Thanks, John. Frustration is just part of the process; it doesn’t have to put an end to dialogue. I still think the jibe about a ‘very contentless and anarchic biblical hermeneutic’ was uncalled for, but your gentle rebuke is well taken.

If Peter and others like him weren’t there to challenge the argument, I would have to do it myself. That might make for better scholarship on my part, but at the moment I think it would be less fun.

Peter knows that the dialogues have helped me think through the implications of this historical hermeneutic. I admit that I have a rather tendentious and blinkered approach to biblical interpretation at times, but I do keep the questions in mind. My aim is to see if a coherent, comprehensive and practical account of what it means to be church can be developed in light of a consistent and realistic narrative-historical reading of the texts. And to be honest, I’ve got a lot of intellectual (and even spiritual) satisfaction from watching this perspective evolve. Whether the church - or even that part of it that thinks it is emerging - will ever agree with me, however, is another matter. I am only one minor voice in a cacophonous clamour.

The diagrams were just to impress Alan Hirsch, who does that sort of thing much better than I do. They are slightly tongue-in-cheek.