As yet, the principal weakness, it seems to me, in Andrew’s theological system, is that it gives no hint of how people outside the immediate 1st century beneficiaries of Jesus’s death and resurrection, are to be transformed. There are no grounds for such a transformation within a system that relegates most of the biblical material, the events in the life of Jesus especially, to a particular people at a particular period in history.

Peter, this is simply not true. Yes, my work has focused for the most part on reading the New Testament in its historical context, and I have argued that there is a contingency to much of the theological content (eschatology in particular) that is obscured and distorted by modern rationalizations of the complex narrative content of the Bible.

But if Israel became renewed creation through the story of the Son of man who suffers and is vindicated (both in its condensed application to Jesus and in its expanded application to the early church as it confronted first Jewish and then Roman opposition), then anyone who subsequently becomes part of that community must leave behind the old humanity and put on the new humanity - must become new creation:

At every level of fragmentation and contextualization… the creational paradigm remains intact – just like fractals, the same pattern is revealed at all levels of magnification. Ideally at least, in even the smallest iterations we see, both actually and prophetically, the living God present through the Holy Spirit, the concrete outworking of compassion and justice, respect and thankfulness for the natural environment, a passion for creativity in the image of the creative God, and an acute sense of having to exist exposed, vulnerable, and visible in the midst of the nations and cultures of the world. Every community of believers is a sign of the whole people of God, a sign of renewed humanity, a sign of the goodness of the creator, a sign of righteousness, a sign of the sheer profligate inventiveness of the Spirit. (Re: Mission: Biblical mission for a post-biblical church, 150-151)

Even in this simplest representation there are more than adequate grounds for personal and corporate transformation. A person leaves behind the programmes and dispositions of the macrocosm and comes to live under the reign of God through Christ, obedient to the law of the Spirit.