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40 results for “New creation”
Clear searchMichael J. Vlach · Biblical theology · 2023
I recommend The New Creation Model because it gave me a clear, sustained account of the resurrection body and the renewed creation as parts of one coherent purpose. Vlach is especially helpful in resisting…
View recommendation →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
…tific Vision the Whole Christian Hope? Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation The beatific vision is the Christian teaching that the redeemed will see God and find their perfect happiness in Him. It draws upon magnificent promises: “Blessed are the pure…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…ist. But even being with Christ in heaven is not the final chapter of Christian hope. The New Testament points towards the resurrection of the body and the renewal of creation. God does not discard His handiwork. He redeems it. The body which suffers weakness, ageing and death wi…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…would leave much of its language unexplained. The chapters speak of righteous kingship, renewed moral perception, the Spirit poured out from above, fruitful land, secure Zion, forgiven inhabitants, judgment upon the nations and the return of the redeemed. Their cumulative movemen…
Read article →Labour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…ings as made in the image of God and commissioned to exercise responsible rule within His creation (Genesis 1:26–28). We do not create from nothing as God does, but we receive what He has made and develop it for good. That includes far more than paid employment. A parent caring f…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
Eternal Love Before Creation What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God Before there was a universe, what was there for God to love? There were no angels, no human beings and no created order. Nothing…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
The New Testament Is a Very Jewish Story Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world To many Jewish people, Christianity appears thoroughly foreign. Its historic centres be…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
The Earth's Great Sabbath Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ The Christian hope for creation rests neither in human effort nor in escape from the material world. The creation groans for the return of…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…er, were grounded in God's oath and carried forwards even through national judgement. The new covenant finally provides the cleansing and transformed heart which Israel could never produce under the law. The covenants are not competing plans. Together they reveal how a holy God j…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…Identity of Jesus Christ If YHWH alone is Creator, Saviour and Lord of all, what are the New Testament writers saying when they place Jesus within that identity? Isaiah does not leave Israel searching for a greater God behind the God who speaks. The One who comforts Jerusalem is…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…wn. The God Philosophy Would Never Have Invented The incarnation did not merely provide a new answer within the established philosophical system. It overturned the system’s governing assumptions. The Platonist looked beyond the visible world towards a higher and more substantial…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…all God's promises have transferred to the Church. Israel's land becomes a figure of the new creation, David's throne becomes Christ's present heavenly rule, and Israel's promised national restoration becomes the salvation of the multinational Church. The promises are not said t…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…hen, whither ye went." —Ezekiel 36:22 The passage then promises regathering, cleansing, a new heart, and the indwelling Spirit (Ezekiel 36:24-28). Israel's condition explains why grace is necessary; God's holy name explains why the promise is certain. This also answers the sugges…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…he Gentiles will see her vindication, kings will behold her glory, and she will receive a new name from the mouth of the LORD. The geographical character of the prophecy is difficult to miss. Isaiah speaks about Zion, Jerusalem, her land, her walls, her watchmen, her grain, her w…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
Does Eternal Mean Divine? Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation Why this is useful to know: On your walk through life, you will encounter challenges to the deity of Christ from television shows and documentaries, Muslims, Latter-day Saints, Jeho…
Read article →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…iscussions of the true humanity and deity of Christ, bodily resurrection, the goodness of creation, and the unity of the Old and New Testaments. He is also an important early witness to a future earthly kingdom: his premillennial passages show that this expectation cannot simply…
View recommendation →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…efore say that Allah is merciful, forgiving and loving; that his mercy reaches throughout creation; that he receives the repentant; and that his love is morally serious rather than indifferent to human conduct. The Christian argument should not deny any of that. It should ask wha…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…es the letter by pronouncing peace and mercy upon those who walk according to the rule of new creation "and upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:15-16). Is that expression Paul's name for the whole Church? These are substantial questions because Galatians gives Gentile believers…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…d will not displace the gospel, make the cross unnecessary or turn the experiencer into a new source of revelation for the Church. The test is not whether the story frightens us or comforts us. It is whether its claims agree with the revelation God has already given. What Scriptu…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…o discussed it with his priest, who apparently regarded it as something everyone already knew. The claim itself was far from new to me. I first encountered it around seventeen years ago, when I began engaging in religious forums online. I was debating a humanist who appealed, if…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…The expression can be useful, provided it does not mean that the early Christians simply knew less Bible or believed in an unfinished Christ. The biblical realities were already present. What remained underdeveloped was the language capable of preserving all of them together. Wha…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…, or distrust of corrupt institutions. If all these things are Gnostic, then parts of the New Testament begin to look suspicious. A label that explains everything explains nothing. The question therefore requires three different investigations. Did modern evangelicalism descend f…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…the saints, Christ’s descent to earth, the judgement of the nations and the liberation of creation all occur as one indivisible event. That conclusion is produced by identifying passages with one another. It must be tested by exactly the same standard. Does John 5 teach one simul…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…l literary case. Medieval Muslim interpreters certainly reflected upon nature and treated creation as a sign of God. But the programme of matching Qur'anic phrases with modern scientific discoveries expanded especially in recent apologetics. It often begins with the discovery and…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…braham, the faithful Israelite, David's greater Son, the true temple, and mediator of the new covenant. The Church is united to Him. Jewish and Gentile believers therefore become one people, inherit the promises, and anticipate not merely one land but the renewed creation. On thi…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…seventh day (Genesis 2:3), commanded Israel to keep it and grounded it in His own work of creation (Exodus 20:8-11). Yet Jesus does not say merely that He understands the Sabbath better than His opponents. He declares Himself its Lord. Again, a single statement can be assigned to…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
…ord and my God” (John 20:28), and Jesus receives rather than corrects his confession. The New Testament also gives the Son works and honours belonging to God. All things were created by Him (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). He forgives sins, receives worship, gives life, and will judg…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…arose and commanded the wind and the sea, and they obeyed Him. He grew in wisdom, yet He knew what was in man. He was tempted, yet without sin. He said that He did not know the hour of His return, yet His disciples confessed that He knew all things. He suffered, bled and died, al…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…s Qur’anic theology. Forming a creature from clay and breathing life into it evokes God’s creation of Adam. Jesus appears to perform a divine kind of creative act, but the repeated qualification “by Allah’s leave” places the power under divine permission and prevents the miracle…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…on is not a clever means of evading all authority. It is the order established within the New Testament itself. Overseers are commanded to hold fast the faithful word so that they may teach sound doctrine and refute error (Titus 1:9). Elders are to shepherd the flock without beco…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…ted in its strongest recognisable form. The Qur'an does not say that Allah gave Jesus the New Testament. It speaks of the Injeel in the singular as a revelation bestowed upon Jesus, just as the Torah was given to Moses and the Qur'an to Muhammad. The four canonical Gospels, by co…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…nity and Islam agree about many things at the level of vocabulary. Both speak of one God, creation, revelation, prophets, angels, judgement, mercy, prayer and Jesus the Messiah. But shared vocabulary can conceal incompatible meanings. Christianity says that Jesus is the eternal S…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…t God has not revoked His oath to Abraham, abandoned His covenant with David, emptied the new covenant of its named recipients, or converted Israel into a title which now excludes the people descended from Jacob. The Church's inheritance is gloriously real. Israel's future is cov…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…istianity can survive; it is glory Christianity alone can proclaim. The Maker entered His creation. The eternal Son made our nature His own. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain was carried in human arms. But what happens when a philosopher encounters that glory and…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…h part should be allowed to retain its natural force. The promise belongs to the coming renewal Jesus places the apostolic thrones "in the regeneration". The word describes renewal or re-creation. Its only other New Testament occurrence refers to the believer's spiritual renewal…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…cross and presented Him as the eternal Word who was already with God in the beginning. I knew those truths could not contradict one another, but I did not yet possess the theological distinction that would later help me considerably: the distinction between eternity and economy.…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…s. But independence does not mean indifference. The Creator has a rightful claim upon His creation, and His love and holiness concern the lives He gives. To ask why God cares when we deceive someone is also to ask why the God of truth should care about falsehood. To ask why He ca…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…ulfilled apart from Him. He is the Seed of Abraham, the Son of David, the mediator of the new covenant, and the One in whom all God's promises are yea and amen (Galatians 3:16; Luke 1:32-33; Hebrews 9:15; 2 Corinthians 1:20). The Church also shares blessings once associated with…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…or the creature's side? Nicaea answered that He is truly God, not the highest item within creation. But the conclusion does not follow from those facts. To establish that Constantine invented the doctrine, one would need evidence that Christians did not worship Christ as God befo…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…the people who ought to be feared or condemned. Once the package has been accepted, every new event arrives with an interpretation already attached. Christians should be especially cautious about this. We already have a faith, a moral authority and a final allegiance. A political…
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