N.T. Wright: Kingdom and Church

Just came across the following quote in JVOG

‘To equate kingdom and church is at best putting the cart before the horse, at worst a complete anachronism. Trye, there is a sense in which the community of Jesus’ people was part of the overall meaning of his announcement of the kingdom. But this idea needs checking and modifying in far too many ways for us to able to assert that when Jesus walked around the Galilean villages announcing the kingdom he was telling people about the church he was going to found. Put baldly like that, it is bound to seem as out of place as the attempt to discover what sort of Computer Paul used to type his letters’. (222)

It’s a cracking quote. However, I actually  think we can be fairly certain that the Apostle Paul used a Dell PC with Libronix software. He certainly did not use an Apple as he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Read Full Post »

God or Caeser

Just picked up my latest cd-rom from logos. Its called Studies in Jesus and the Gospels and contains 23 different monographs. I purchased them as a pre-pub and in the process saved myself some money. The idea is that you commit to buying the product before it has been published. As an electronic resource its easy to pull out quotes, highlight the text and they are fully searchable.

I started reading one last night by Sean Freyne which seeks to show Jesus’s ministry in the context of a historically reconstructed Galilee. There is some discussion of Galilee and Roman imperial rule. I found the follwoing quite stimulating.

“‘Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’—a call to accept Caesar’s rule, or a declaration that only what belonged to God was of any consequence? There seems little doubt about Jesus’ answer to his own question. Unlike some of his co-religionists who belonged to the retainer class, he was not prepared to accept the inevitability of Rome’s rule as expressed in its propaganda (JW 2.348–361). Like other kingdoms, it too was doomed to pass. Despite Rome’s claims, their peace could not be imposed. ‘They make a desolation and call it peace’ are words put on the lips of a British general Calgacus, by a Roman historian, Tacitus (Agicola 30.3–31). Jesus was not prepared to share the violent response to such conditions, espoused by many Jews throughout the first century, which eventually plunged the nation into a disastrous revolt. He believed in the power of symbols and symbolic action because he believed in a God of whom, unlike Caesar, no image could be made, and yet who summoned people to trust in his presence and his power. This was the risk of faith that Jesus was prepared to take. His was a faith that was grounded in a trust in the goodness of the creation as he had experienced it and reflected on its mysterious but hidden processes. It was also a faith that had been nourished by the apocalyptic imagination that this creator God was still in charge of his world and had the power to make all things new again. No human empire could be compared with this power, no matter how dominant it and its agents appeared to be. Caesar could have his image engraved on the coin of the tribute, but he could not control the power of the imagination that was fed by the tradition of God’s mysterious but powerful presence in the world, to which no image could do justice.”

JW Jewish War of Flavius Josephus

Sean Freyne, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean : A New Reading of the Jesus Story, 149 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004).

Read Full Post »

Free Cornerstone Commentary on Logos

If you head over to the following page you will find details of how to receive a Cornerstone commentary on Matthew and Mark for freeon the Logos libronix platform. The logos package is an excellent tool for studying and research. This may be a good opportunity for you to get to know this wonderful piece of software. The libronix platform can be downloaded for free here.

Read Full Post »