I found myself saying ‘yea and amen’ to almost everything Sweet & Viola were saying (shame about their names).

There need be no conflict between a historically contextualised Christ and a Christ of faith for all times - but it does depend on how radically you historicise the story. I don’t read the story of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection as one of historical contextualisation for his time alone. I find that the story lives in its own context, and subsequent historical contexts including our own.

I don’t find the manifesto’s ‘Christ devotion’ individualistic; it has an individual and corporate application.

I find that Jesus’s teachings are as relevant today as they were in his own time.

I find Christ’s filling all things with himself to be his plans for the entire creation and the purpose of history - not simply related to his own times. (The more I read Isaiah, the more I find this to be suggested by his prophetic insights as fulfilled in Christ also).

I strongly support the interpretation of Matthew 16:18 that it means ‘storm the gates of hell’. This is what Jesus was modelling in his ministry.

I have always appreciated the approach of Gordon Fee, a Pentecostal by background and renowned biblical scholar, who wanted to combine academic theology with a passion for God - academic theology on fire with the Holy Spirit. This encourages me to fling myself into academic theology for all its worth - but not at the expense of passion for Jesus. It’s not a case of big heart substituting big mind - but big mind and big heart working together.

I hope I didn’t detect anywhere in the manifesto the slightest whisper that love for Jesus involves rolling our brains down the aisle. Are we not to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind?