problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I `do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe `how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate `work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone `performs' as a kind of initiation test.

God is the Creator God, he doesn't want to say, "Okay, creation was very good, but I'm scrapping it." He wants to say, "Creation is so good that I'm going to rescue it."

When I was at seminary in my early twenties, one of my teachers said to me, "You're going to have to decide. Either you're going to be an academic or you're going to be a pastor. You can't be both." I remember thinking, Rats! I want to be both! Why are you telling me I can't do these two things?And so I have kind of oscillated to and always wanted to do both.

I regard this conclusion as coming in the same sort of category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70

When Jesus wanted to explain to his disciples what his death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal.

Jesus' death was seen by Jesus himself ... as the ultimate means by which God's kingdom was established. The crucifixion was the shocking answer to the prayer that God's kingdom would come on earth as in heaven.

If you don't have properly constituted civic authorities you will encourage vigilantism and solo efforts at retributive justice - which is anarchy, and God doesn't want his world to be anarchic.