Marginal Christianity

N. T. Wright recently offered a response to some efforts to explain the coronavirus pandemic in terms of a divine judgment for human sins and idolatries (“ Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To,” //time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/). He opines that the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation.” They, heirs of rationalists and Romantics, want clarity and relief through understanding what is going on. Christians, however, must eschew such “dodgy explanations” and turn instead to the practice of lament over these tragic and horrible happenings in our world. Indeed, this seems the only response that is biblically warranted in Wright’s judgment. “It is no part of the Christian vocation,” he writes, “to be able to explain what’s happening a

Emboldened by Jesus’ announcement of the coming of the kingdom of heaven (4:17), his direction for living through this period of crisis and judgment (chs.5-7), and a litany of ten demonstrations of power by Jesus proving his authority to act as the Messiah and agent of God’s coming kingdom (chs.8-9). Now we come to his transferal of his own authority to his disciples and sending them out to spread the news of the coming kingdom throughout Israel (ch.10). It is crucial to read this passage in light of this 1 st century context. Jesus explicitly delimits this mission to Israel: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’” (10:5-7). This inter-Jewish mission is a key component of Jesus’ effort to regather and reconstitute Abrahamic Israel under the shadow of God’s coming judgment of his people. Unlike the so-called Great Com

Matthew continues to mentor his readers and that on two levels. First, he mentors us on how to read the Old Testament. And second, he expounds the deepest significance of Jesus through this way of reading the Old Testament. If Mt. 2 closes with the Messianic “Nazorean,” Mt.3 opens with Messiah’s prophesied forerunner John the Baptist appearing in the desert to announce the near advent of the “Kingdom of Heaven” (v.1). As we might well suspect at this point, Old Testament images and types abound. We’ll take a look at a number of them here. “The Kingdom of Heaven” This is Matthew’s characteristic way of designating what the messianic ministry of Jesus is all about. No other gospel uses this phrase. Where they have “kingdom of God” Matthew seems to have substituted “heaven” for “God.” The common explanation that this is out of respect for Jewish scruples for speaking the name of God appears not to be correct. Matthew does not otherwise avoid the word “God” (51 times) and even