Marginal Christianity

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...

                                                  36  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37  For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38  For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39  and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40  Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41  Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42  Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on...

Ch.7: Suffering, Redemption, and Love     Only in Isa.53 do we find a conjoining of suffering as the means and not only the context of Israel’s long-expected deliverance from its sins. In Isa.53 this is a new theme in Isa. 40-55. The surrounding chapters set the stage for this organic development. Trouble happens when we taken this “suffering as means of forgiveness” theme out of its context in Isaiah and plot it in a different story. The danger of reading this theme in a pagan narrative is very real. There is evidence of this happening in 2 and 4 Maccabees in the famous story of the seven brothers. Isaiah is strong on the idea of divine faithful love (lacking in the Maccabean writings). Thus, the idea of atonement involving an angry deity needing to be pacified is ruled out. There is a proper sense of divine anger, of course. Wright says, ". . . the suggestion that 'sin' does not make God angry (a frequent idea in       ...

Ch.6: The Divine Presence and the Forgiveness of Sins     God seeking a “place for his Presence on earth and among his creatures is the centerpiece of the Bible’s story. It develops throughout the story in different forms and moods.     The ark of the covenant is central to this theme. A special box covered in gold built to hold the tablets of the Ten Commandments Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai, it is not difficult to see why it was considered so special. The lid of this box, its covering, became the meeting place for God and his people. It signaled his presence and interest in being at the center of the life of his people. It served as the context for Israel’s sacrificial system which is all about God’s presence. It was housed in the Tabernacle, placed in shrine at Shiloh when the people entered the land, and David brought it to Jerusalem to inhabit the temple built by his son Solomon. The conversation between God and David is among the most ...

Ch.5: “In All the Scriptures”           What story does Jesus’ work in rescuing humanity and restoring them to their original identity and vocation organically grow out of. The story of Israel grows out the story of the creator and his creation. The Old Testament ends without a clear resolution to the dilemmas and troubles encountered along the way.           Exile is the summary name for these dilemmas and struggles. The big one is the deportation to Babylon in the 6th century b.c. But other smaller “exiles” punctuate the story leading up to this one.                     -Abraham goes down to Egypt and gets in difficulty                     -Isaac follows suit. -Jacob has to flee to live with his uncle...

Ch.2: Wrestling with the Cross, Then and Now           One of the chief claim NTW advances is that atonement must be congruent with eschatology. That is, the means (atonement) God uses must be congruent with the ends (eschatology) toward which he is working. How we conceive God’s goals determines how we will understand his works.           Medieval Catholicism bought into an eschatology of individual salvation from sin and life with God in heaven forever. This its theory of penal substitutionary atonement was congruent with this eschatology.           Luther and Calvin challenged the excesses that Medieval Catholicism developed but never challenged the Heaven-Hell schema that determined its eschatology nor the assumption that the cross had to do with pacifying God’s wrath. They could not, therefore, see the biblical eschatology of new creation...

Ch.1: A Vitally Important Scandal The evocative and existential power of the symbol of the cross remains as potent as ever for believer and non-believer alike. Why is that? This is the question N. T. Wright (NTW) proposes to treat in this book. Why do Christians consider this event, so scandalous in so many ways, the day the world changed forever and for its good? This question resists easy answers. But fortunately its power and reality do not depend on such answers, easy or otherwise. Yet it is a question and as such demands an answer (as best we can supply one). So NTW sets his hand to provide one. He lays out an agenda for his answer at the close of the chapter (18). First, there’s the historical question (Why did Jesus get killed by Pilate at the insistence of the Jewish leaders?) followed closely by the theological (What did God intend this event to achieve?) question, both of which are inextricably intertwined. And then finally, and related to these two questions i...

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...