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The question here, I take it, is this: Is it possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the Christian gospel?

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My answer – again unhesitatingly – is, Yes, it certainly is possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the gospel. I'm assuming, naturally, that what is meant in context by "hijacking the name 'Christian!!'" is claiming explicitly or implicitly that one's own way of being Christian is the only way rightly so named. But you'll have noted, I'm sure, that both my reformulation of the question and my answer to it allow for the possibility – which I trust the questioner, also, would wish to allow for – that "noisy fundamentalists" are by no means the only, even if, perhaps, the noisiest, Christians who make or imply any such exclusivistic claim.

More than this, however, I will not say here by way of responding to the question, since it is one of the questions close enough in meaning to a question I responded to at some length last year that I have no hesitation in referring all of you to that question and to my response. The question I refer to is Question 3 (on pp. 7-11 of my written answers): _How does one express \[one's\] faith to others when "Christian" has been kidnapped and 110no\[Ww\] means a very tUZTTOWnarrow vieu)view?_

7. Many "fundamental Christians seek the Kingdom of God as a physical place after death. Many wlw who attend mainline churches also struggle with the concept of what occurs after death and haw our living "now" impacts what happens "then." Can you speak to your understanding of "The Kingdom of God" and its impact on us as a people of faith and/or the emphasis the Christian religion should place on "the afterlife' "?

This, as anyone who was here last year may have guessed, is the other question I take to be close enough in meaning to a question I responded to at length then that an extended answer now hardly seems called for. So I simply refer the questioner and all of the rest of you to Question 6 and my response thereto (on pp. 17-21 of my written answers). Whereas that question asked, "Would you like to speak about the afterlife?" (italics added), the present question asks whether I can speak about it. And, of course, I should like to think that what I said in answering the earlier question is sufficient evidence that I indeed can – that I am able to speak about the afterlife, however adequately.14

But you perhaps noted that there's one thing the current question asks about that I did not specifically go into in my response a year ago – namely, how I understand the concept term, "the Kingdom of God." So just a brief further word on my understanding of how "the Kingdom of God" is understood by normative Christian witness and an adequate Christian theology.

The Greek term translated by our English phrase, "the Kingdom of God," is, as is said, "systematically ambiguous,1t " in that it can express both of two different, if also closely related, in fact, correlative, concepts. It can thus refer both to the rule or dominion exercised by God and to the reign or domain over which God rules. On my understanding of how these two concepts are to be used normatively by Christian witness and theology, the rule or dominion of God is simply God's pure, unbounded, all-encompassing love of all things, whereby anything that is becomes possible both in principle and in fact and whereby anything that is is really real and of abiding significance. Correlatively, then, God's reign or domain is simply all things – everything whatsoever, both possible and actual, that is embraced or encompassed by God's love.

So, on my understanding, to ask, as the questioner does, about the "impact" of "the Kingdom of God" on us as a people of faith, is to ask about nothing else than the "impact" of God's boundless, all-embracing love on us as people who trustfully accept God's love and loyally live accordingly, loving God and all that God loves, which, of course, is everything – and everyone. In the same way, to ask about "the emphasis the Christian religion should place on 'the afterlife'" can only be to ask about the emphasis Christians should place on God's all-encompassing-- and never-ending -- love, for to be embraced everlastingly by that love is, as I understand it, the only "afterlife" that Christians have either the right or the responsibility to emphasize.

8. If you have been taught that intercessory prayer works if you have enough faith, why is it that it seems a magical incantation and not really faith – especially when nothing happens?

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This question raises several important theological issues – from What is the right course to follow when what you've been taught proves to be either patently false or unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless? to What is really faith, as distinct from magic? and, not least, What is the point of intercessory prayer if, on at least some understandings of it, it seems to be quite pointless and/ or a matter of practicing magic instead of really living by faith? Obviously, we could spend our entire time this evening on anyone of these issues – to say nothing of the others the question also raises. So I shall respond to it by saying only a few things about just one of them – leaving it to the subsequent discussion to bring out anything else that can and should be said to respond to the question.

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