Just to clarify, my argument is that national Israel was
conceived as a fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, and therefore as
in some sense a renewal of creation, according to Law. That template
failed and was swept away in the war against Rome. In Christ things are
different - not least, ethnic distinctions are removed - but the New
Testament as a whole still assumes separation because not all choose to
be part of a new covenant in the Spirit. Discussing a few verses out of
context doesn’t get round that fact.

A radical spiritual exceptionalism in which God acts with
benevolence on behalf of
only a small subset of humanity while dismissing the rest as
degenerates worthy of enslavement and destruction: I suspect I’m not
the only one who regards this sort of thing as barbaric
and fascistic.

This is really depressing. The point has been made repeatedly that the
church understands itself to be called apart, renewed by the Spirit,
bound in loyalty to Jesus, for the sake of the world, in
order to be a medium of creational blessing; eg.:

For the microcosm to be called apart, differentiated from
the macrocosm, does not mean that we are stuck with an ‘antagonistic
us-versus-them mentality’. The microcosm is called apart for
the sake of the macrocosm.

I do not understand why you persist in caricaturing this as a
‘radical spiritual exceptionalism in which God acts with benevolence on
behalf of
only a small subset of humanity while dismissing the rest as
degenerates worthy of enslavement and destruction’.

He does not commend anything about Israel — its ethnic
purity, its law,
its separation from the other nations — as exemplary of the new
creation. When he looks for a precedent he harkens back before Israel
to Abraham and the expansive promise God made through him to all
nations. He speaks of grace and faith and an explosive opening outward
of God’s benevolence. 

 Agreed.

You don’t offer an alternative justification; rather you
limit your
remarks to debunk — Scripturally, of course — the one they’ve chosen.
Why is it so important for you to reinforce these barriers between
microcosm and macrocosm, to the point of cautiously excusing genocide
of outsiders and cautiously rejecting charity extended to them?

Again you are twisting my words. I wish neither to excuse
genocide nor to deny charity towards the poor. This is primarily a
matter of biblical interpretation. There is to my mind an intriguing
parallel between the flood and the Canaanite ‘genocide’ that I think is
worth exploring in the light of the new creation theme. I don’t like
killing any more than you do, but it’s there in scripture and I’m not
sure it helps in the long run to ignore it. It’s also pretty clear to
me that Jesus does not tell the sheep and goats story in order to
encourage charitable activity. That’s also a simple matter of biblical
interpretation. The fact that I didn’t immediately offer an alternative
justification does not mean that I oppose charitable giving. My interest was simply in something else: ‘the positive point is of immense significance, narratively speaking: the story is an assurance given to the disciples that they will share in the vindication of Christ himself when the Son of man comes to receive a kingdom’. Again, I
don’t understand why you are so determined to misrepresent what I am
 saying.

Finally, my intention is not to reinforce the barriers between microcosm and macrocosm. There are no barriers. There is a radical difference, but there are no barriers. My intention is rather to suggest that the church should understand its calling expansively, as a summons to embody in itself the full scope of creational existence. Why is that ‘fascistic’? There is no denigration of the rest of humanity in this. If anything, it presupposes a critique of the church as being too narrow in its self-understanding and a rather high regard for the human spirit.