Marginal Christianity

Divinity Returns in the Messiah In the second temple period, we find the theme which I have come, in recent years, to regard as the major clue to all the early Christian accounts of God’s action in Jesus. Ezekiel tells of the divine glory, riding on the throne-chariot, abandoning the temple to its fate because of the persistent idolatry of people and priests alike. But in the final dream-like sequence of the book the temple is rebuilt, and in chapter 43, the divine glory returns at last. This is the point, as well, of the whole poem of Isaiah 40–55: The watchmen will see the divine glory returning to Zion, though when they look closely what they will see is the figure of the Servant. The point is this: In two of the major so-called post-exilic books, Zechariah and Malachi, the Temple has been rebuilt, but the promise of YHWH’s glorious return remains unfulfilled. The prophets insist that the Spirit will return, but that it hasn’t happened. YHWH will indeed return, ...

  by Peter J. Leithart 12 . 22 . 12 This piece was originally published at the Credenda/Agenda web site in 2009. Being in a Grinchy mood and of a generally Grinchy disposition, I thought it worth re-presenting. Several years ago, when The Passion of the Christ was making headlines, I realized that N. T. Wright has spoiled every Jesus film. Once you’ve read Wright, you realize that none of the movies get Jesus right. Pharisees and scribes are reduced stock villains with caricatured Jewish features. Pilate has to make an appearance, and Herod, but we are given no sense that first-century Israel was the powder keg that it actually was. No film ever gives us what Wright says we should be looking for: a “crucifiable” Jesus, a Jesus who does something so provocative to make the Jews murderously hostile. In the movies, Jesus is a hippy peace-child, a delicate flower of a man, a dew-eyed first-century Jewish Gandhi. Why would anyone want to hurt Him? Maybe because He’s ...

Ch.3: The Cross In Its First Century Setting           The original ancient setting for considering the cross is the Greco-Roman world of late antiquity. The ethos of that world as defined by its great poets and story-tellers was wrath (Homer, The Illiad ) and arms (Virgil, the Aeneid ). Gods or humans, everyone and everything was implicated in these two realities.           This is why that world executed certain people in the brutal and degrading way of crucifixion. IT was designed not simply to kill the criminal but to do so in a degrading fashion. As an example to break the spirit of any onlookers who might be contemplating actions of a treasonous or seditious nature. This assertion of sheer power carried the message of the futility of such actions. That crucifixion often left the condemned person hanging alive in torturous suffering begging for release brought the trifecta of degrada...

  N.T. Wright ABC Religion and Ethics 10 Apr 2015 There are compelling reasons why Christianity is historically incomprehensible without the resurrection. But the question of whether it happened mustn't distract from the question of what it means. Credit: Jurand / Shutterstock I have argued at considerable length that we cannot understand the historical rise of the early Christian movement unless we take as basic their belief that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead, leaving an empty tomb behind him. Of course, one might say that the earliest Christians were mistaken. But I have also argued that the best reason for the rise of that belief is that it really did happen. It is rather too easy, however, to allow the question, "But did it happen?" to distract from the question, "But what does it mean?" The event of the resurrection remains vital, but the meaning is all-important. We in the church have often downgraded t...

  Posted on July 31, 2013 by Bobby Grow Here is the pericope under consideration by both Karl Barth and N.T. Wright, respectively: 5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ~Philippians 2:5-11 Here i...