Once concept I might add to yesterday’s look at the theology of foreignness is the concept of the Diaspora. Originally, the term “diaspora” just meant scattering. Then it came to refer to the scattering of Jews away from the Promised Land.

Christians appropriated that term to refer to themselves. James uses the term in the first verse of his letter, though given the Jewishness of his writing, he may have been addressing Jewish Christians primarily. But there’s no doubt of the meaning when Peter uses it at the beginning of his first letter; a quick read of 1 Peter shows that Jews were not the primary audience Peter had in mind, yet he calls them the Diaspora, “God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1)

The term “strangers” in that verse was usually described to mean resident aliens; the ESV uses the term “exiles.” That’s who we are, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, scattered among the nations.