Statue of Alfred the Great, Winchester, England Go to Part One. Preterism, or, Covenant Eschatology Preterism (from the Latin, præter or “past”) is a biblical hermeneutic or interpretive method consistent with process theism. A preterist biblical theology denies that the Bible sets out the story of humanity from the creation of planet earth when God […]
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, lies on the ground at the Jallianwala Bagh memorial. Photograph: Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images The recent move by the Canadian government to criminalize “condoning, denying, or downplaying” the Holocaust is not just an infringement of civil liberties supposedly guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. More importantly, it endows a […]
According to the OED, a “mythos” is a “traditional or recurrent narrative theme or pattern; a standard plot in literature.” For many, the Holocaust Mythos conjures up the hope of universal redemption from the absolute evils of racism, anti-Semitism, and militant White nationalism. Arising out of the allegedly planned extermination of the Jewish people by […]
St. Augustine [1]of Hippo (354–430) Augustine’s Hellenistic Hermeneutic Augustine’s interpretation of the biblical metanarrative portrays both the creation and the end of the world as the appearance and disappearance of corruptible material existence. He had no doubt that the New Testament writers were predicting the literal end of the earthly world when, as “[t]he whole […]
Introduction From its beginnings in the first century A.D. Christianity anchored its cosmology in the Bible. But what is the Bible? As a book in hand, of course, it is a collection of ancient texts, the product of the religious history of a remarkably durable and professedly holy ethno-nation in the ancient Near East. One […]
N.T. Wright on Paul’s Resurrection Theology: Global or National? N.T. Wright, the former Anglican bishop of Durham, is an influential scholar-theologian-priest and the author of many gargantuan studies of the historical Jesus and the apostle Paul. He, too, maintains that the meaning of the cross and resurrection is not to be found in theological abstractions […]
Introduction Biblical interpretation is, if not the only, certainly the core task of theological hermeneutics. Unfortunately, religious conflict and biblical interpretation have always been joined at the hip. Is it therefore the case that theologians engage in “politics” when they offer authoritative interpretations? Is it too much of a stretch to characterize biblical hermeneutics as […]
