Re: Christ and Eschatology (1)

Peter, this is an excellent series of articles. If you’re open to dialogue, perhaps we could start with a couple of comments and a question with respect to this first piece.

The suffering of Christ on the cross, in particular, no longer has the central redemptive significance which its place in the four gospels would seem to ascribe to it.

To my way of thinking the issue here is not whether Christ has ‘central redemptive significance’ but how that significance is constructed. The New Testament seems to me overwhelmingly to make sense of Jesus within the story about Israel: he dies for Israel’s sins, his resurrection anticipates the restoration of the people, he becomes Lord over this people. It is through that narrative, therefore, that he has significance for the whole world. It seems to me that much contemporary theology omits the mediating role of the story of a people, but the response of the creator to the disintegration of the original creation was to bring a people into existence.

Within this reinterpretation, the significance of the cross as the place where the new covenant was sealed in the blood of Christ is also lost.

I don’t see why this should be the case. God’s new covenant with his people is sealed by the blood of the cross. That is the significance of the Lord’s supper. His death because of the sins of the people is - metaphorically - the means by which the new covenant is sealed. Certainly, it is central to my way of reading the New Testament. The new covenant is not a covenant with the world; it is, just as the old one was, a covenant with a historical community. People may subsequently enter into the covenant, but the covenant is not with individuals; is is with the people, who have been saved from historical destruction by the atoning death of Jesus.

The issue seems to me to be brought to a head in the question of whether Jesus was exclusively an actor within the limited history of Israel, and to be seen as such, or whether the history of Israel was actually reaching a climax of some sort in him as a person, and in his person.

I don’t entirely understand the distinction that you are making here. What do you mean when you say that ‘the history of Israel was actually reaching a climax of some sort in him as a person, and in his person’? How do you account for that biblically?