Posted by Dyfed on Friday, May 18, 2012,
In :
Bible
We refer to him as the
apostle to the Gentiles (I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want a capital 'A' there)
and yet isn't it odd how little of Paul's gospel preaching to the Gentiles is actually
recorded in the book of Acts. Depending on your view of how the Bible was
inspired you would have thought that the Holy Spirit would have prompted Luke
to give us a lot more examples of how it's done.
Good news to the Jews
That's not to say that we
don't have any examples of Paul's preaching in Acts; we do. B...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, May 11, 2012,
In :
Bible
So we've been looking at
Paul and how he writes about Adam and Jesus, sin and salvation. If you read
last week's post you will know that I've been making some general points before
coming to Romans 5. What I'm trying to do (in case you're here for the first
time) is to show that it isn't necessary to believe in an historic Adam and Eve
just because Paul draws a parallel between them and Jesus.
Who fell?
But we've just hit one
little point that needs to be touched upon already. Paul doesn't dr...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, May 4, 2012,
In :
Bible
In the last post in this
series on Genesis I looked at the whole issue of sin and whether we have to
hold on to a historical Adam in order to make sense of it, since sin and
salvation are issues which force some people to reject the scientific evidence
and thus insist on a literal reading of the text. As I pointed out in that post
this is not necessary. But the question is then raised of what should we make
of Paul? After all he linked the idea of Adam's sin and Jesus obedience very
closely t...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, May 2, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
And so we come to the final
and concluding chapter of Roger Mitchell's Church,
Gospel, & Empire. It has been a challenging read with some difficult
concepts being discussed. His forthcoming 'more accessible' volume will
undoubtedly be welcome! But there is little doubt in my mind that it is a piece
of work that is crucial to grasp and implement for those concerned about seeing
a transformed church.
In providing a theological
understanding for what has gone wrong since the fourth century Mitche...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, April 30, 2012,
In :
Pagan influences
‘The Supper has become an
empty ritual officiated by a clergyman, rather than a shared-life experience
enjoyed by the church.’ These are particularly strong words by Viola and Barna
in Pagan Christianity in a chapter
tackling both sacraments – Communion and Baptism. Let’s see how they arrive at
this conclusion.
Baptism and the sinner's prayer
Their central point about
Baptism's place in church life is that it was replaced by the ‘sinner’s prayer’
in the nineteenth century. I find ...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, April 25, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
In developing a theology of
kenarchy Roger Mitchell also provides the beginning of a method of interpreting
the Bible in a way that would help us to more clearly see the self-emptying
Jesus and the kingdom-based-on-humility within its covers. For many the idea of
having to interpret the Bible is anathema. All we should do, they say, is to
read what's on the page and a take literalist approach to the text. However,
that approach is itself an interpretation of the text as it is clear that many
...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, April 23, 2012,
In :
Pagan influences
Is tithing biblical? After
seeing Viola and Barna’s views in Pagan
Christianity on so many other subjects it will not surprise you to learn
that on this issue too they take a contrary view to most of the contemporary
church. While tithing is certainly an Old Testament principle – and an
important one at that – it does not feature in the life of the first century
church as a requirement made of the followers of Jesus.
Tithing as tax
In analysing where the practice
came from PC goes into so...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, April 18, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
In the previous post on
Roger Mitchell's book I looked at how he calls on us to understand God
exclusively through the self-emptying love of Jesus. By doing this God is
stripped of the imperial sovereignty that he has had to carry in the Christian
church since the 4th century. But this new way of perceiving God (or at least a
return to an original perception) must then lead to the followers of Jesus
adopting the same lifestyle themselves. That is, the church must itself be
kenotic in its prac...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, April 6, 2012,
In :
Random
John records three of the
sayings that Jesus uttered from the cross. The last is a deep theological
reflection on how Jesus was accomplishing his task; the second was an
indication that Jesus was fully human and could physically thirst in those
agonising hours; and the first … well the first saying bothers me. 'Woman, here
is your son,' he says to his mother Mary. And to John he says, 'Here is your
mother.'
Compassion
Traditionally this saying
has been interpreted as Jesus showing the depth o...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, April 4, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
Tried unjustly, scourged,
humiliated, slapped in the face, and introduced by a sarcastic Pilate -
'Behold, your King!' Maybe it's no wonder that faced with such a king the
religious leaders responded with 'We have no king but Caesar.' Whether they had
recognised Jesus as the true Son of God or not their choice was to bow the knee
to that other son of god - the Roman Emperor.
Choosing power
From the world's view it was
hardly a choice: the leader of the world's only super power or a battered and...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, March 28, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
If the first two sections of
Roger Mitchell's Church, Gospel, & Empire are a little difficult to
navigate due to their in-depth (and wholly necessary) theological treatment of
the subject, the third section has a life-giving quality to it that raises the
book above the level of a mere academic volume. It has a radical cutting edge
to it that offers the reader a glimpse of what church could look like if we
embraced 'kenarchy'.
Kenarchy
As that last word testifies,
however, the third section is n...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, March 16, 2012,
In :
Bible
One of the main objections
to reading the creation accounts in Genesis as myth and not as factual truth is
based on the view that it was God through the Holy Spirit who inspired the
author(s) of the passage to write what they did. Taking their cue from 1
Timothy 3:16 those who say that these passages are factually correct argue that
God would surely never have lied or misled the authors in such a way as have
them write untruth.
Accommodation
This is a powerful argument
but fails to take into ac...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, March 14, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
How church and empire
combined to establish peace on earth through the use of sovereignty is the key
theme in Roger Mitchell's book Church,
Gospel & Empire and so far in this series I have sketched out the way
Roger has traced this theme through history beginning with Constantine. The
last post looked at how money was brought into the equation and how the Bank of
England was set up to lend money to the crown as it strove to defend the
sovereignty of the emerging nation state.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, March 7, 2012,
In :
Random
It was as I chuckled to
myself two Sunday mornings ago that I started to reflect on how differently we
think about freedom. I was listening to the Anglican service on Radio 4 as I
shaved when the words of the Bible reading tickled me – ‘It is for freedom that
Christ has set you free.’ How ironic, I thought, that a congregation that is so
restricted in the way it worships should be listening to this verse! I quickly
corrected myself, remembering that Paul had not written those words so t...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, February 15, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
Recent stories in the news
here in the UK – such as banning prayers in local councils and government ministers
calling for a strengthening of ‘Christian Britain’ – show how crucial Roger
Mitchell’s analysis in Church, Gospel
& Empire really is. Already in our tour through the book we have seen
how the historian Eusebius and the Roman Emperor Constantine managed to tie
both church and empire together is such a way as key imperial principles were
subsumed by the church. The consequenc...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 10, 2012,
In :
Bible
A few years ago when I was
involved with co-leading a new church plant one of the first things I had to do
was to form a ‘statement of faith’ for the congregation. This was a novel
experience for me since as someone brought up a Baptist in Wales (I am still a
baptist, by the way) I never had to think about such a thing before because
Welsh Baptist churches never had a formal statement of beliefs. But as people
felt we needed to be well defined in our theology (and there’s nothing wrong
...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, February 8, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
The cross of Jesus and
military superiority are inextricably linked in the story of Constantine. In
312 C.E. he faced his enemy and co-emperor Maxentius near the Milvian Bridge, which
crossed the River Tiber. Before entering into battle Constantine saw a vision
of the cross with the words ‘By this sign conquer’. Though still a pagan at the
time he took it as a sign that he should fight under the Christian God’s protection
and when he won the battle the story of his vision – however mu...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, February 6, 2012,
In :
Pagan influences
As they embarked on their
quest to find where many of our church practices have originated, Viola and
Barna speak for many when they say in Pagan
Christianity that they ‘ardently want their relationship with the Lord to
be their top priority in life. They are tired of the institutions,
denominations, and routines getting in the way of a resonant connection with
Him’. If you’re mumbling to yourself right now, ‘That’s exactly how I feel’;
then welcome on the journey. You are most de...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 3, 2012,
In :
Bible
What role does the Bible
play in defining what a Christian is? Do we need to ‘believe the word of God’
before we can claim to be Christian? In certain quarters today you would think
so. The Bible as the literal word of God to us has to be accepted. Any wavering
on this and you would soon be condemned as being on dangerous ground.
But this has not been the
case throughout church history. One German church historian noted the shift
that happened during the first and second centuries C.E.:
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, January 30, 2012,
In :
Pagan influences
Pagan
Christianity. The title says it all, does it not? And if
you had any doubts about the contents of Frank Viola and George Barna’s book
then their sub-title makes it even clearer – Exploring the roots of our church practices. Their central theme is
that practices not ordained by God in Jesus have entered church life; practices
first devised by pagans and introduced into the church and over the centuries have
become the accepted way of doing things.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, January 25, 2012,
In :
Post-Christendom
How could the church have
been so infected by imperial power to render it so ineffective? This is the
question that Roger Mitchell attempts to answer in the remainder of the first
two parts of his book. He introduces key characters and periods in which the
imperial principle was introduced and consolidated. The first of which is
Eusebius of Caesarea.
Father of church history
Eusebius has the distinction
of being referred to as ‘the father of church history’ and his most famous of books,
The...
“Jesus
said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father
but through me’.” This was Jesus’ answer when Thomas asked him how people get
into heaven and what happens to all the other religions in the world. Except
this wasn’t the question Thomas asked and we should, therefore, be very wary of
trying to make Jesus’ words fit into our preconceived ideas. And it is through
studying the context of Jesus’ words that Brian McLaren attempts an alternative
...
Brian
McLaren (in A New Kind of Christianity) frames his ninth question – on
religious pluralism – within the context of armed conflict between faith
communities around the world. This is certainly a very potent frame but he
could also have mentioned the current narrative that is predominant among some
Christian conservatives in the west – that of the rise of Islam and the threat
to Christian religious freedom. Whichever frame we use the need to explore
pluralism is vital in today’s w...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 6, 2012,
In :
Bible
For the past 200 years or so
the Bible has come to play an increasingly central part in the daily life of
ordinary Christians. It wasn’t always the case. Go further back and few
ordinary Christians could either read or could afford their own copy. Go
further back again and the Bible did not exist in their language. Even further
and the Latin version was quite rare. Take another step to the third century
and there wasn’t even a common agreement on which books should be included in the
Bibl...
Finally
in this chapter on eschatology McLaren discusses the issue of final judgement. This is not
something that can be shied away from for it is ‘a central theme across the
biblical library’. A ‘true accounting, evaluation or assessment of our lives,
our works, our nations, our world cannot help but happen’. However, under the
old Greco-Roman scheme the word ‘judgement’ has been misapplied and we need to
have a truer understanding of it.
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...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, December 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
More Wisdom from Tom Wright
today, this time on the Sabbath:
"One of the few things that
ancient pagans knew about the Jewish people was that, from the pagans’ point of
view, they had a lazy day once a week. From the Jewish point of view, it wasn’t
laziness; it was the chance to celebrate time in a different mode. The Sabbath was
the day when human time and God’s time met, when the day-to-day succession of tasks
and sorrows was set aside and one entered a different sort of time, celebrat...
How responsible are we for
our sinful actions? Are there different levels of responsibilities and should
that be reflected in any justice we face? Some would be horrified that I’ve
even posed the question and yet these are the questions being asked by modern
day neuroscience.
In a report just published
by the Royal Society (Neuroscience and the Law) a team of scientists are
calling for the understanding of how the brain works to be included in the
justice system – especially in the matter ...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, December 14, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Was he a total stranger,
visiting the synagogue for the very first time? Or had his condition just
remained hidden from the leaders and his fellow worshippers over many months,
even years? Whatever it was he took a big risk the day he manifested before
Jesus (Mark 1:21-28). For to be recognised as having an unclean spirit would
have almost certainly meant he would have been banished from the synagogue and
probably from the wider community too. Unclean spirits and religious
institutions just d...
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.
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, December 9, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
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.”
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, December 7, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
I love polls (but then
regular readers knew that) – especially ones that expose our post-Christendom
times. Take this one conducted on behalf of Christian think tank Theos on
British attitudes towards Christmas. A number of statements were offered as an
explanation about the purpose of Christmas - e.g. it’s about ‘spending time
with family and friends’, or ‘challenging political oppression around the world’,
or it has ‘no real meaning for today’. Something for everyone, then. ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, December 6, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Nobody likes the taxman. But
don’t let that be a sufficient analogy as you read the account of Jesus calling
Matthew as a disciple. Think instead of losing the Battle of Britain, of a Nazi
occupation of the UK, and of your hard-earned money going off to pay for the
Third Reich’s ever increasing empire. Taxmen now wear jackboots and have armed
guards accompanying them. A little different to our current situation.
Just what was Jesus thinking
when he called this most despised of men into his...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, December 5, 2011,
In :
Random
We’ve been away so blogging
has been light. Normal service resuming any day now! But for today an update on
my time away.
Towards wholeness
I’ve mentioned my journey
towards wholeness a number of times on this blog. A journey that has had me
delve deeply into some painful stuff from my past but in doing so has seen a
lot of healing released. God is always good though the path he has us on may be
very uncomfortable.
And so it proved once again
in my time on the Isle of Wight. I’ve never bee...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 30, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
So Christians in the UK feel
marginalised. So says the latest opinion poll conducted by ComRes on behalf of
Premier Christian Media Trust. The full details of the poll can be found at BRIN here –
but basically 544 Christians were asked whether they thought ‘the
marginalisation of Christianity in British public life was increasing,
decreasing, or staying the same in public, the media, the government and the
workplace’. Some two thirds thought the process was increasing overall – with
7...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 24, 2011,
In :
Hell
Jesus’ use of the image of
fire to describe God’s judgement has now been investigated but there are a few
other examples in the New Testament that need our attention. First is the
passage in Jude’s letter with its reference to Sodom and Gomorrah being an
example of those who will have to undergo ‘the punishment of eternal fire’
(verse 7, also 2 Peter 2:6).
Destruction
If the cities mentioned in
Genesis 18 and 19 are meant to be an example of how this punishment will occur
then it seem...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 17, 2011,
In :
Hell
The parable of the sheep and
goats (Matthew 25:31-46) is another one of those stories that Jesus used that
speaks of a dividing between the righteous and unrighteous at the end of the
age. The righteous will enjoy ‘eternal life’; the unrighteous won’t. Indeed
according to most English and Welsh translations the unrighteous will ‘depart
into the eternal fire’ (v.41) and ‘will go away to eternal punishment’ (v.46).
A clear statement?
And that surely settles it.
These verses are clea...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In asking the question ‘What
would Jesus do?’ in the context of the spat between the Occupy camp and St
Paul’s Cathedral a reference was made by some to the Gospel story about Jesus
cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. The inference was that just as Jesus cleared
out the Temple of its commercial aspects he would also bring judgement upon St
Paul’s tacit support of Western capitalism. Not only was this a simplistic
account of the Cathedral’s position it also rests on a wrong interpreta...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, November 11, 2011,
In :
Politics
There is something profoundly moving in listening to the stories told by
the brave men who have fought in any war. On Monday I listened to a piece on
Radio 4’s Today programme about the work done behind enemy lines in Burma
during the Second World War. A new book is being published about their story
and the author was the piece’s main contributor but they also had one of the
soldiers who had actually seen action at the time.
Nightmares
As this was a covert operation it would have been impos...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 10, 2011,
In :
Hell
If it can be argued that the
burning of the chaff (Matthew 3:12) is a reference to the dividing off of evil
from an individual rather than the dividing between two sets of people, then
the same cannot be done with the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) and
Jesus’ subsequent explanation (13:36-43).
Judgement within history
Here the picture is clearly
about the division between two different sets of people ‘at the end of the
age’. Less clear perhaps is the meaning of the phrase ‘end...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 8, 2011,
In :
Random
Jesus had an accountant – so said a Nigerian pastor on a recent Channel
4 documentary about the prosperity doctrine being preached in that country. He
said it without any sense of irony and as a response to the challenge put to
him that Jesus was poor. No, he insisted, Jesus was rich. He then produced the
accountant line in order to ‘prove’ his point.
Ridiculous, I know, but it got me thinking about how the image of Jesus
is manipulated so that it’s a little easier for us to believe in...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 2, 2011,
In :
Hell
If it can be argued that the
burning of the chaff (Matthew 3:12) is a reference to the dividing off of evil
from an individual rather than the dividing between two sets of people, then
the same cannot be done with the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) and
Jesus’ subsequent explanation (13:36-43).
Here the picture is clearly
about the division between two different sets of people’ at the end of the
age’. Less clear perhaps is the meaning of the phrase ‘end of the age’ – which...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 1, 2011,
In :
Random
Jesus made an appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight last night. He was also
on Question Time last Thursday. In fact he popped up in quite a few mainstream
media places during the week and all because of the Occupy protest in London.
Or to be more precise because of the spat between the protestors and St Paul’s
Cathedral.
I don’t think anyone intended to give him so much exposure – there was
no planned crusade, they weren’t the right sort of tents; there was no great
supernatural sign and...
In
his fourth question Brian McLaren asks who Jesus is and why he is important.
Asking such a question would suggest that he is actually opening up a debate on
the nature of Jesus’ humanity and/or divinity – but this is not something he
does. Rather he responds to some of the pictures drawn of Jesus in the US
particularly – suggesting that they find their roots more in the Greco-Roman
and Platonic meta-narrative referred to in his first question.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, October 27, 2011,
In :
Hell
In the last post I looked at
John the Baptiser’s warning about Jesus coming in judgement to sift the wheat
from the chaff and that the chaff would be burnt in an ‘unquenchable fire’
(Matthew 3:12). There are a number of other references in the New Testament to
this fire that never goes out and it would seem that they take their image from
the very last verse in Isaiah 66:24 – ‘And they will go out and look upon the
dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not di...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, October 25, 2011,
In :
Random
It felt important at the time. He was tall and thin and had a grey
beard. His black hoody and shell suit bottoms were quite dirty though he didn’t
smell as if he’d been wearing them for a long time. He had a small, knitted cap
on his head which every now and again he adjusted just in case the wind was about
to blow it off. His face was quite reddened as if he had often been standing in
the weather doing the same thing.
And he stood there that day – plastic water bottle in hand – and re...
Is
God violent, cruel, and genocidal? This is Brian McLaren’s third question and
surely all would answer with a resounding ‘no’. And yet there are many passages
in the Bible – and especially in the Old Testament – that suggest that this
exactly how God can be at times, passages that make him appear very un-Christ-like.
The question that McLaren attempts to answer is whether this is a true
reflection of God or whether the truth is that God is actually like Jesus –
loving, forgiving...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, October 18, 2011,
In :
Hell
John the Baptiser certainly
had a way with words and the day he talked of Jesus coming to burn up the chaff
must have been a striking moment for those who heard him (Matthew 3:12). They
would have been very familiar with the picture John painted, of course, for
using a winnowing fork to throw up the grain into the air in order to separate
it from the chaff would have been something that was well known to all.
The chaff – being the husk
that surrounded the grain and the bits of stalk brought...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, October 12, 2011,
In :
Hell
Let’s begin our trawl
through the relevant NT passages that are often interpreted as being references
to hell because Jesus refers to the fire of judgement in them. Rather than take
each individual verse one by one I’m going to gather them together and deal
with them according to their theme.
Burning dead wood
The first theme to be looked
at is the motif of throwing dead wood, trees, or branches into the fire because
the tree has not produced fruit. The most obvious example – though not ...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, October 5, 2011,
In :
Hell
In the last post on the
picture of hell as fire I explored some interpretive issues in the Old
Testament suggesting that figurative language and context were key things to
take into account. From that I would argue that it is fair to conclude that
while fire is used as a picture of God’s anger towards and punishment of sin,
there is very little in this OT motif that can be used to prove the existence
of hell as eternal conscious torment. The punishment of fire is severe and
fully reflects G...
In
last week’s post I shared McLaren’s suggestion that the Christian story has
been hijacked by a philosophy that was essentially pagan and which emphasised
the destruction of the body and all material things but the salvation of a
disembodied, eternal soul with god.
The Hebraic worldview
Is
there an alternative understanding? Yes, says McLaren, if we read the Bible
from the Hebraic worldview. Our problem is that we have read back to Jesus and
his good news through the lenses provided for u...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 28, 2011,
In :
Hell
Fire as punishment is an
often used image in the Old Testament and in my first post on the subject two
weeks ago I began to unpack this subject. Its importance is found in the use
Jesus makes of the image and it is probably safe to say that it is from the OT
that Jesus got this image from. Before jumping to the conclusion that these
passages are a reference to an eternal conscious punishment, however, certain
points have to be made.
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, September 27, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Holiday reading for me this
year was Rob Bell’s controversial Love
Wins. The typo in the very last line of the UK version makes it an
imperfect book and it’s not difficult to see why it has become one of the most
contentious books of the year but for me the expansive view of God’s love that
it portrays makes it a hit.
Opening a debate
Bell’s writing style isn’t
to everybody’s liking but I find it quite refreshing and find myself hearing
his spoken voice coming through the printed wo...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 14, 2011,
In :
Hell
One of the most common
images used to describe hell is fire. Indeed it is probably widely believed
that hell is some kind of fiery dungeon and that somehow the fire plays an
integral part in the conscious torment that the damned will suffer there for
eternity. We get this image and concept, of course, from the words of Jesus for
no other biblical character or author says more about hell-fire than Jesus of
Nazareth. Or does he? As this second series about hell progresses we’ll get to
look at...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, January 31, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
‘The Alexandrian public is more delighted
with tumult than any other people; and if at any time it should find a pretext,
breaks forth into the most intolerable excesses; for it never ceases from its
turbulence without bloodshed.’ That’s not a quote from a BBC commentator on the
streets of the Egyptian city today but rather the view of an ancient church
historian at a time when the Christian church was a real powerhou...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, January 24, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
It is referred to as the Gangster Council –
and if that makes it sound the most unchristian meeting ever held then you
would be right and wrong at the same time. Wrong in that it was a
formally-called gathering of ‘world’ Christian leaders; right in that the level
of violence used in it totally discredited the meeting. Unfortunately, the
violence used was but a reflection of the violence generally used within the
chur...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 18, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Bliss,
ecstasy and joy are supposed to mark our new and renewing life in Jesus. Some call it the joy revolution but because
I’m such a miserable so-and-so most of the time, it’s an emphasis I have
struggled with it. Coming under the Lordship of Jesus, however, has to mean more than
just a ‘new obedience’ as Moltmann refers to it.
The danger
Moltmann sees in only emphasising the lordship of Jesus when thinking of the
...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 16, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
‘If you’re
happy and you know it, clap your hands – CLAP! CLAP! If you’re happy and you
know it’ … and so on until your hands are red raw from clapping so much just to
prove to David Cameron that your happiness levels are indeed high despite the
slashing of our public services. Yes the prime minister is interested in
setting up a happiness index for the UK – a statistical device that will
tell us how happy we ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, October 12, 2010,
In :
Random
Controversy has been building up
over the selling of unlabelled halal meat in British supermarkets. According to
the Mail on Sunday many hundreds of schools, pubs and restaurants are
serving meat that has been slaughtered according to Islamic law and the public
are completely unaware that it is happening. Reaction to the story has come
from two different directions: the animal welfare lobby are concerned about the
pain and ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, September 7, 2010,
In :
Apostolic
Luke opens his account of the acts
of the apostles by referring back to his first book, his gospel. There, he
says, he recorded all that Jesus had ‘begun to do’. What an amazing
thought! That all we have in the gospels is the beginning of what Jesus wants
to do in this world. He hadn’t finished his work – it had merely begun. And
Luke closes the gospel by referring to Jesus’ ascension which brings his
e...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 1, 2010,
In :
Random
A few thoughts on resurrection today
as I have a funeral to take tomorrow and I’ve been asked to preach. One of the
readings chosen is the final section of the 15th chapter in 1
Corinthians – it’s the chapter on resurrection and includes these powerful
words, ‘O death, where is your victory’. I once challenged an atheist to say
what hope he could provide a family in bereavement apart from the fact that the
deceased had li...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, August 12, 2010,
In :
Apostolic
So far in this series I have been
looking at how Jesus applied the term ‘apostle’ to his disciples. It is not a
term he is reported to have used widely and yet there is enough detail in the
three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) to say something about how he
saw things.
The four key things drawn from the
previous posts have been i) they are appointed by Jesus; ii) they are to preach
the Kingdom; iii) they have ...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, August 2, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is a 43
year old woman from Iran who was found guilty of adultery in
2006. Her punishment is to be stoned to death. The latest news is positive for
her, however, since Brazil – a key ally of Iran – is to offer her asylum. While
some Islamic scholars apparently deny that stoning is recommended as a punishment
in the Koran, some Muslim traditions still insist that it is an option and ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, July 16, 2010,
In :
Random
The temple in Jerusalem represented the six days of
creation, with the Holy of Holies representing the first day, the veil
representing the second and so on. This is one of the many new things I’ve
learned from Margaret Barker in a book of hers that I’m reading at the moment –
TempleTheology: An introduction (London, 2004).
She also says that there are
basically two streams of thought in the Old Testament...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, July 15, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
For as long as I can remember I have
had a lot of anger in my heart. This anger rarely spilled out in public – but
it destroyed my first marriage. And because I generally kept a lid on it, this
anger was turned inwards and resulted in a lot of depression over the years – a
depression that resulted in two episodes of serious ill-health needing
medicine.
To read Jesus saying that keeping a
lid on anger won’t do in the Ki...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, June 30, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
To live consistently as a follower
of Jesus in a counter cultural way is one thing – to do so in regard of keeping
the law is quite another. Being counter culture could be no more than being
nice to your neighbours or not rushing out to buy the latest in iphone
technology but to be consistent with the law, to live up to its requirements is
something very different and far harder to accomplish.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, June 24, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
For the effect of an upside down
Kingdom value to be itself turned upside down really is a difficult concept to
hold onto! But this is what Jesus seems to be saying in his words about being
salt and light (Matt 5:13-16). In the previous paragraph Jesus
says that being his follower will draw persecution; in this one he says that it
will get people glorifying God. Confused? I am – no wonder I keep getting
migraines!
It is not a coincidence that those
listed as being blessed after the peacemakers are those who are persecuted
(Matt 5:10-12). To be a peacemaker in a world that has learned the perverse
value of confrontation is no easy task and will surely draw opposition. But in the
face of such opposition Jesus is saying that the correct stance to take is to
be one of peacemaking.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, May 26, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
Jesus’ emphasis on the upside-down
values of the Kingdom continues with his words about the ‘pure of heart’ and
how they will be blessed by seeing God. In Old Testament Hebrew thought ‘seeing
God’ had a cultic element to it since it was by going to the Temple, to be
involved in its cultic practices, that one would see God. Closely attached to
this act of Temple worship was being clear of sin – or
havi...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, May 18, 2010,
In :
Apostolic
My first post on the apostolic (read
it here) drew some good responses from Ben, Mark, and James – thanks, guys. In
this topic I really am trying to grapple with a subject that I don’t have any
answers to – and yet feel that the answers so often given in church life today
do not quite reflect what the NT says about being an apostle. Ben makes a very
valid point that the apostles were called to plant the gos...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, April 12, 2010,
In :
Random
I was on television six times last
Thursday. Did you see me? It was from the launch of Plaid’s national campaign
for the General Election here in the UK. I was sitting on the front row
right in front of the speaker’s podium. Apparently all the BBC’s main news
programmes carried footage of the event as well as it being live on Sky and
then later on Channel 4 News. Wonderful coverage. In fact I was seen more of...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, April 8, 2010,
In :
Apostolic
I have a bee in my bonnet about the
apostolic. In fact regular readers of the blog would say I have several bees in
several bonnets about a whole host of things, but I think especially the
concept of the apostolic is stirring something in me these days. I’ve already
posted some thoughts, but I’d like to develop more over the next few weeks.
They’re not going to be fully thought out truths about what an apos...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, April 7, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
The church shaped by the Roman Empire gave us an institution that bears
little resemblance to the vision of the body of Christ in the New Testament.
Before going on to look at the principles for finding a new shape suggested by
Stuart Murray in his Post-Christendom, let’s recap on what he has been
saying so far in chapters 1 to 7. How has the church been shaped by empire?
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, April 6, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
When Jesus talks about those who ‘thirst
and hunger for righteousness’, what is it that they have desire for? Is it that
they desire to be righteous in the sense that they are in a right relationship
with God, that they live a life that is holy and set apart for him? This would probably
be the usual reading of this verse.
But in a book I read over the Easter
holiday – Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, March 23, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
Responding to the Roman Catholic
Church’s deeply troubling problems over the abuse of children is
difficult. I do not want to be stirring waters that are not mine to stir.
Neither do I want to say anything that causes more pain to those who have been
hurt. However there is a lesson for all churches to learn from this most
disturbing of episodes and it is to do with power and how it used and abused by
church.
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, March 22, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
A fine example of the upside down
values of the Kingdom of God can be seen in the blessing poured
out onto the gentle (or humble or meek) – theirs is the earth as an
inheritance. This beatitude has an echo from Psalm 37 in it. There it is the wicked who take
the earth and its possessions to themselves. They smash and grab their way
through life not worried about who gets left behind or who gets trampled
underfoot.
This is a great post by a frined of mine from the Colwyn Bay days, Methodist minister Graham Peacock. He asks whether we would invent Jesus if he did not exist.
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, March 15, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
There’s plenty to mourn
about in this world. In fact, you would have to be pretty insensitive to not be
mourning at times, if not for yourself then for all the injustices, the wrongs,
and the general condition of the world.
To what extent is the
‘mourning’ referred to by Jesus in the second Beatitude an action of choice, I
wonder? If the being ‘poor in spirit’ is about recognising your own poverty and
...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, March 11, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
It
seems to me that the ‘Beatitudes’ deal with the marginalised, that Jesus speaks
a great blessing of life and power into their lives. This reflects his life’s
work – it is to the margins that he went looking for people to heal and
restore; to the margins looking for broken people to bring them to a place
where they could flourish.
There
seems to be little that attracted Jesus to the centre, be that the...
Before getting stuck into
the meat of what Kingdom living is all about Jesus does something profoundly
loving: he affirms the very people he calls into this new lifestyle. The
demands of that life will be great. Maintaining those choices will not be easy.
And so before going into the detail Jesus tells his hearers that the Kingdom is
for people just like them. If they are broken, if they are small, if they are
do...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, March 4, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
One of the most powerful
criticisms of Christians in the West today is that we seem no different to
anyone else living in society. Our values, lifestyle, choices are pretty much
the same as those who have no faith or a different faith. ‘You’re no better
than the rest of us,’ is a common refrain. Is it true? Take a few seconds to
think about that before reading on.
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, March 2, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
Stuart Murray’s
description of Christendom in the late Medieval period is scathing: it was
‘monolithic, totalitarian and seemingly impervious to critique’ (Post-Christendom,
page 132). And yet there were dissenting voices to be heard all over Europe at this time. That those
dissenters faced the wrath of Christendom through suppression and persecution
tells us a great deal about what a threat they were deeme...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 26, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
Blogging through Mark’s
gospel took me 60 posts over some 18 months. When I have time (or rather, when
I make time) I will gather all those posts together and see whether they
make any sense as a whole, for I wrote them post by individual post – in micro
rather than macro. But the theme I was trying to draw out of each passage was
that of the emerging Kingdom of God in and through the life
of Jesus.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, February 24, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
Under
Christendom the church became the dominant force in society. Indeed by the 12th
century the church was able to exercise power over countries and their rulers
in Western Europe. ‘No secular ruler could rival papal wealth or
authority,’ says Stuart Murray in Post-Christendom as he paints a picture of a
totalitarian church in the late medieval period (page 110). Dissent was not
welcomed at all by this time...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, February 23, 2010,
In :
Politics
Bullying
and politics seem to go together. Gordon Brown should not feel isolated in his
current situation of being fingered as a work-place bully – he is in good
company in the Palace of Westminster. The stories about his
rage towards colleagues have been around for a long time and those of us who
enjoy the political blogoshpere have not been surprised by the latest
revelations. Stories about his loyal lieutena...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, February 22, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
Most
translations while including Mark 16:9-20 actually say that the passage did not
form part of the original text. And when you read these verses it does have
that feel to it. Nevertheless there is little in the passage that we should
discount as being a part of the original story. It does tie in with the
post-resurrection accounts.
However,
the challenge that is presented in this passage is immense and its ce...
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Saturday, February 20, 2010,
In :
Linking other blogs
The Clarion has a great piece about the criticism thrown at Tiger Woods this week following his public apology. It seems to me that Jesus would be with the Clarion on this one, as he too said that those who want to judge should better be sure they have nothing in their own lives that could give rise to judgement.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, February 18, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
The tenderness shown by both Joseph of Arimathea and the three women – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome – was surely a beautiful thing (Mark 15:42-16:8). The contrast between their actions towards Jesus and the actions of all who had contact with him over the previous three days is great. Thoughtful and gentle, they came to his body to ensure a good burial. They bought linen and spices to care for the body. Their motives were the highest possible.
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, February 15, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
Before we leave the cross we should take time to consider Jesus’ attitude and demeanour during that awful event, for it is the crucifixion of Jesus that is one of the key things that brings in Kingdom power. Much has been written since that time about the cross. The current debate surrounding the issue of penal substitution – whether Jesus was punished on our behalf – is raging within evangelical circles and is an example of how theology has grappled with Jesus’ death. Whole forests...
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Monday, February 8, 2010,
In :
Emerging Kingdom
The death of Jesus brings about a great change in the atmosphere around him as he hangs on the cross (Mark 15:16-47). Beforehand he is mocked, beaten, and tortured. There is extreme pain – both physical and emotional – as the nails are hammered into his flesh. Religious leaders display an astounding level of callousness as he hangs dying. They are venomous as they hurl their insults towards him.
But afterwards, when the veil was torn at his last breath we can notice a significant ...
