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Theology

Some Random Good Stuff

I have come across a few fascinating theology pieces this week, which I want to draw your attention to. I can’t actually remember who pointed me to some of them, so apologies for the lack of referrals.

The Jubilee Centre have published an excellent piece on eschatology and politics. The summary of the article reads:

Christians fail to do justice to ‘politics’ when they seek to withdraw from the political arena or to use political power to dominate society. Similarly, Christians misunderstand ‘eschatology’ when they obsessively focus on debates about end-times chronology and when they effectively ignore it altogether. In each case, the purpose of biblical eschatology – critique, hope and a re-ordering of everyday priorities and relationships – and hence the political implications of God’s coming and present kingdom, are neglected. A broader understanding of politics and eschatology contends that everything we do is significant in the sight of God and in the light of the future.

Excellent stuff. You can read the full article here.

I also came across a fascinating piece on partnerships in mission from a Pauline perspective. This kicks off with a very provocative (though, I have to say, accurate) statement:

To borrow a storyline from Andrew Walls, if scholarly space travellers visited this planet in 1910 and witnessed how the Western church was subsidizing indigenous Christian movements around the world, and then returned again in 2010 only to observe the same, they would rightly conclude that those dedicated to discipling the nations continue to place unnecessary obstacles in the path of the missio Dei. One is
therefore left wondering whether the academic discipline of missiology has made any substantial difference in this area over the course of a century.

You can find the article in this pdf magazine. It starts on page 6.

Ben Byerly pointed me to a fascinating article on why New Testament scholars don’t care about the dispute between John Piper and NT Wright regarding justification. For those of us who don’t live in the scholarly world, it is a good reminder that the likes of Piper and even Wright are not always at the forefront of ideas. Some of the issues they are talking about publicly today, were debated in the academic world 10-15 years ago. It is hard to pull a quote from this one, but you can read it here.