About Providence, Divine Action and the Church


In this blog, Terry J. Wright posts thoughts and shares research on the Christian doctrine of providence. This doctrine testifies to God’s provision for all things through creation’s high priest, the man Christ Jesus. However, the precise meaning and manner of this provision is a perpetually open question, and this blog is a forum for discussion of the many issues relating to providence and the place of the Church within God’s action.

Sunday 17 June 2012

Random Thoughts (4)

The following thoughts were inspired by the sixth symposium of the Temple Studies Group, which met on 16 June 2012 to discuss the temple in the Johannine writings:

[13] John 18–20 echoes the Genesis creation story. There’s a devil in the garden (Judas; John 18:1-3); Jesus is the Human (ho anthrōpos; John 19:5) who completes God’s will (‘it is finished’; John 19:30); Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener, which was the job given to Adam in Eden (John 20:15; cf. Genesis 2:15); Jesus and Mary together in the garden (John 19:41; 20:14-16) constitute the new Adam and Eve at the head of the new creation.

[14] In Matthew 6:11, epiousion can be translated as ‘daily bread’, ‘tomorrow’s bread’, or even ‘beyond substance’. When celebrating the Eucharist, is there a connection between all these three possible interpretations? The bread set before us today is actually a foretaste of the eschatological banquet that finds its source in heaven.

[15] Margaret Barker has argued that much of the New Testament assumes the legitimacy of the first Jerusalem temple’s practices, practices that were abandoned once the rediscovery of (supposedly) the book of Deuteronomy led to Josiah’s reforms. Is Deuteronomy therefore the crucial Old Testament book? There’s an early-ish Christian text, which I’ve only just discovered, called The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, in which the Christian Timothy says that while the first four books of the Pentateuch are inspired by God, the Book of Deuteronomy isn’t. What did the author of this dialogue know or believe that we today don’t know?

[16] John 17 is an exposition of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4).

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