The fourth in the most dynamic series ever written is out… (Disclaimer: by dynamic series I obviously mean written by me over the previous few months – how could I ever make a bigger claim that that?) Copies – hardback and eBook available from:
What a smart title I hear you all say with one voice. ‘Yes’ I reply cos when I was thinking about a title I thought I would do something very clever and tie the end of the book to the first volume. First volume tries to start with the real division is not about right and wrong, but regarding life and death. The tree of life… in the day you eat of the other one (the ‘infallible guide to right and wrong?’ tree) you will die… death enters into the human race… who were created to live forever (no, and not that the soul is immortal; wrong book being read to come up with that novel idea)… choose life that you may live… Israel chooses the other path… Jesus takes the consequences, tasting death for all… so that all may live… the lifeline.
In the book I try to dig in to the Pauline Gospel some, and suggest that there is a radical feminisation of creation, and the word ‘new creation’ is a much better term than that of a ‘new world order’. Last chapter, God does not require sacrifice; we are the ones who needed the death of Jesus. Root issue is the cleansing of the heart / conscience, that it is not ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness’ but that verse puts in another step along the path… Blood is not necessary for forgiveness but the author does suggest it was necessary for the step that leads to forgiveness.
I was going to (maybe will) write another three volumes (eschatology – drawing on the call of Israel, hence no ‘Promised Land’ promised, past nor future; the traumas of 66-70AD, hence no expectation of antiChrist future; prophetic utterances that Scripture records as not coming to pass, hence the difference between promise and prediction, blah de blah…), but maybe I should consider that the issues that are more important are the ‘so what’ with regard to the trajectory from creation in the way distant path, of course not being a scientist I am not qualified to use the word ‘evolution’, to the close of the New Testament (pre AD70 with a one-book spill over that helps further guide us in our world). So using provocative language, our relationship to ‘mother earth’ (settle down I am simply ramping up slightly the ‘the first humanity was from the dust’ perspective, that I am pretty sure is there in the early pages, and repeated when taking a look back from the future – 1 Cor. 15); relationship to gender (drawing on the already / not yet, implications of the Ascended Christ for gender, what wisdom we might be able to hear from the market square; pre-Pauline issue of ekklesia and post-Pauline approaches; and of course our relationship to the ‘state’ and the creation of money and a redemptive economics.
If the last paragraph sounded as if I know what I am writing about… apologies. Explorations in theology can lead to explorations from theology, and also to the discovery that one of God’s many gifts to humanity is the ability to make mistakes.