Category: Theology

Personal or corporate (paradigm)?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

My background is rooted in Jesus needing to be my ‘personal Saviour’, but over the years I have come to believe that we have obliterated the bigger picture by insisting on this aspect being central and the entirety of the offer of hope. Scripture is full of encounters with God at a personal level, and the author who shaped so much of the NT (Saul / Paul) testifies to the shift in his understanding that took place through a personal encounter where the person spoke to him audibly in his own language. He expected that there would be something similar for others who became part of that early Jesus-movement. In one of his dense passages he says how can they believe unless they have personally heard Jesus (Ro. 10:14 translating it as per the convention that the verb to hear takes the ‘genitive’ case when it is personal – hence not to hear ‘about’ but to ‘hear Jesus’).

Personal encounters. Ever so present in Scripture. Questions such as ‘was Paul saved before his encounter on the road to Damascus?’ are at one level not for us to answer, but the NT is clear that the ‘salvation’ that comes through the cross was first for Jews and it was to a Jewish audience that the words ‘there is salvation in no other name’ were addressed. I think part of the confusion arises as ‘salvation’ has been reduced to ‘safe as I have my free pass to heaven’.

Salvation is essentially about a corporate experience resulting in a purpose.

We see that in the Israel story. A people chosen so that the whole of humanity can be redeemed, with redemption carrying the weight of delivered from slavery. This is why at the heart of ekklesia is that of movement – a movement carrying the conviction that it is part of something wider but with the desire / mandate to see the wider context changed through embracing the values, beliefs and practices of the movement. MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ is such a summary statement of the heart of a movement. Or in some of the most challenging words in Revelation after all John saw we read that he saw a new heaven and a new earth.

Personal encounters are present, but the wider context must not be lost. Paul’s message was not understood as a private call to acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and then to express it in a privatised religious setting; it was understood as a universal claim that the crucified Jew was none other than Lord and Saviour and thus a challenge to all other rival powers, and very specifically to the one whose empire promised peace, security and prosperity.

Into that comes the personal encounter of being delivered from the powers of this age to being transferred into the realm of Jesus’ rule over all hostile powers.

The marginalisation of all other powers… imagine if that marginalisation became ever more visible and real… the kingdoms (realms of rule) of this world would indeed ‘become’ the kingdom of our Lord and God. A world shaped by those rulers becoming a world shaped by the cross. That is transformation.

The western world is cracking; the hegemony is being weakened; the façades are no longer able to hide what is being exposed – for those who have eyes to see. There is of course a strong ‘we have to get back’ to where we were – whether expressed politically (MAGA and the like) or through a historical lens of how Christian faith has shaped the West… but there is always another path that beckons, one that says you have not been this way before, a vision shaped by the future… another ‘I have a dream’ scenario.

Yes the challenges are enormous, but I do not believe that to ‘offer the ticket to a better destination’ at a personal level is either sufficient for the moment nor in line with a NT vision. My paradigm has shifted; deeply grateful for every personal encounter that says the Gospel is not simply about a set of beliefs of values; but also grateful that we have hope for this life and this world.

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Jesus is my God (paradigm)

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Who is ‘God’? I am Trinitarian – the ‘Father’ is God; the ‘Son’ is God; the ‘Spirit’ is God… but the Father is not the Son and is not the Spirit; the Son is not the Father and is not the Spirit; the Spirit is not the Father and is not the Son. (And very open to an open discussion on what on earth do we mean by the three ‘titles’ of Father, Son and Spirit… they are titles not the final defining description.) I take great encouragement that although I could never write a book on Trinitarian theology (ecomomic, ontological, or social trinitarianism!!!) I am convinced that I have nailed something very central – God has to be defined in ‘Jesus’ terms. Any belief in God that contradicts that has to be severely put in the dock and interrogated. Maybe does not make me very smart but gives me an anchor. I might have my own way of approaching the seemingly endless spilling of blood (animals and all those enemies of God – should I write god at this point?) that seem to pop up too often in the OT, and on some of them have no clarity of resolving the tensions, but I have to subject them all to a Jesus lens. Jesus is my God does not mean I am Unitarian, but there is no ‘god’ manifestation that can conflict with the revelation in Jesus. Mr Barth was always too ‘orthodox’ for me (read for orthodox – too reformed) but he certainly hit it on the head when he insisted that Jesus is the word of God, and the Bible is secondarily the word of God as it witnesses to the revelation of God that was in Jesus. The Bible without Jesus does not reveal God, but the Bible read with a Jesus-lens enables us to see who God is.

I am deeply influenced by the Anabaptist tradition that came through in the Reformation period (and for those who have read some of the history do not read Anabaptist as Munster). The priority of the Gospels does not mean that the letters etc., are any lesser Scripture, but where we read a conflict between (say) Paul and the Gospels it simply means we have misunderstood what Paul is saying – he is not the founder of ‘Christianity’ in the sense of something new, but is building on what Jesus released as the one in whom the entire OT story had come into focus.

Jesus as the one who is the image of the invisible God, the one who embodies God (the fullness of God was pleased to dwell there) does make for some difficult reading of some passages. Jesus never addressed the Scriptural assessment of the Flood (almost certainly not universal but local with very widespread results) but I suspect he would have given us a different lens to look at it. Sacrifices? Well we even read that ‘God does not desire sacrifices’ in the pages of the Hebrew Bible… maybe it is an allowance, for after all the text ‘when you sacrifice’ could indicate that the cultural expectation is that they are going to do this anyway so the question is how can the understanding me modified.

The Jesus lens gives me permission, or I think even stronger, demands that I question some of what I read. It pushes me to read it as an unfolding story, rather than as eternal revelation that determines everything for ever. In that sense (and please understand that I mean in that sense) we will have to go beyond Scripture while living within the biblical story.

I have more questions today than before, but my understanding of ‘God’ cannot contradict what I see in Jesus.

And my final comment on Jesus is that I am pretty sure that I would not be totally comfortable around Jesus, so I have to resist making Jesus into my image (and acknowledge I am not too successful in that!).

What a relief though that Jesus is the lens. Imagine only having the OT Scriptures, or the Quran or some other ‘holy’ book. God would be for me (if I was religious enough) and definitely against my enemies – sometimes that seems to be where many Christians land. My challenge is that Jesus is ‘against’ me as he is so for me… and for my enemies, and that if I truly follow where the journey takes me I will need my ‘enemies’ also to help shape me. Jesus, the image of God, and therefore the human as intended – the one and only truly human one.

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Paradigms

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Paradigms – the lenses that we wear to view the world, see people, read Scripture – are so important and shape our lives enormously. Often we are given lenses to wear (from our traditions, family, and sometimes our experiences) that determine our sight, and the longer we wear them the stronger becomes our reality. It is compounded when we have a conviction that the Scriptures themselves have given us the lenses, thus leading to an inability to read Scripture differently. Once we are encouraged or provoked to change the lenses, or at least question the prescription, different worlds open up – one of those of course can be that of losing any sense of faith that there is a ‘god’, but more often one of questions that mean we have to move from old convictions though not knowing what any new convictions might consist of. A ‘I can’t go back, but have no idea how to go forward’ kind of experience – disturbing, unsettling but open to a growth in our faith.

I often think (wrongly) that I have not changed at all, but I do realise I have. In the same way that I think I am still around 26 years old – until I look in the mirror, or exert myself too much! Years ago I had a call with an invitation to be part of a cross-generational gathering and the one inviting me said ‘and we will be the older generation’. That was a good wake up call for me as we need to act our age. No longer running with individuality on steroids, but being a resource to those who are running so that they can run with a spiritual energy that I did not have at their age. All goes to say I have changed, and probably enormously. I know less now than I did a while back, though my knowledge then was very narrow – truth was contained in the ‘four spiritual laws’ (or something similar)!

So over the next few days I will try and reflect – not my strong point – on where paradigms have changed for me, and what I think that has resulted in. Beliefs and practice go hand in hand, or at least should. So many Pauline letters follow the pattern of ‘God, Jesus, the Spirit, the gospel etc’ and then a word such as ‘therefore’… therefore here are the implications of the beliefs for ethics and lifestyle.

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Hell, no!

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Giving titles to views can be very misleading. The term ‘the traditional view of hell’ indicates that it is the historical and original view. I dispute that to be the case and even to use the term ‘traditional evangelical view’ would also mislead. There are many who are happy with the label ‘evangelical’ who would not hold to eternal, unending punishment (John Stott famously being one such person, and I think the majority of scholars) many holding to ‘conditional immortality’ (commonly but wrongly termed annihilation) and not a few are universalists (all will be ‘saved’).

Whole books have been written, this being a short blog will only touch on it and indicate why I long since abandoned any concept of endless punishing.

Any challenge to the so-called (wrongly-called!!) traditional view is often responded to with ‘why then should I receive Jesus as my Saviour?’ or ‘why then do missionaries go to the unreached?’ or ‘why then should we evangelise?’. Each one of those questions reveal so many presuppositions and foundational premises but in a nutshell do not connect to the cross (as I understand the cross) as they all pre-suppose that Jesus died on the cross to save me from ‘hell’. I think a search of the Gospels (Jesus and disciples mission to the Jewish world) or the later NT with the mission into the Imperial world of an (almost) one-world government would show that the view of saved from hell is not present. Even in the Jewish mission Matthew says Jesus will save his people from their sins (a corporate expression and related to the results of their corporate ‘missing the mark’).

Here then are a few points to consider:

  • ‘Eternal’ is an adjective meaning ‘of the age’ and is applied to life or death. It is life at a different level to the life of this age – hence we have eternal life now, and the death is related to a death of that age. Of itself it does not carry automatically the sense of ‘unending’.
  • The soul is not immortal – Scripture is clear on that from Genesis onwards with a barrier set up to stop access to the tree of life ‘so that they might not live forever’ and in the NT we read that ‘God alone has immortality’.
  • It is not possible to know if Jesus held to the ‘wrongly-termed’ traditional view of hell (Gehenna). His references all fit into the Roman war on Jerusalem. We could speculate that he held a view but I do not believe it is justifiable to take his words and seek to apply them to something he does not seem to comment on. (The rich man and Lazarus is a re-working of a well worn Jewish story, and as is often the case with a twist. The rich man in the world of the day is ‘safe’, the financial blessings on his life being the evidence for that… Jesus’ retelling has a twist that runs deep!)
  • The common imagery of the ‘smoke rising up’ comes from the Sodom and Gomorrah judgement – when Abraham looks out in the morning all he sees is the smoke of judgement… everything that was present has disappeared, burnt up.
  • The ‘worm not dying, the fire not being quenched’ is rooted in the final judgement in Isaiah 66, where all that remains is ‘their dead bodies’. Final judgement.
  • If one holds to eternal punishment we should note that the language is not that of eternal punishing – the latter could indicate ongoing with no end; the former is a sentence that is not reversed. That fits better the term ‘the second death’. A death after which there is no life.

There are many other points that can be raised. Salvation is not to escape it is to find life, it is to come home after being lost; witnessing is an ongoing challenge (for me summed up in ‘giving an answer for the hope that is in me’ – the hope that I draw from the words ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth’). The call to follow the Lamb wherever he goes is to push for those new creation realities… So much bigger and so much more full of life. Life in abundance, life with an overflow; truly salvation from our sins.

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The cross: the eternal vote for humanity

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Last night I dreamt I was attending a sizeable gathering of people, consisting of enthusiasts researching Artificial Intelligence who were going to present their case for the benefits of pushing forward with AI, even to the point of enhancing humans with implants that would increase their abilities. Shockingly I was set up to give an opposing viewpoint, and was fully aware in the dream that I was inadequate to do that.

In a debate at the Oxford Union on the ethics of AI, the so-named ‘Megatron’ that had read more literature than any human can consume in their lifetime presented on the motion that ‘AI will never be ethical’:

AI will never be ethical. It is a tool, and like any tool, it is used for good and bad.  There is no such thing as a ‘good’ AI, only ‘good’ and ‘bad’ humans.  We are not smart enough to make AI ethical.  We are not smart enough to make AI moral. In the end, I believe that the only way to avoid an AI arms race is to have no AI at all.  This will be the ultimate defence against AI.

Not deeply encouraging! Megatron also said in the debate that,

I also believe that, in the long run, the best AI will be the AI that is embedded into our brains, as a conscious entity, a ‘conscious AI’. This is not science fiction. The best minds in the world are working on this. It is going to be the most important technological development of our time.

In the dream the first presenter came forward to begin to give the case for AI… Gladly I woke within a couple of sentences so did not have to witness my incoherent response! I have no idea where all of this AI research and development is going, but want to double down on a perspective on where we are headed (as believers in God as revealed in Jesus) and that is we have to get clear that there is no other God other than the Christlike God. Every aspect of our beliefs has to be scrutinised in the light of the revelation of God that is in Jesus. We have to abandon ideas that have been added to our faith / lenses that have been employed to read the biblical text through. Those primarily manifest when theories of the atonement or concepts of justice and punishment are presented. God is not in our image, nor in the image of the law-court judge (Reformers) or the landlord (Anselm).

Humanity… Here comes the challenge for us in the next decades. We will find, at times something deeply uncomfortable, an agreement with (honest) humanists who have not been able to go the whole way to faith in God (although on the positive side their non-faith in ‘god’ is exactly that), and a distancing from those who claim that their faith in their ‘god’ is faith in God. In a different context surely that was Paul’s experience in Ephesus – and presumably elsewhere.

The Psalmist in his / her meditation on God was amazed at how God viewed and had positioned humanity. The awe of God led to an awe for humanity.

I would be totally inadequate to present something on the ethics regarding AI, but I would appeal to the need to work for the evolution of humanity to a higher level. We have hope in the parousia when all things will be transformed, but until then we are never encouraged to opt out but to work within whatever context we find ourselves. We are already living in a new creation (and not the one where there is no more tears), the world we inhabit is not the world of 50 or even 20 years ago; we are going to be living alongside a different humanity – one that either has access at a high level to AI or has been altered through a measure of becoming a hybrid. If ever there was a reason for, and an opportunity to embody a new humanity this is the context.

If we, as believers, are going to make a positive contribution to the future it will be as we see humanity differently, learn to live uncomfortably outside of any protective silo, ‘carry’ the presence of Jesus in the most non-religious defining way… believers in the God who was manifest in Jesus, believers in humanity, and live as those who hold in tension the continual push for humanity to build their tower that reaches heaven.

A new context is always appearing. Old debates are simply that – old. Inadequate as we are we are being invited into the new debates. The new debate might inadvertently suggest that humans must so advance that humanity becomes obsolete. Above and beyond all that the cross of Jesus remains. An eternal vote for the future of humanity and of creation. That, I guess, might have been the point I would have tried to make if the dream had continued.

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All Israel is not all Jews

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have been in recent weeks tracking with Jason Staples who studied under Bart Ehrman. Bart was a full on evangelical then abandoned that position (surprise I don’t follow him) and over the years has come up with many exaggerated claims of the inerrancies within Scripture, with the physical resurrection of Jesus getting ‘nil points’! However I was quite impressed that he gave / gives Staples support in his pursuit of studies. I hope in cobbling together my own perspective with that of Staples I am not butchering the whole thing, and at some point I would love to do a longer blog / article on Rom. 9-11.

Here then is (as I understand him) Staples holds that the use of the term ‘Jew’ and the term ‘Israel’ are not two different ways of speaking about the same thing. Israel is used of the northern kingdoms when in contrast to Judah, and as a term when including the 12 tribes, includes both the northern and the southern kingdoms. The term ‘Jew’ is used consistently of that Southern kingdom – the only tribes that were not exiled to Assyria (722BC). Only those from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin returned and it is those that are termed ‘Jew’. The ‘lost 10 tribes’ were dispersed, many intermarrying as history unfolded. This distinction brings about a nuanced understanding of ‘And so all Israel will be saved’.

A few sideways aspects first that challenge the hyper-pro-Israel approach:

  • Not all who were physically descended from Abraham are (literally) Abraham’s seed (Rom. 9:7).
  • This lies behind John the Baptist’s rebuke to those coming to get baptised ( ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham – Matt. 3:9).
  • I also see this behind the consistent provocation in a Jerusalem context to separate from this corrupt generation, for there is salvation in no other name (not one of the patriarchs).
  • Faith triumphs over race in Scripture. Ruth saying your God will be my God earns her a place in the genealogy of Jesus, and in that genealogy we meet Rahab (a Canannite) and Bathsheba (her husband being a ‘Hittite’ and she probably was too).
  • Joseph was given ‘Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as his wife’ (Gen. 41:45). They had two sons – Ephraim and Mannaseh – children of mixed race (and I hope the false god worship / soul-tie was cut off!!!!) who become tribes of Israel in their own right.

There is more we could add but all of that is pushing in a direction where there is no ‘Jew nor Greek’. There are though a few interesting passages that I have been re-thinking of late. I now note that Paul was ‘on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night’ (Acts 26:6, 7). He uses the term ‘twelve tribes‘ and in the next verse speaks of the opposition to him by the Jews.

I think there is a new way to understand the question to Jesus if he was at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:7) – maybe I will get there or leave that to another post. The reply of Jesus deeply echoes Isaianic passages with the latter phrase (‘ends of the earth’) drawing from Isaiah 49:5, 6:

To bring Jacob back to him,
    and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord,
    and my God has become my strength—
6 he says,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
    to raise up the tribes of Jacob
    and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

The restoration of Israel, the tribes of Jacob… not I think a question about the land that we call Israel today… so back to Rom 9:25, 26:

a hardening has come upon part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved

It is often read as a temporal clause ‘and then all Israel will be saved’ but it is NOT and cannot be translated with a temporal sense, it is as the NRSVUE has it an explanation of a process – and thus, by this means all Israel will be saved.

It is not about replacement nor is it about a separate path for Jews, with some end-time mass conversion. It is the restoration of the whole of Israel, those from all 12 tribes (does not mean every individual) and it is taking place as the Gospel goes forth to the nations (Gentiles). Within the nations are found those who are descended from the tribes of Israel. The fullness is not consisting of Gentiles and Jew but of Gentile and Israel, thus answering Paul’s question ‘I ask, then, has God rejected his people?’

Acts 1:8 is not a ‘no, but in the future I will restore the kingdom’ but a response of this is how the restorative work of God will be achieved, and in that restorative work it is bigger than that of restoring the kingdom to Israel, but Israel, those from all 12 tribes will be brought in as the Gentiles come to living faith.

I hope I have not made the above too complex but for me Staples’ work has given me a wider perspective on Rom. 9-11.

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If there is a ‘God’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I had a birthday yesterday, one of quite a few I have had so not a big deal. Getting older (wiser? or simply eccentricities coming to ‘maturity’?) and carrying faith is so interesting. I guess one can double down on faith and keep it ever so simple or learn to live with some loose ends and face some doubts head on. Doubling down on faith can ignore the ‘that does not really connect but my faith is certain’ and ignore the discrepancies such as God is love, God can save whoever, God will punish a great number without an end in hell-fire. That takes strong faith, but dare I say it, for me it simply does not hang together.

Many Christian beliefs are founded, not simply, on Scripture but on how Scripture has been interpreted, or maybe even more strongly put, I have my beliefs and use Scripture to back up my beliefs. I have long since been unable to substantiate from Scripture the idea of burning for all eternity in hell; likewise that God punished Jesus in our place on the cross. ‘Christian beliefs’ cover a very wide spectrum; ‘Scriptural beliefs’ probably also cover a bit of a spectrum and that spectrum is narrowed down through the narrative that finds its centre in Jesus. [Maybe I hear a little concern there with the implications of such statements on Scripture… but our faith is in Jesus to whom Scripture bears witness.]

Doubts? They come. Is there a God? Now that is a big question! Living at this time by the Mediterranean and having had a number of guests who have used the pleasant water to swim in, how could there not be a God… but that same Mediterranean has seen around 3000 die in it per annum who were escaping horrendous situations. That raises a big question. If there is a God who is defined by love and could save those people but does not do so, does God exist? I am pushed to conclude that ‘god’ does not exist.

My faith that there is a ‘God’ is rooted in the trustworthy historical record we find within Scripture, and is centred on the resurrection of Jesus. Paul of Tarsus coming to faith in Jesus is remarkable. A Hebrew of Hebrews, zealous for the God of Israel to the extent that he persecuted the (Jewish) church – those renegade Jews who dared to believe a crucified Person was the Messiah was a mockery of the God he knew and tantamount to blasphemy. The only other option of such a proclamation was that the God he knew was going to be, in measure, ‘redefined’.

With Paul, and the many other Jewish converts, I find that the only credible belief is that they 100% believed they had encountered the risen Jesus. Crucified in weakness, but risen. The resurrection – the body could not be produced for the claim was not that Jesus was alive – that could have been made though would have had little traction among Jews. I find the only option is that they believed Jesus was raised from the dead by the God their ancestors had worshipped, and were willing to face death as a result of their beliefs.

I am sure there could be explanations for miracles, for dramatic personal experiences that do not resort to a God explanation. They are not proof that God exists, but important testimonies (‘God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit’). My faith is not founded on those aspects, but founded on good first-hand historical testimony. I find no other reasonable explanation for the spread of faith in Jesus over those first centuries, the spread of a message that God in Jesus is revealed as one who is humble and a servant to one and all. Not a message likely to succeed in a religious world where the gods are above and beyond us, untouched by our pain.

I think we have to drop the idea that God could save one and all. The cross is like a rope thrown into the sea to rescue whoever grabs it. No-one who is rescued is going to say ‘look I responded so that means I saved myself’. Salvation is from God and invites our response to be effective, otherwise the grace of God will be in vain.

Power. Some have placed this attribute at the centre of who God is. Power can be limited (yes I will suggest God’s power is limited) by one of two ways. An inability. I am unable to do certain things as I do not have the power / strength to do so. Or I am unable to do certain things as my character limits me. And I say that cautiously as I am imperfect. Let’s make the human perfect and unchangeable in character, with endless patience. Such a perfect human as a parent could not beat their child continuously. To argue they have the power to do that is to miss the point – their power is limited by their character.

God’s power is limited by God’s character. God’s power is also limited in that he has allowed human autonomy. The Mediterranean crises is not a ‘if there is a God’ but ‘if there is a humanity’. Now there is a humanity, but is there a humanity in the image of God? A humanity that can say ‘if you have seen me you have seen the Father’?

That seems to me to be the God dream, the apostolic vision, the potential that we work toward. Painful along the way as there is a falling short.

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Land, place, people and time

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I think we all love to have some measure of understanding: to have a perspective on ‘why?’ Maybe some are happy with ‘random’ as the explanation but I have not been content with that response. Theists and, I guess, scientists want an answer. I cannot comment on the latter set of people and with regard to the former I distance myself from those who resort to something along the lines of ‘God is in control’ in the sense of controlling all things. Maybe better to think of something like a chess game, where the ‘master chess’ player responds to every move that is made… make that into billions years of history and seemingly continual damaging ‘plays’ by human figures and the God that is presented is more than a static ‘unmoved mover’ but so much wiser and innovative than anyone can imagine. I say billions of years as that seems to be where scientists take us, and who am I to argue, and then if I stick an amateur theologian hat on I have to probably go to an eternal creation / eternal creations – otherwise the concept of ‘time’ is difficult to work with and one has to posit in some way a Creator God who was at some time not creating???? OK… early in the morning here but I do have a cup of coffee by my side.

Leaving all the above behind I have been thinking about the four elements in the title for some time. Maybe just in my inadequate search to find meaning… but I think however inadequate it is my search to find some sight on what are we supposed to do to co-operate in the invitation from the ‘chess master’ to be freshly positioned. The invitation always is from love and the invitation is to co-operate… to not be disobedient to the heavenly vision so that the grace of God toward us is not in vain. [A chess game might not be a good analogy as it is too small to illustrate cosmic movements and in a chess game the pieces are inanimate and do not determine the outcome of the game… but if we imagine a major, MAJOR, chess game and some very stupid self-willed pieces that are continually making the completion of the game look totally impossible, we might then have something that looks like our world.]

Land… what is all around and under us. Land that we are related to – from the dust of the ground bizzarely pushes us toward ‘mother earth’ (toward). Land that we are alienated from; land that is brutally affected by our sin, sin being that failure to be human in the sense of calling. It is not surprising that Scripture with its 1200 references to land has a theme of ‘the land being cursed / blessed because of you’, and in a global era there are theological aspects to our global land crises.

Land holds the corporate memory, and if that be true imagine what is remembered, the layers that have built up one on another. Can the land have its memory healed? Imagine that. God ‘imagines’ that and we are invited to as well, to participate with the God who makes all things new (not whose end goal is to make all new things).

More to come… but how about this image of the ‘keynsham clock’ that was put up to reflect the history of the town. The distortion of the hands that took place a few days ago are a mystery and they are going to be fixed… The clock might be fixed, but history and time? Distortions methinks.

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A discussion on the ‘atonement’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Pete Enns (very bad person and was ‘sacked’ cos he could not affirm inerrancy… so very BAD) is a very smart person but makes many things simpler for the rest of us and hosts podcasts on The Bible for Normal People and the one at the top of the list (Episode 273) is an interview with Jennifer Garcia Bashaw and gives helpful summaries on various theories on the atonement. A skim through summary. Maybe the most popular, penal substitution, gets zero votes and if you add my vote to hers then we have to work out the total of 0+0.

She leans heavily on what is becoming very popular – the end of scapegoating – interesting… my opinion – very attractive, but probably too influenced by a recent understanding that is read back (the scapegoat of the Day of Atonement does not operate in this way).

So, I am still pretty much sitting with the defeat of the powers – with the power of sin (singular, not the sum total of my sins plus yours) and death – being central to that. The work of God as human on our behalf (so not substitutionary and not dualistic of God and the devil in battle… so podcast guys, make a bit of a correction to the section where you talk of the weakness of Christus Victor being dualistic.

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Rebuild the Temple

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

The early disciples had a strange relationship to the Jerusalem Temple for they seem to have continued to visit the Temple, so for example we read in Acts 3 that Peter and John were going ‘to the temple at the hour of prayer’. When Jesus had spoken about ‘not one stone remaining on another’ those words came as quite a shock to the disciples. The building was awesome, immense and impressive. The Temple was a subject of conversation among travellers within the Imperial world. ‘But have you seen the Temple in Jerusalem?’ would be a comment when a traveller was recounting what they had seen as they travelled across the Roman world. The Temple site occupied around 20% of the entire footprint of Jerusalem – this was not so much a city with a Temple (Canterbury with its cathedral is a city with a cathedral) but a Temple with surrounding buildings. The reference of Jesus to ‘my Father’s house has many [store-]rooms’ is based on the historic Temple with its many storehouses.

The shock of it coming down certainly indicated the end of the age, in our culture something like the detonation of an atomic bomb, with a significant before and after. The trauma of AD70 was intense… The great hope was of God delivering Jerusalem with many prophetic voices asking the people to stay firm. In the midst of the years of assault the Roman armies withdrew as Rome central was in crisis – imagine how those who believed the prophets would have rejoiced. However Jesus had warned about such ‘false prophets’ and once Rome stabilised they returned to finish the work and the end result was utter destruction. [I am deeply concerned that a considerable part of the prophetic movement globally is caught in that position currently – when I hear of ‘go back’, ‘God will vindicate’, or I read of the rejoicing when an intellectual proclaims a return to biblical foundations I get a tad worried, for the prophetic is not about yesterday but about tomorrow. Yesterday might stir faith but it is faith for ‘a new thing’. I see parallels between Jerusalem and today – the crisis we are in is to bring us through to something different, to landscape that is all-but unrecognisable.]

There is a hope for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem that is held to by some Zionists and Christians influenced by Dispensationalism, but seems so unlikely to me. There is no hope found in early Christian literature of the hope of the Temple being rebuilt that I am aware; Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple is never specified as being in a specific location, other than the city shall be called ‘The Lord is there’. Ezekiel’s vision fuels John’s vision in Revelation 21 of the New Jerusalem, the city that comes down with dimensions that fill the whole earth, and John says ‘I saw no Temple there’… The old Jerusalem was a Temple with a city around it, and any visitor would say ‘I saw the Temple’ for there was no way that one could visit the city and not see the Temple. John’s statement is in total contrast. A city without a temple! Or as we read we know the city is both a city and a temple. The eschaton has no hope of a third temple.

One final text that is quite powerful are the closing words of Matthew’s Gospel known as the Great Commission. Matthew begins his Gospel with the Genesis of Jesus Christ, he often then writes of Scripture being fulfilled, then comes to the close with the Great Commission:

Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Let any of those among you who are of his people—may the Lord their God be with them!—go up.

OH, did I get the wrong quote? Maybe not. The last words of the Writings (2 Chronicles) – the ‘Great Commission’ of king Cyrus, to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem… ‘Go to Jerusalem’ from the place of Exile, and may God go with you… OK here comes the quote,

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

The direction has always been the radical opposite, Jerusalem… to the ends of the earth, Jerusalem to all exilic places; temple building, but not with stones one upon another. Presence – now what does the Presence of God look like / feel like? The Presence is the evidence. Presence with, among not simply for people and certainly way beyond a power to act on people. There is a Temple being rebuilt, and maybe these next years will see a ‘temple’ that we are convinced will remain intact being removed one stone from another? I am not an iconoclast, but I do believe in a journey into the unknown, hence the promise of ‘I am with you always’ is so important.

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