present to us. So also the Bible is sacrament, a human product whereby God becomes present to u...
The four-week period of Advent before Christmas—and the six-week period of Lent before Easter—are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggested that Lent was...
The coming kingdom of God was not, then, a matter of abstract ideas or timeless truths. It was not about a new sort of religion, a new spiritual experience, a new moral code (or new strength to observ...
The Politics of the Bible The key to seeing the political passion of the Bible is hearing and understanding its primary voices in their ancient historical contexts. These contexts are not only literar...
Sin needs to be demoted from its status as the dominant Christian metaphor for what’s wrong among us.
Rather, the language of divine agency here emphasizes the theme of God’s grace: God provided the sacrifice.
Rather than imagining God as a personlike being out there, this concept imagines God as the encompassing Spirit in whom everything that is, is. The universe is not separate from God, but in God. Indee...