Category Archives: Jesus Christ

Kenosis theory

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Taking Phil 2:7 (“he emptied himself”), along with 2 Cor 8:9 (“he became poor”), has led some to develop a kenosis theory, according to which Christ’s becoming human necessarily entailed a renunciation of some of his divine qualities.  Otherwise, how could he share in those limitations of space, time, power, knowledge, and so on, that are part and parcel of human existence?

According to one version of the kenosis theory, Christ emptied himself of his ‘metaphysical’ attributes (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience and so on), but not his ‘moral’ attributes (love, justice, holiness, and so on).…

Faith, hope and love in Jesus’ ministry

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The familiar Christian triad of faith, hope and love occur not only in the writings of Paul but also in the ministry of Jesus himself.

Faith is prominent in passages such as Matt. 6:30; 8:10, 26; 9:2, 22, 29; 14:31; 15:28; 16:8; 17:20; 21:21; 23:23.

The idea of hope (even if not always the actual word) occurs in Matt. 9:2; 14:27; Mark 5:36; 6:50; 9:23; John 11:11, 23, 40, etc.

And love, pre-eminent of the three, is stressed in passages including Matt.…

Miracle and metaphor

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Marcus J. Borg describes himself as  ‘moderate to liberal’ scholar.  In setting out his ‘appreciative disagreement’ with Tom Wright (in response to the latter’s Jesus and the Victory of God), Borg homes in on the question of miracle.  He sees the Gospels as a combination of ‘history remembered’ and ‘history metaphorized’.  The first of these terms refers to those events that are recorded in the Gospels simply because they actually happened.  The second term refers to other things that are related in the Gospels.  …

Gospel spirituality

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What does gospel (that is to say, evangelical and reformed) spirituality look like?  Peter Adam writes:-

1. Mediator

Christ is the mediator of the revelation of God, so this spirituality is Christ-centred, responding with faith in Jesus Christ, and especially to his saving death and resurrection.

2. Revealer

Christ has revealed the Father, so this spirituality is that of trust in God our Father, his love and kindness in Christ, and his sovereign and providential rule over everything.…

The driving force in Jesus’ life

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Sit down (suggests J.I. Packer, in his celebrated book Knowing God) and read through Mark’s Gospel, and you will receive an impression of Jesus that includes at least the following four features:-

1. Jesus was a man of action.  He was ‘a man always on the move, always altering situations and precipitating things—working miracles; calling and training disciples; upsetting error that passed as truth and irreligion that passed as godliness; and finally walking straight and open–eyed into betrayal, condemnation and crucifixion (a freakish sequence of anomalies which in the oddest way one is made to feel that he himself controlled all along the line),’

2.  …

Jesus – pre-existent or exalted divinity?

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Bart Ehrman is one of those scholars who impresses with his extensive knowledge (to say nothing of his personal charm and communication ability), but who makes glaring errors of judgement on too regular a basis.  Perhaps it is his own loss of Christian faith that makes him so certain that he has no axe to grind that he cannot see the axes lying all around him – some on have already been ground, others are waiting to be ground, still others are in the process of being ground.  …

Mark 1:1-20 – Four witnesses – sermon notes

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A book by Philip Pullman : ‘The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ’.  This reflects the popular distinction between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’; the simple Galilean teacher, as depicted in the Gospels, and the exalted object of the church’s worship, as found in the Epistles.

How is Jesus actually presented in this, the earliest and shortest of the Gospels; the one that most emphasises his humanness?  Let’s call four witnesses.…

Rom 5:12-21 – A tale of two families – sermon notes

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I wonder how far back you can trace your family tree?  Not many of us can rival the claim of Canadian furniture-maker Michael Ibsen, who is the nearest known relative of Richard III, who died at the battle of Bosworth in 1483.

But did you know that, in fact, each of us is a member of one or other of two very ancient families?  These families are discussed by Paul in Romans 5.

At the head of each of these two families stands a representative. …

That’s not what I call preaching 4

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I wanted to check a few details about Philip Pullman’s book, ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’.  In that book, Pullman imagines ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ were brothers: ‘Jesus’ was godly and moral, but ‘Christ’ was something of a Judas-character, whose physical likeness to ‘Jesus’ led, after the death of his brother, to a belief in the resurrection and the founding of the Christian Church.

I was intrigued to read this transcript of a sermon by the Reverend Robert Reiss, who at the time was Canon in Residence at Westminster Abbey.  …

Who did Jesus think he was?

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If we are to take the four Gospels pretty much at face value (i.e. not as documents whose teaching emanates largely from the faith of the early church, rather than from the Master himself) then we are faced with two complementary, and equally astonishing, sets of truths regarding Jesus’ claims concerning himself.

1. Firstly, there is everything that Jesus did not say or do.

‘Jesus never said to his disciples, Let us worship God together; Let us put our faith in God; Let us pray together; Let us trust or hope in God.…