In
my first post on Brian McLaren’s eschatology I sketched his suggestion that God
is inviting us to participate with him in restoring creation, what McLaren
refers to as ‘participatory eschatology’. He then goes on to deal with the term
‘the second coming of Christ’ – a
key term in this subject – and offers a very different understanding.
He begins
his treatment of the phrase by drawing our attention to what Bible scholars
have been saying about the New Testament authors’ ant... Continue reading ...
If
human sexuality is an explosive subject for the church then it is no more than
a damp firework compared to eschatology. This is the subject that Brian McLaren
tackles in the eighth question of his book A
New Kind of Christianity. As someone who was brought up within conservative
church circles McLaren is ‘terribly familiar’ – as he puts it – with this subject,
giving us his firm opinion on the subject from the off. I’m going to blog on
this chapter over three poists.
Eschatology a... Continue reading ...
Tom Wright on the Temple in 1st
century Jerusalem:
“It wasn’t, as sacred
buildings have been in some other traditions, a retreat from the world. It was
a bridgehead into the world. It was
the sign that the creator God was claiming the whole world, claiming it back
for himself, establishing his domain in the middle of it.”
For 1st century temple,
read 21st century church.
Simply
Jesus (London, 2011), page 130.
Continue reading ...
As we walk through creation
trusting that our being the sons and daughters of God is being revealed to it
in however a partial way, one of the things needed within us is peace. Peace is
one of the big Bible concepts. It is far, far more than the absence of war; it
is wholeness, oneness, completeness, security, wellbeing, prosperity, life,
abundance. It is God’s plan for his creation.It is also our internal
state when we have a sense that all is well. All may not be well on the outside;
we m... Continue reading ...
 Does our presence within creation affect our surroundings? Some of the old Celtic saints used to believe so. A couple of weeks ago I referred to the PhD thesis I’ve been reading recently on being revealed to creation – here’s another snippet of what I’ve learned from it.Some of the Celtic saints had an optimistic view of nature in that while they accepted there was some degree of alienation between humanity and creation because of the fall, they did not believe that creation itself w...
Being revealed to creation as the children of God has been my preaching theme for the past few Sundays. The key thought comes from Romans 8:19 where Paul says that creation is waiting with eager anticipation for the sons of God to be revealed – and it must surely be right to include daughters of God in there as well. I think it’s akin to the act of celebrating communion being itself a proclamation of the good news about Jesus (1 Cor 11:26). That is, just by being the adopted children of G...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, March 14, 2011,
In :
Random
A jumble of thoughts this morning. Sorry.
Yesterday Helen was due to continue her
teaching series on spiritual disciplines (prayer, Bible reading etc.) and her
theme for the morning was going to be ‘simplicity’. It didn’t happen. We had
also invited Rosey to share about the work she is involved in (actually, for
‘involved in’ read ‘set up’) in Bangladesh – giving an
education to some of the poorest street c... Continue reading ...
What is the church? It seems that
for many it is the place we go to in order to flee from the world and all the
mess that’s a part of it; a place where we can escape to because it is separate
from the world. Moltmann gives a very different answer. The church, he says, is
‘not “the not-world”; it is the world which is now already turning anew to the
future of God because it follows the call of freedom’ (page 83).
In... Continue reading ...
Restoring the whole of
creation lies at the very heart of God’s mission in our world and this will
include the salvation and restoration of humanity. Our part of that mission is
not only to extend the boundaries of the Kingdom through such work as
evangelism and social action, but also just by living out the redeemed life we
now have. And a central aspect of that is to express the creative side
of ourselves. So... Continue reading ...
Two recent announcements made by the Conservative Party reflect how far they too have moved away from traditional and conservative Christian values. Of course, both Labour and the Lib Dems have distanced themselves from social conservatism a long time ago, but the Tories were pretty much signed up members of the ‘keep the UK a Christian country’ until very recently and could be counted on to defend Christian values on issues such as marriage. But as society has changed so have the polit... Continue reading ...
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