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...

“We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.”                                                      Gideon Lichfield, Technology Review, Mar.17, 2020. One thing we cannot say at this point about the new world of worldwide pandemic we are entering is that once it is over we will return to normal. One reason is that “we” who say that today will not be the “we” who exit the other side of this crisis. We can’t help but think that now but it good to be alerted that it will not likely be the case then. And who can tell what “we” then will think of as normal or the d...

Matthew 25:1-13: The Parable of the Bridesmaids “In the Middle East, to this day, there are some places where the customs at a wedding are quite similar to the ones described here. In the modern West, people don't normally get married in the middle of the night! But in that culture torchlight processions, late in the evening, are certainly known, and it seems as though the proceedings might have several stages, with the bridegroom likely to be delayed at an earlier venue before he arrives for the banquet itself, to be greeted at last by the bridesmaids.” Thus Tom Wright sets the scene for us Westerners for whom this scene is unfamiliar and seems more than a little bizarre. [1] But what’s its point? It’s the difference between sleeping (v.4) and staying awake (v.13). The foolish and the wise (v.2). Readiness for a great event and being taken by surprise by it. By now it should be clear that Jesus refers here to the great crisis in Israel evoked by his coming ...

                                                                        Herman and Herma Neutics offer the first five of Ten Commandments of Bible Reading  1.        You shall expect to hear God speak to you through the Bible, even if you are not always aware of it. 2.        You shall treat the Bible as a strange book from far distant cultures. It is written for you but not to you. What you think you know about it will probably mislead you. 3.        You shall hear a word of Grace in the Bible. Humans hate grace, however, and a...

Written by Branson Parler on February 24, 2014 Print PDF The problem If you’re a proponent of nonviolence, you will definitely hear the question: what about the conquest of Canaan? How does this fit with the call to nonviolence? How does this “violent” God fit with the nonviolent Jesus? Numerous books have engaged this issue and the problem of God’s violence, often focusing on the Old Testament (usually meaning the conquest recorded in Joshua). These questions must be answered carefully because the answers given have far-reaching implications and not simply for our view of nonviolence. My contention is that Christian pacifists must affirm certain points of continuity between Joshua, Jeremiah, and Jesus—conquest, exile, and cross—or else they may undermine the central logic of the biblical narrative and, along with it, our doctrine of God. Conquest One popular answer is that the conquest narratives record Israel’s projection onto God rather than God’s actual instruc...

The Great Judgment (20:11-15) The Great Judgment Images of power introduce this scene. A “great white throne,” an undescribed but imperious “one” sits on it. Creation felling in terror but finding no place to hide. Even more terrifying, the dead are all over the place. Famous infamous, unknown, uncared about, they’re all there. From the sea and Death and Hades the dead come. Before the throne they watch as “books” are opened, full of the deeds of the deed (20:13). Death and Hades join the two beasts in the lake of fire. The sea too, after disgorging its dead disappears and has no place in the new creation. The dragon is already caged in the abyss. The powers that oppose God are defeated. Human beings still face a reckoning before God based on what they have done (20:13). And those who have not done enough to get their name written in the “book of life” join the evil powers in the lake of fire, “the second death 20:14). The first death, of course, is our physical dea...

the fall of babylon (Revelation (18) Rev.17 details the “mystery” of the harlot, the beast, Rome. Only to eyes of faith does the true reality of this figure disclose itself. If you take the blue pill the glitz and glamor, power and prosperity will be what you see. If you take the red pill, however, you will see what John shows you, for Revelation is the red pill par excellence. This illustration from the movie “The Matrix” is a perfect example of how this book works. It unveils, or x-rays, the surface of things so the community of faith can carry on with a sure sense of the deep truth of God and the world it has been called to bear witness in. Rev.18 details in horrible detail the demise of this figure. A great angel announces Rom’s fall, declaring it a wilderness, a haunt of every foul thing, who has polluted and deceived the earth with it oppression, injustice, and cruelty (18:2-3. Another heavenly voice calls God’s people out of Rome. This is not a physical retrea...

Q & A's 5 and 6 are new Catechism 1.     Who is the Christian God? “I am/will be who I am/will be” (Ex.3:14). God is and will be utterly faithful to himself and to the world he created. 2.     Why did this God create our world? To live with us here in shalom (a world rightly ordered in every way), lavishing love and expending power to bring this state of affairs to be. 3.     Why did God create us? To be divine image-bearers, royal representatives who reflect God's character and will throughout the world and care for and nurture the creation to its full flourishing.                                                           ...

Revelation 16: the bowls of God’s wrath 16:1-11 Rev.16 with its bowls of God’s wrath is the third (fourth really but the seven thunders is not rolled out for us (Rev.10) series of seven reflecting the reality and intensity of God’s judgment on the world from Jesus’ resurrection to his return (the 42 weeks, 31/2 years, 1,260 days). Each of the sevens (seals, trumpets, bowls) lead us to judgment and the kingdom of God but in degrees of intensification. The seals affected ¼ of the earth, the trumpets 1/3, and the bowls 100% (perhaps the thunders would have been ½). This is likely a rhetorical device to reflect the inevitability and comprehensiveness of judgment. It’s not going to get better and no one gets out of it! Here the Empire meet its match. It is not the ultimate dispenser of justice or arbiter of punishment. Instead, it is like all else subject to the dictates of divine justice and the reality of divine judgment. The church lives in a world under such judgment, str...

Revelation 14-15 (2) In one of the famous Peanuts comic strips Charlie Brown and his sister Sallie are talking about the Bible verse they needed to memorize for Sunday school. “Maybe it was something Moses said,” mused Sallie, “or something from the book of Re-evaluation.” [1] Actually, that’s a pretty good name for Revelation. That’s it’s primary goal – to get us to re-evaluate everything in the light of Jesus Christ! Richard Bauckham puts it well: “We have already noticed the unusual profusion of visual imagery in Revelation and                                  its capacity to create a symbolic world which its readers can enter and thereby have                              ...