First, it should present a positive agenda, not just a tool of critique. It will not just analyze contemporary society but provide a vision for its future flourishing and renewal. Second, it will present a challenge to customary and fashionable of thinking. It will not merely take whatever happens to be the current flavor of the month in

In other words, in much popular modern Christian thought we have made a three-layered mistake. We have Platonized our eschatology (substituting “souls going to heaven” for the promised new creation) and have therefore moralized our anthropology (substituting a qualifying examination of moral performance for the biblical notion of the human

questions such as “Was the stone rolled back?” “Was the tomb empty?” “Are the Easter appearances to be taken literally?” become secondary. Whatever really happened, what is most important, is that the Christ-Spirit is really alive and well and continuing “to do his thing” in the lives and bodies of his followers.