Bible and Mission

  As the Western world shifts to embrace a post-Christian culture, we might pause to remember from what we were delivered when Christian faith first took hold of pagan antiquity.   For this, we might quote someone at the beginning of Christian witness in the Roman Empire—the apostle Paul—and someone writing at the end of pagan rule in the early 4 th century—Eusebius.   If we wanted to play with the language of today, we might say that Christianity ‘cancelled’ the cultures of the Graeco-Roman world; but that would not be quite accurate.   Christians were persecuted and murdered during those first 300 years, but the Church steadily grew.   They witnessed to the culture and could not have cancelled it even if they wanted to do so.   Only once the first Christian emperor, Constantine, began to pass laws and favour the Church did any power come into play against pagan culture.   By that time, many, many people had embraced Christianity.   Today’s canc...

  The boldness of Christian prayer lies not in any merits of our own or in that of others but wholly in Jesus Christ our Lord.   Nor does it lie in some working up of faith on our part where God is held to the mat and forced to honour our requests because we have achieved some level of effective faith.   Indeed, such a false understanding of faith turns faith into a work of our own.  As a work, such faith is understood to be a merit of our own that requires God to reward.   This erroneous view of faith is the antithesis of a faith in God that acknowledges Him as the author of every good and perfect gift (James 1.17).   Our confidence is not in ourselves but in God.   We know that God is our Heavenly Father.   He wants us to come to Him, to make known our requests before Him (Philippians 4.6).   James encourages us to ask God for what we need, though with right motives (4.2-3). Our access is not through human merit but through Christ Jesu...

  The Church is not a zoo ... and that is why unity, not diversity, is its communal value.   As Aristotle rightly noted, ethics develop from clarity about what is our end or goal ( Nicomachean Ethics 1094a).   To make diversity our end rather than unity will produce an entirely different ethic for the Church.   The present essay will, positively, explore the significance of unity—and a particular unity in Christ—as the Church’s moral end by considering Paul’s words on the matter in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12.4-7, and Ephesians 4.1-6.18.   It will also address, negatively, the errors that result when diversity replaces unity as the Church’s community value—including when unity is regarded as a product of diversity seen as a value in itself (e.g., ecclesial multiculturalism).   The essay functions as a plea for a Biblical understanding of the Church at a time when our Christian ecclesiology is in tatters and many are advocating an error stemming directly fro...

[This series of essays seeks to define Progressive Theology and offer a critique of it.] Progressive Theology,  Ethic of Diversity, and Revelation 7.9 Rudolf Bultmann famously asserted that ‘‘Every assertion about man is simultaneously an assertion about God and vice versa .’ [1]   His actual understanding of this necessary relationship emphasized the anthropological far more than the theological, since his concern to demythologize Scripture leaned heavily into a scientific rather than theological understanding, and his existentialism meant that theology was meant to answer the question of human existence.  While Bultmann’s anthropocentric existentialism focussed more on the individual in light of the human condition, Progressive Theology, also anthropocentric, is focussed more on the social condition in light of power dynamics.  The language often used for this is ‘social justice’, which is understood in reference to group identities and their relationships. One t...

[This essay continues an attempt to define and offer a critique of Progressive Theology.] The Hermeneutics of Listening and Creative Appropriation In matters of interpretation, Progressive Theology is characterized by listening and creative appropriation.  ‘Listening’ in postmodernity replaces interpretation and research in traditional, Renaissance, and Enlightenment scholarship.  It does not seek some objective truth, whether held by tradition or subjected to rational and scientific enquiry.  Its goal is much more experiential, diverse, and empathetic, listening to the experiences of a variety of persons invited to the discussion, particularly those whose voices have not been heard.  The intended (or pretended) goal is non-judgemental love and compassion, as in the latest document of the Church of England—‘Living in Love and Faith’, rather than faithfulness to Scripture or the orthodox Church. [1]   Scripture is used (isolated quotes, values, themes) to prese...