Marginal Christianity

The Place of the Old Testament           As we embark on God’s response to humanity’s revolt against him we face the fact of the Old Testament. This sprawling, daunting, mystifying, complex story occupies the vast majority of the Christian Bible. That alone makes us ask “What’s going on in the Old Testament anyway?”           The church adopted the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible as their own and joined them to those documents that eventually became the New Testament to form it Bible. So what is the relation they discerned between these two sets of texts that made it possible and plausible to read them together? The church understood its existence as a part of the long story of what God had been doing in and for the world from creation onwards . However complicated and difficult it may be to understand that relation at points, the fact of the Christian Bible as Old and New Testaments ...

by Gina Dalfonzo 1 . 22 . 16 If you ever doubt that C. S. Lewis was gifted with a prophetic voice, you need look no further for correction than Prince Caspian. In the story, you may remember, Narnia is in a desperate situation. The Telmarines have taken over, and the citizens of Narnia have been persecuted, silenced, and driven into hiding. When Prince Caspian—a Telmarine himself, but one who sympathizes with the Narnian cause—joins forces with them, this leads to a fresh round of attacks from the other Telmarines and their king, Miraz. The Narnians try to summon help by using Queen Susan’s horn—and they are successful, though not all of them realize it right away. Drawn to Narnia by the call of the horn, Peter and Edmund and their guide, the dwarf Trumpkin, come upon a handful of Narnians meeting with Prince Caspian. Nikabrik, another dwarf, is angry that apparently no help has come from Aslan or the old kings and queens of Narnia. While others argue that “help will come” if...

Giles Fraser Tolstoy’s War and Peace is well over a thousand pages. And the BBC has been criticised for whittling it down into a mere six episodes. So it’s obviously ridiculous to try and summarise such a whopping doorstopper in three short sentences. But seeing as Tolstoy believed there was quite a lot to be said for foolishness, here goes: all Christians are fools. Politicians can’t allow themselves to look or behave like fools. Therefore, politicians cannot be Christian. No wonder the Russian Orthodox church excommunicated him in 1901. He was a thorn in the side of organised religion and, even more so, a vigorous opponent of the state. For Tolstoy, the state was one great big protection racket, a monopoly of organised violence demanding money for a false promise of security. For by the raising of armies its citizens organise for war and yet also make themselves a target for attack. Thus the Christian state is a contradiction in terms. Not that you’d know it from the BBC’s ...

We are, however, not the way we’re supposed to be. We all know it. Something’s out of sync. We don’t function like we should. We looked a bit at evil in the creation above. Now we tighten the focus to look at what’s gone wrong with humanity. Traditionally we call it the “Fall.” I think the term “catastrophe” better catches the widespread and tragic character of what has happened than Fall. Whatever we call it, though, Gen.3-11 narrates the moment of catastrophe in the Garden of Eden as well as the catastrophic ripples of this event that engulf the entire planet in chaos (uncreation). This litany of horror sadly remains most relevant to our lives today suggesting that as much as the world has changed over recorded history human beings have not changed at the core of who they are. We Start with Original Sin. But to start with original sin does not mean starting with Adam and Eve in Gen.3. Rather, it means starting with Jesus Christ. “Compared with Him we stand there in all our ...