When it comes to the meaning of biblical terms — like gospel, kingdom, heaven — not a few of us can get irritated and clearly a recent example of yet one more attempt to correct the church and to get the church back on track is N.T. Wright’s chapter “Distorted and Competing Gospels” in his [Read More...]
Surprised by King Jesus
Jan 15, 2015 @ 0:09 by Leave a Comment
Maybe N.T Wright’s best title yet is Surprised by Hope, that word “surprise” giving Wright not a few opportunities to provide the shocking news of the gospel with that word “surprised.” So chp 3 in Simply Good News is called “Surprised by King Jesus.” Which is his way of setting up the reality of Jesus in [Read More...]
Simply Good News: NT Wright’s New Book
Jan 12, 2015 @ 5:02 by Leave a Comment
C.S. Lewis sketched “mere” Christianity in those famous radio talks after World War 2 and the literary deposit, Mere Christianity, has shaped the mind of many of us. Then along came John Stott who “evangelicalized” Lewis’ book in his book Basic Christianity. Then along came England’s third contributor to this basics discussion with Simply Christian, followed by Simply Jesus [Read More...]
Jesus as the Means, the “Good Fairy”
Nov 4, 2014 @ 10:36 by Leave a Comment
In a letter from Franz Ernst Pfisterer to his former seminary professor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pfisterer reflects on DB’s critical observations about a sermon Pfisterer sent to him for critique. Evidently Bonhoeffer pushed against something in the sermon that made Jesus the means. I have been arguing for sometime that the soterian gospel, the gospel that [Read More...]
The Gospel and Global Warming (RJS)
Aug 28, 2014 @ 5:11 by Leave a Comment
Jonathan Moo and Robert White in Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis turn from the evidence for environmental crisis and global warming to a Christian response. There are plenty of secular people who think that the Christian response (at least the evangelical response) is consumption and destruction. Others simply think we have our [Read More...]
Repairing the World: Tikkun Olam
Jun 25, 2014 @ 0:05 by Leave a Comment
What if we take this sentence in its full force: “Jesus is the Savior of the world”? Yes, some balk because “Savior” conjures up some goofy experiences, manipulative to be accurate, with salvation messages and gospel invitations and talking Savior means not talking Lord, and talking Savior means no kingdom but heaven-when-we-die. OK, I get [Read More...]
The Gospel and the Nones
Apr 25, 2014 @ 0:02 by Leave a Comment
Here is a fact: the median church size in America is now at 108 (down from 140). Churches are shrinking, the Nones are rising. So, James Emery White asks in his book The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, how do we close the gap between churches shrinking and the Nones rising? [Read More...]
From the Other Angle
Feb 19, 2014 @ 10:10 by Leave a Comment
The Onion’s piece of how a person thinks about the soterian-gospel-in-brief strikes the person hearing this kind of evangelism: Hello, sorry to bother you, but I was hoping I could borrow just a minute of your time. You see, lately I’ve been thinking about whether there’s something more to life, something I’ve been missing. There [Read More...]
14 Gospel Distortions (Howard Snyder)
Jan 6, 2014 @ 9:52 by Leave a Comment
A very good set of observations by Howard Snyder, and if you go to the link he fleshes out each one. This issue of distorting the gospel is at the heart of our The King Jesus Gospel. 1. Interpret the gospel primarily through Romans. 2. Focus solely on “personal salvation.” 3. Make heaven the goal. 4. [Read More...]
The Boring Word in Theology
Nov 13, 2013 @ 5:02 by Leave a Comment
That word is “prolegomena” and it bores readers to begin a book with pages and pages of prolegomena. I know a 3 volume German theology on a topic, and the whole first volume is prolegomena. But everyone writing a theology, including Mike Bird, Evangelical Theology, begins with prolegomena. But let’s give the guy a hearing. What [Read More...]
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