Jesus Victory of God V2: Christian Origins And The Question Of God

so the gospel writers told the story of Jesus in order to undergird and reinforce the Christian determination to follow him, to go on following him, to live as he lived and, if necessary, to die as he died, believing that God’s kingdom, established through his work, was becoming a reality in more and more of the world through their own lives, work,

People have tried to read the story of Jesus as though the only thing it had to say to the Jews of Jesus’s day was that they were wrong. They were wrong about God, about God’s coming kingdom, about the way to salvation.

there is little evidence, after the first four or five centuries of the church, that the Jewish context of Jesus’s public career was playing any role in theological or pastoral reflection. To this day there remains a strong prejudice against any such thing.

Third, the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated, that is implemented through his cross, is emphatically for this world. The four gospels together demand a complete reappraisal of the various avoidance tactics Western Christianity has employed rather than face this challenge head-on. It simply won’t do to line up the options, as has normally been done, in