John Doyle has summarized his excellent set of studies of the ‘new creation’ motif in Paul. He claims to have embarked on this course at least partly as a self-defensive response to a piece I had written on the Canaanite ‘genocide’, so I hope a courteous rejoinder is not out of place.

Among present commentators, how is Jesus related to other figures of religious devotion like the Buddha or Muhammad or even New Agers?

One popular response is to reduce the relationship between Jesus and, say, the Buddha, to one of Right versus Wrong. Let’s call this view the “many paths, one goal” model of thought. Usually, it turns out that Jesus is Right and the Buddha is Wrong. Ravi Zacharias, a popular Christian theologian, philosopher and commentator recently gave a talk that focused explicitly on the zero-sum relationship between Jesus and Eastern religions. And in turn, Tom Gilson over at the Thinking Christian blog used Zacharias’ insight to declare followers of New Age deities “contradictory” and wrong. For folks standing with Zacharias and Gilson, then, the empirically apparent plurality of religious figures is reducible to a single relationship of either Right or Wrong.

I began this series of posts about the old and new creations while coiled in a self-defensive posture. As a non-Christian, how do I respond to Andrew’s justification of the Yahwistic genocide recorded in Deuteronomy 7, a mass slaughter of Gentiles by Jews that harkens back to the Flood and foreshadows the Last Judgment? For Andrew this mass eradication of entire nations exemplified God’s ongoing project of separating the elect microcosm of the “new creation” from the corrupt macrocosmic “old creation.” While it’s possible to infer new/old creation distinctions in certain historical events and turns of phrase that appear in the Old Testament, only Paul actually uses the words and concepts explicitly. Does Paul draw the distinction between old and new creations the same way Andrew does?

It’s been said that Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians serves as a template for the letter to the Ephesians. Whether or not that’s the case, the passage on the "new man" in Colossians 3 closely parallels that in Ephesians 4, with some notable augmentations.

Continuing the series of posts on the new creation begun here, here, and here, we move on to Paul’s reference to the "new man" in Ephesians 4.

People keep leaving the “church” to go to house churches (which may be more of the “church” than our buildings in warehouses with pastors wearing cutoff jeans and bleaching their hair to be relevant), and now I understand why.

I’m hanging in there because I think the church can sort it out… but these are the five reasons I would cite to leave the church….

Here Paul explicitly links the passing away of the old creation and the arrival of the new to the death and resurrection of Christ. The phrase καινη κτισις, here translated by the NASB as "new creature," is rendered as "new creation" in Galatians 6. One might say that each new creature in Christ participates in the more comprehensive new creation.

What is the "new creation"? In light of ongoing discussions it’s worth looking at each Bible passage that refers explicitly to the idea. As far as I can tell there are five such passages, all of them appearing in the Pauline Epistles: Galatians 6:12-16, 2 Corinthians 5:14-19, Ephesians 2:11-22, Ephesians 4:17-24, and Colossians 3:1-11. I propose that we go through them one at a time, then see what tentative conclusions we can draw. Here I begin with Galatians, which is the only passage in the entire Bible where the precise phrase "new creation appears.

Two disconsolate figures sat on a low wall opposite the hostel, their eyes glancing at the boarded up windows and the ‘For Sale’ sign written in, to them, an undecipherable Slavonic code. Access to the premises was permissible, but the interior was empty, its familiar fittings and fixtures removed, vacant possession being the hope of its vendors for a ‘quick sale’.