Marginal Christianity

Setting Remembering that the Synoptic gospels focus on the first stage of God reasserting his rule which is offering Israel one last chance to be the Israel God wanted it to be or face the judgment for refusal, this inaugural sermon of Jesus that Matthew has assembled around the theme of life in this tumultuous and conflicted time under the rule of Jesus is a sermon for that time and place. Andrew Perriman draws the necessary conclusion from this fact: “The sermon on the mount is addressed to first century Jews in Israel. The Beatitudes define that small community of first century Jews in Israel through which and for the sake of which YHWH would restore his people at a time of severe political-religious crisis. It is a community of the helpless, of those who suffered and mourned because of Israel’s wretched condition. They would be persecuted. But they would be the beneficiaries of the impending intervention of YHWH as king to judge his people. They would inherit . . . not...

For some years now Andrew Perriman at his blog and in his books has been forming and re-forming what he calls a “narrative-historical” hermeneutic or approach to interpreting the Bible. His chief concern is to extend an N T Wright-type of approach to read the NT in a fully historical manner rather than stop at the end of the 1 st century a.d.  As he puts it, “What I say is: a narrative theology ought to be able to account for the  whole experience of the people of God, not just the beginning, middle, and end of it. We may give some sort of priority to the early biblical sections of the narrative, but the  story doesn’t stop with the events of the New Testament —even those future events which are foreseen in the New Testament. We are still part of that story, and so is  our  future” ( https://www.postost.net/2019/03/testing-times-narrative-framework-renewal-western-church?fbclid=IwAR28U5wmrfCodsjrYIXyFUUpiJn-dWG3vUPAz-5QnR6Ej6RNkNB0IRBuiUI ). So far as I’m aw...

Wed, 01/03/2017 - 11:48 | Andrew Perriman I’ve just got back from a missions conference at which the idea that believers in general and “missionaries” in particular are being—or should be—transformed into the “image of Christ” got a lot of airtime. I can see what people are getting at. The assumption is that Jesus represents either an ideal way of being human or an ideal way of doing ministry. He’s Jesus, after all! Therefore, to grow towards spiritual maturity is to be conformed to his image. It’s a central plank of evangelical piety. Tim Challies quotes Jerry Bridges : “Christlikeness is God’s goal for all who trust in Christ, and that should be our goal also.” It is used with reference to character: Jesus sets the standard for holiness, love, justice, faithfulness, etc. But it was also suggested at the conference that Jesus perfectly embodies the APEST functions of Ephesians 4:11 in himself, therefore he constitutes the standard for the ministries...

Recently Andrew Perriman posted a comparison and contrast of his own narrative-historical model of biblical interpretation that N. T. Wright’s Five Act Play dramatic model and Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen’s slightly revised version of that model ( http://www.postost.net/lexicon/all-world-stage-narrative-historical-revision-wright-five-act-play-hermeneutic ). The chart below reflects those three models along with my own proposal. Below the chart are my brief assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of each followed by a more extended exposition of my own proposal. Wright Bartholomew and Goheen Perriman Wyatt Prologue: Creation and Fall Bookend 1 of biblical story: Creation/New Creation theme (Gen.1-2) – Presence (Temple) Act 1: Creation Act I: God Establishes His Kingdom: Creation Act 1: The people of God and the land Act 1: Catastrophe (Gen.3-11) Theme of si...