salvation

Does the new book really say that the NT has no application to us today?

Graham Old (Leaving Münster) asked this question in response to some remarks that Peter Wilkinson made about my book Re: Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church. Rather than address the question under the original book announcement I thought it better to start a new thread. It is the perennial problem of historical readings of the New Testament that they tend to distance the narrative from the reader today. We are accustomed to thinking that the gospel has direct personal relevance to us and to all humanity and we struggle to see how this can be the case if key categories such as ‘judgment’, ‘salvation’ and ‘forgiveness’ are to be historically contextualized. The issue under consideration here is not the whole of the New Testament but the particular question of what it means to say that ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3). This continues the discussion from ‘The death of Jesus in the Gospels’ and ‘The death of Jesus in Paul’.

can someone give me the terms and definitions used in OT and NT for hell and salvation? and a few of the places those particular words are used? i have read quite a few discussions on this forum and would like to have a little better understanding of the words that are actualy used - contextually of course.

The first and most important question we face in asking about the meaning of Jesus’ death in Paul is: What sort of thing are we looking for? This is necessarily a highly abbreviated analysis, but I think that what we need to find is not the right explanatory theory to superimpose on top of Paul’s various arguments and metaphors (substitutionary atonement, Christus Victor, moral influence, etc.) but the eschatological narrative that lies underneath them. The mistake that is typically made is to isolate the cross from the narrative context and transmute it into a singular metaphysical event that can in principle be formulated in terms of a theory of the atonement. This is not necessarily an illegitimate procedure, but problems arise when these theological constructs are turned round and used as interpretive grids for the reading of scripture.

Simeon is a righteous and devout man who has been looking for the ‘consolation’ or ‘comforting’ (paraklēsis) of Israel. The phrase is an unmistakable reference to the theme of the ‘comforting’ of Israel and Zion that is found widely in Isaiah 40-66. The most interesting passage is Isaiah 52:7-10. Here we have an announcement of ‘good news’ that YHWH is returning to Zion following Israel’s protracted exile; he will defeat Israel’s enemies and reign as king. This is what Jesus will enact prophetically when he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. The people of Israel will be comforted, forgiven; her judgment will be brought to an end (cf. Isaiah 40:1-2). Moreover, Isaiah’s statement ‘he has redeemed Jerusalem’ is picked up by Luke in his account of the prophetess Anna, who spoke of Jesus ‘to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem’ (Lk. 2:38).

This is the first of a series of brief exegetical reflections on the birth narratives. I hope they will show that the Christmas stories are not merely the product of pious fancy but have serious thematic relevance for a historical reading of the Gospels. But whatever you make of them, I wish you a merry and meaningful Christmas.

Joseph is told by the angel that the boy will be called Jesus because ‘he will save his people from their sins’. We expect the Christmas story to have universal relevance, good news for all mankind, but the message here is only that Jesus will be Israel’s saviour: he will save his people. The reference to Israel’s ‘sins’ should also be understood in a quite specific eschatological sense. These are the sins that have placed the nation under judgment, the outcome of which will be political destruction if the nation qua nation does not repent.

The allusion to Hos. 6:6 LXX (‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’) brings into view the wider context of Hosea’s prophecy. The people of Israel will take their sacrificial animals to the temple, but they will not find the Lord there (Hos. 5:6). He has withdrawn from them until they acknowledge their guilt and seek his face, saying: ‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him’ (Hos. 6:1-2).

I want to pick up on a couple of issues that Paul Hartigan raised in his ‘NT Wright is seriously wrong’ post. They do not appear as yet to have been covered at any length in the discussion, which has focused on the question of whether the Bible offers us a good God / bad God scenario, though the thread has got rather long and I could easily have missed something.

i did a site search on the teaching often referred to as universal restoration or universal redemption - and found zip.

after 25 years as a christian - on both the inside and the outside of the organised evangelical church - i now find myself looking closely at this teaching and feeling quietly excited and liberated by it.

Recently, a Christian friend who is working in East Asia, and with whom I correspond, has been asking timely, for him, questions about how to talk about Jesus to people who have no religious background. In our dialogue, and spurred on by much that I have been reading at this site, I spent a day re-reading Acts with particular emphasis on what Luke recorded was actually said during ‘proclamation events.’ I have added below the summary I sent my friend. Some of the formatting is awkward, and someday when i have time i will come back and make it better!

Proclamation in Acts

The following is an attempt to summarize the core of each of the different proclamation events in Acts. The idea is that perhaps we can understand better what we should be saying to people by looking at the little bit of information we have of what the early church was saying to their contemporaries.