Scripture Engagement

'The book of Romans wasn't written by Luther. The book of Romans wasn't even written by Calvin. The book of Romans was written by Paul, and Paul was a Jew, and we Jews, don't like Gentiles!' Martin Goldsmith, All Nations Christian College, 1991-92. We are so used to reading Romans through the eyes of Luther and Calvin that we forget that the reason it was written was quite different from the issues those venerable theologians faced. The problem, from a Jewish perspective, is that the Gentiles were considered to be so impure as to be beyond the bounds of God's saving grace. They were the uncircumcised, sexually immoral, idolatrous, unclean people who couldn't possibly by part of God's saving plan. But God's plan did include them (Gen 12:1-3), and Isaiah, amongst others, prophesied that 'all nations' would be included in temple worship (Isa 56:6-8). In this he was correct. Jesus' resurrection and ascension changed everything. No longer was ...

I don't know if you're preaching on Easter Sunday? And I don't know what your congregation is like, but imagine you're preaching in an honour-shame context on Easter Sunday. What would you say? How would you explain the efficacy of the work of Christ on the cross? You wouldn't mention Christ 'paying the price for our sins'. Noooo You would mention restoration to a new family, the family of God You would mention a sense of belonging to that family You would mention that Christ's death took away our (collective) shame and restored honour to both God and to us (collectively) You might mention that Christ (as representative of a new humanity) succeeded where both Adam (representative of humans) and Israel failed You might mention that as our elder brother Christ paved the way for us to share the honour that belongs to him You probably would mention that we now have access to the Father, and have the same right to the privileges that Christ won fo...

We are used to talking about Bible translation in terms of communication. Missiologists talk often talk about 'bridges' used for sharing the good news, which is also a communication metaphor - we have something we want to communicate, but we need a bridge, a way of expressing it, some kind of packaging for it, so that it communicates correctly (or hides whats inside the package, if we interpret the metaphor literally). This is a misunderstanding for two reasons: It is a false assumption that we have 'correctly' understood the good news. Unfortunately we have only understood a representation of the good news for our own culture . It doesn't matter how we package it, this will be misunderstood or irrelevant to the receptor culture (the primary audience in question). For instance, those in the minority world often explain the good news in terms of our guilt before a just God who has to punish sin, and that He, in Christ, took that punishment on our behalf to make us...