Re: We have to go back, but not to square one

What wonderful diagrams! However did you manage to transfer them to these comment boxes - and in colour?

My original problems raised on previous threads remain. First, I question the ‘Christendom’ notion as an authentic expression or even interpretation of biblical (or even post biblical) Christianity - pace Stuart Murray - and I think many expressions of the Christian faith throughout the period would question it as a valid way of viewing the church and society - both in the past, and as something which, purportedly, has ended. It rests on a faulty interpretation of cultural and church history. In other words, ‘Christendom’ is a chimera - it lacks biblical substance as a concept, was never clearly defined, and never existed according to the confused definitions of those who coined it.

Second, the hypothesis of the cDNA needs biblical substantiation. My understanding of Paul, for instance, is that the cDNA, or the ‘seed’ of Abraham, which is another way of looking at it, was fulfilled in Christ. It is in him that the new creation came into being, and only in relationship with him that it becomes effective in his people. All the lines converge on Christ. There isn’t a cDNA line that existed independently of him, that he somehow came to facilitate in its onward journey, and that continues more or less independently of him, in his people. This is the impression that your model conveys.

We also have to ask what defined the make-up of this cDNA. In your model, the NT is merely a historical facilitator for the independently onward marching cDNA. So what constitutes the cDNA? It’s this absence of definition that leads me to describe your model as existential - with an existential Jesus who is no longer defined according to the NT in terms of application today. I believe that the NT does define and provide the DNA of the cDNA as it is seen in God’s people today. Which raises many questions of biblical interpretation latent in the broader hypothesis - including a preterism which exceeds the wildest dreams of the radical preterists.

Otherwise it’s a lot of fun to discuss. I just think it runs into too many insurmountable problems to be, well, coherent - to use a word which I don’t like as it is too often slung around amongst academic theologians as a cover for a slanging match. Maybe we do need to go back to square one. Why not?