parables of a prodigal world

I never much bought into the rapture theology of the "Left Behind" sect, and that was true simply on exegetical/hermeneutical grounds. But the implications!...Oh, the implications!!... No mo' bacon?!?! Why the hell would I even want to be there? And she might be singing and all, but I get the sense that the young woman in the video is with me on this one. Check it out one more time if you don't believe me. Grace and Peace, Raffi

Glory to God the Creator for this nugget from the master exegete, John "Mac Daddy" MacArthur: "The environmental movement is consumed with trying to preserve the planet forever. But we know that isn’t in God’s plan… The earth we inhabit is not a permanent planet. It is, frankly, a disposable planet—it is going to have a very short life. It’s been around about six thousand years or so—that’s all—and it may last a few thousand more. And then the Lord is going to destroy it… I’ve told environmentalists that if they think humanity is wrecking the planet, wait until they see what Jesus does to it. Peter says God is going to literally turn it in an atomic implosion so that the whole universe goes out of existence." Kaplooey! Grace and Peace, Raffi

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adders den. --Isaiah 11:6-8 How will all this happen? It's almost to optimistic to accept as a reality. The animosity between the wolf and the lamb, the calf and the lion, these are of the natural order of things, right? It has nothing to with human sin and fallenness, with the weakness of the love of God in the human heart, right? The vision of Isaiah 11:6-8 has got to be a metaphor, right? How big is your vision of the redemptive power of God? How big is your vision of the power of love? They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; because the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord (i.e., lov...

Panentheism: (from Greek πᾶν (pân) "all"; ἐν (en) "in"; and θεός (Theós) "God"; "all-in-God") is a belief system which posits that God interpenetrates every part of nature, and timelessly extends beyond as well. Panentheism is distinguished from pantheism , which holds that God is synonymous with the material universe. Anyone who's read and heard N.T. Wright at any length might well wonder whether the good bishop is a closet panentheist. Wright's view of biblical cosmology/eschatology has that ring to it. We should all know well, by now, his cosmological insistence that heaven and earth are the "overlapping and interlocking dimensions of God's creation." But it is his eschatological vision that really seems, at first glance, an affirmation of panentheism. After all, two of his favorite eschatological portraits are the Isaianic image of "the earth being filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea," an...

OK, I'll admit it. N.T. Wright is my theological hero. The 4 of you who read this blog regularly will know that I would unabashedly admit that my Christian understanding was woefully inadequate before I started engaging with Wright's work (not that many would say it is much farther along now, but anyway...) Having said that, I don't swallow whole every aspect of Wright's theological vision. Many of his ideas, I'll admit, I either can't get my head around, or I disagree with, or some combination of the two. One example comes to mind, touching on perhaps the most significant of Wright's theological categories. Isaiah and the Eschatological Framework One of Wright's favorite tools for framing his eschatological vision is the use of Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 11 to highlight the present and future senses of God's glory. Isaiah 6, of course, contains the Seraphim's exclamation that "the whole earth is full of [the Lord's] glory," while Isaiah ...

I confess that I've been too busy over the last few days to have read any further from Christians at the Cross . But maybe that was providential, inasmuch as there was a theme that occurred early in the book that had been pressing on my heart to share, one that was less explicit than Wright's presentation of the fresh, new paradigm that I spoke of in my first post . In Chapter 1, The Sermon at the Eucharist on Palm Sunday , Wright says and does something that, I believe, is indicative of one of the central lessons I've learned from grappling with his work in its entirety. Toward the end of the chapter, he says (addressed to the congregation to whom the sermon was originally delivered): "I want you to write down, over the next two or three days, just a sentence or two, or maybe a word or two, about the particular griefs that this community has had to bear in recent years. And over the course of the week we'll gather them up, we'll put them in a basket here somew...