Marginal Christianity

John the Baptist (11:1-6) John the Baptist’s disciples keep him abreast of all that is happening with his protégé Jesus of Nazareth as he languishes in prison. And he grows understandably more and more confused. He was convinced God was ready to lower the boom on an altogether deserving people who consistently and idolatrously refused to be who he called and gifted them to be. He believed Jesus was the divine agent of that judgment. He hoped to inaugurate a New Exodus on the other side of which a newly repentant and obedient people might emerge. But his emphasis was on judgment. He was a thoroughly Old Testament prophet in that regard. But Jesus was spending his time healing and exorcizing and preaching, announcing a new fulfillment of God’s plan and purpose through him. He knew judgment was coming, too be sure (as we have seen). But his vision focused on gathering a new Abrahamic Israel from amidst the old and equipping them to survive this judgment. So John sends ...

Identity and Vocation of Israel (5:13-16)   Jesus details the passions that ground God’s people in faithfulness, a flourishing life, in the Beatitudes. In the short section that follows he addresses their identity and vocation (vv.13-16), their deepest convictions about God, themselves, and their calling in the world, their priorities. “Jesus is calling the Israel of his day to be Israel indeed, now that he is there. What he says here can now be applied to all Christians, but its original meaning was a challenge to Jesus’ own contemporaries. God had called Israel to be the salt of the earth; but Israel was behaving like everyone else, with its power politics, its factional squabbles, its militant revolutions. How could God keep the world from going bad – the main function of salt in the ancient world – if Israel, his chosen ‘salt’, had lost its distinctive taste?” [1] Wright’s reference to “chosen” salt gives us the clue we need. Chosen here means covenant. Salt, th...

Reading the Old Testament as a Christian Book The Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible. At least taken by itself it is. But when the church added the New Testament to it, it became a Christian book. But what does that mean?  How does it effect the way we read it? Herman likes to make a point of how much of it there is - way more than the New Testament. It must have some vital role to play in shaping Christian understanding if the church chose to put it together with the NT. That means we cannot ignore or neglect it as Christians started doing in the second century and in too many circles continue to do to this day. One has only to remember that this is what the Nazis did in Germany as part of their program of rebuilding the German nation of pure Aryan blood. We forget or neglect the Old Testament to our hurt! So, how do we (Christians) read the Old Testament? 1. as part of the one story of God with his creation and creatures. It is chapter 1 of a 2 chapter story...

June 20, 2016 Brett Fawcett Rebel Blogger If you ever wanted to know what some observers mean when they speak of “the culture of death,” just listen the recent interview by CBC Radio’s Carol Off with Jean Vanier. Jean Vanier is the founder of L’Arche, “the Ark”, an international network of communities that care for the mentally disabled by putting them, not in hospitals or “care centres”, but in homes—real homes. Rather than treating those with intellectual disabilities as inconveniences to be shuffled out of the way, L’Arche assistants treat them as core members in the community life they share. In a recent editorial for the Globe and Mail, Vanier commented on the looming physician-assisted suicide legislation in Canada, warning that “we must take care not to obscure or forget the innate dignity of those who are vulnerable”. He believes we should always ensure that . . . Read more at ttp://www.therebel.media/cbc_interview_jean_vanier_euthanasia_culture_of_dea...

    Iain Provan, in his book Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Ch. 10) makes the claim that God is a gradualist. This has significant implications for biblical society, the lessons we should draw from biblical society, and the attitude we should take toward our society today. From all of this it is clear that, in the biblical way of thinking, God does not deal with the world in an all-or-nothing way. He works with the world as he finds it, and (indeed) he accommodates himself to the world as he finds it, so that the world—and human society—may continue. When it comes to the new Jerusalem, God is a gradualist. He nudges the world slowly in the direction of this great city, rather than dropping it from heaven directly upon the world. (p.264) The “all of this” that Provan refers to is the way God works with people in Genesis and Exodus. No one is perfect, and some are downright disgusting at times. G...

by C. C. Pecknold 11 . 10 . 14     R ecently I attended a seminar on religious liberty at Villanova School of Law. I wanted to learn how the law could help protect the Church as we advance into increasingly difficult cultural waters. Instead, the legal eagles offered a much more pessimistic prognosis: legal protections are eroding fast, and law follows culture, so don’t count on the law to protect the Church for long. While I did not walk away entirely hopeless about what the law can do to protect the Church, it did heighten my sense that we are rapidly running out of options. Christians can no longer rely on a cultural consensus and its legal expression in favor of religious belief, especially religious belief that insists on having a place in the public square. After meeting with the lawyers, I had to ask: Now what? I thought about this question when reading  Dale Coulter and  Bianca Czaderna ’s responses to my “The Dominican Option.” For a number of year...

9  So what are we saying? Are we better off? Not at all. We have already stated the charge: both Jews and Greeks are all under the power of sin. 10  As it is written, There is no righteous person, not even one. 11  There is no one who understands.      There is no one who looks for God. 12  They all turned away.      They have become worthless together. There is no one who shows kindness.      There is not even one. 13  Their throat is a grave that has been opened.      They are deceitful with their tongues,          and the poison of vipers is under their lips. 14       Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. 15  Their feet are quick to shed blood; 16           destruction and misery are in their ways; 17       ...