Sublime

The sermon—to take it for the moment as a whole—is not a mere miscellany of ethical instruction. It cannot be generalized into a set of suggestions, or even commands, on how to be ‘good’. Nor can it be turned into a guide-map for how to go to ‘heaven’ after death. It is rather, as it stands, a challenge to Israel to be Israel.

once, in other words, Israel’s God has been glorified in him, in the “new Temple” sense that permeates John’s gospel—then the Spirit is given, so that the disciples can at last be for the world what Jesus was for Israel. “As the father has sent me, so I am sending you” (20:21) is one of the most demanding of mission charges, but also a key moment i

There is no historical verisimilitude in the picture of the Pharisees as petty, and perhaps Pelagian, legalists. There is no evidence that the Pharisees as such were directly involved in the events which led to Jesus’ actual death. And there is no connection, in this scheme, between the Pharisees’ reaction to Jesus and the Temple incident, which lo

5

John 3:16, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” There we are, think average Christian readers. This is the biblical promise of a timeless heavenly bliss. But it isn’t.

it was assumed that talk of the ‘kingdom of god’, or of the ‘son of man coming on the clouds of heaven’, was to be taken as a literal prediction of events, shortly to take place, which would close the space-time order. But not only is it unnecessary to read apocalyptic language in this way: it is actually necessary, as historians, that we refuse to

At the very least, prophecy is truth telling.