becoming

We are called to do things which people will see as subversive. And in a sense, they’ve all been right. Because the power of love, which is what the Gospel is all about, always challenges the love of power, which is what Caesar is all about.

Tom Wright, bishop of Durham

St John’s Nottingham has a youtube channel featuring world-class biblical scholars like Bauckham, Thiselton, Dunn, Wright, Hurtado, Stanton, Burridge and others, talking about Ricoeur, the kingdom of God, the divinity of Jesus, the Gospels and eyewitnesses, the Gospel of John…

Enjoy!

[HT: Chrisendom]

邱昭文老師的「認識賴特」講義，和台北校園出版社的特別講座。

當我們等NT Wright的COQG系列中，關於保羅那冊出爐，等到頸長之際，華神的邱昭文老師原來正著手為《校園》把Jesus and the Victory of God翻譯為中文。分享中她也提到出版社正面對的壓力，和作為譯者的感受和看法。

我也曾和種耔的Samuel討論過《校園》決定譯COQG會不會是吃力不討好之舉？我不大清楚亞洲神學生的英語情況。不過我總覺得，會對此書有興趣之神學生，其英文程度，會不會還需要依賴中文譯本？在北美，就這系列的學術程度，一本華語信徒是不會看的。看的，很有可能，已在英語神學院，也就可以看原著罷，是嗎？

不過，我還是如邱老師一樣，「當我發現校園早已買下版權，真是又驚喜、又佩服」。

能有這樣願境的出版社，撐！

[link: 邱老師網誌]

In what way have we as evangelical Christians failed to grasp or live out the fullness of God’s missional intent? How (if at all) has our theology of evangelism been weak?

Read Christopher Wright’s response in a 2-part series here (1) and here (2).

A snippet:

We have tended to separate believing from living the gospel, and to prioritize the first. That is, we seem to think that there can be a belief of faith separate from the life of faith, that people can be saved by something that goes on in their heads, without worrying too much about what happens in their lives. So long as they have prayed the right prayer and believed the right doctrine, nothing else ultimately matters, or at least, whatever happens next is secondary and distinct.

…The bad result of this dichotomy is that we have people called believers and evangelicals, whose actual lives are indistinguishable from the culture around them – whether in terms of moral standards, or social and political attitudes and actual behaviour (as various surveys have shown, including the recent Pew survey that showed evangelicals were the largest religious group in the USA who approved of the use of torture).

Wright’s 16-page interview on why he wrote JUSTIFICATION: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.

[link: ivpress]

聆聽的意思是，當別人停止說話時，你不是在想要說甚麼、忙於構想你的回應，而是專注於他剛才所說的話。

Norman Wright

Rowan Williams’ Easter sermon reminds us that we (i.e. our lives) are the living proof of the reality of resurrection:

…And the only way of saying that, of course is for it to be lived out. It’s no use talking endlessly – preaching endlessly – about reconciliation and forgiveness and liberation. No argument can persuade anyone about this, only the lived reality. It’s worth remembering that Paul of Tarsus joined the Christian community not as a well-meaning religious enquirer but as someone who had been the equivalent of a terrorist gunman, someone who had supervised the activities of a private militia devoted to abducting and imprisoning members of the Christian sect.

On the other hand, Larry Hurtado’s Why Was Jesus Crucified? A historical perspective is a flip-side warning to the Church when she forgets her subversive nature and mission:

In fact, Jesus’ crucifixion posed a whole clutch of potential problems for early Christians. It meant that at the origin and heart of their faith was a state execution and that their revered savior had been tried and found guilty by the representative of Roman imperial authority. This likely made a good many people wonder if the Christians weren’t some seriously subversive movement. It was, at least, not the sort of group that readily appealed to those who cared about their social standing.

Jesus’ crucifixion represented a collision between Jesus and Roman governmental authority, an obvious liability to early Christian efforts to promote their faith. Yet, remarkably, they somehow succeeded. Centuries of subsequent Christian tradition have made the image of the crucified Jesus so familiar that the offensiveness of the event that it portrays has been almost completely lost.

And Mark Roberts encourages us to celebrate the Resurrection with his Easter Postscript:

…Because of the resurrection, we reverence the cross.
Because of the resurrection, the symbol of the cross is one of the best known in the world.
Because of the resurrection, what was once the sign of horrific death is now a sign of life and hope.
Because of the resurrection, the death of Jesus is remembered, cherished, even celebrated.
Because of the resurrection, the Stations of the Cross lead, not to death, but to live.
Because of the resurrection, we are reborn into a living hope.
Because of the resurrection, we know that we too will live anew.
Because of the resurrection, everything is different.
Because of the resurrection, new life has begun.
Christ is risen!
He is risen, indeed!

While our good bishop at Durham commissioned us:

…to be agents of new creation we must ourselves become, and live as, people of new creation. And that means holiness, which means rediscovering what a full and genuine human life was always meant to be like. Our world has lived on so many lies and half-truths about what it means to be human, whether it’s the celeb culture, the drug culture, the idolisation of sport, the obsession with sex, or just the slow deterioration of human relationships and community. The challenge to personal holiness always comes as a shock, like someone waking you up at midnight and insisting that you’ve got to come running to see the new dawn. We are called to be Easter people, resurrection people, leaving behind in the grave all that spoils and downgrades our human calling.