Q. I entirely agree with you that we already see incipient Trinitarian thinking about Father, Son, and Spirit all under the heading of God, in Gal. 4. I like to say that we have already in our earliest NT books the raw materials of a doctrine of the Trinity, which granted, needs some later unpacking, but that M. Hengel was right that the earliest Christology which we find in Paul is the highest or some of the highest, so the... Read more

Q. Michael Heiser, an OT scholar, who studied with M. Fox at U Wisconsin Madison, has written some fascinating books about spiritual beings (not just impersonal forces) in the OT and NT— The Unseen Realm, another on Angels etc. These studies are of relevance to the discussion of the ‘things (or is it beings) who are not by nature gods. I am not sure that Paul is talking about idols or beings with the stoicheia language but in 1 Cor... Read more

Q. It is interesting isn’t it, and I quite agree with you, that Paul applies the adoption as sons language to both Jews and Gentiles in Christ. They all need to become new creatures in Christ, and this is indeed like the way the 4th Evangelist says we all need to become children of God through being born of God/born again. Even a pious good Jew like Nicodemus is said to need this to get into the Kingdom later. John... Read more

Q. Thank you for the discussion of God sent forth his Son. I must say it’s always bewildered me why Jimmy Dunn and others worked so hard to try and avoid seeing the pre-existence of the Son in Phil.2.5-11. What’s up with that? In simple terms here in Gal 4 we are told God sent his Son to deal with the human dilemma. Now I’d be apt to say ‘you can’t send someone to do a job, if he doesn’t... Read more

Q. I think one of the real problems some commentators have with your reading, say on Gal. 4, in light of the Exodus and Exile materials is that when Paul says ‘to redeem those under the Law out from under the Law’, that really isn’t very analogous to redeeming literal slaves out from their bondage under Pharaoh. The Law was not a wicked master enslaving people. Indeed, Paul stresses it was good and holy, and the confinement or moral fencing... Read more

Q. As for the idea of progressive revelation, what at least I mean by that is not some sort of inherently evolutionary development of ideas but rather that later revelation from God often takes matters further, or even eclipses earlier things For example, the theology of actual bodily resurrection which most clear shows up for the first time in Dan. 12, eclipses the notion of the afterlife which merely involves Sheol, being gathers to one’s ancestors in the underworld. Would... Read more

Q. It seems to me a more balanced approach than we find in the apocalyptic readers of Paul to say that there is both a historical sequence of events which Christ comes and is the fulfillment of, and there is also surprising moments of divine incursion as well in that overall narrative. It’s not just one or the other. God does come to the rescue at points interrupting a bad scenario for God’s people, but this is part of the... Read more

Q. I was equally pleased to see you discuss Wisdom of Solomon in connect with Paul’s Christology, as I had done in my Jesus the Sage volume. Christ takes the role previously predicated of Wisdom in that interesting book (see also e.g. 1 Cor. 10). He doesn’t merely embody wisdom in the abstract, he is God’s Wisdom come in person. Why do you think otherwise well grounded Biblical exegetes so often push back against this line of thinking to this... Read more

Q. On p. 260 you put your finger on something which I have often found troubling, namely the abstracting of ideas from the NT in order to put together a systematic theology of sorts. I think your critique of what happened at Nicaea and Chalcedon etc. is quite fair. You do not mention, which you could have done, how middle Platonism affected the way say for example John 1, but also Gal. 4 was read by those divines at that... Read more

Q. It’s pretty clear that you and I disagree about what Paul means by the stoicheia tou kosmou. We do however agree that Paul is not using those terms in the normal meaning they had— namely the elements of the universe— earth, air, fire, water. For me at least we do indeed need to consider the use of stoicheia elsewhere in the NT, in texts either by Paul or possibly influenced by Paul, by which I mean Colossians and Hebrews.... Read more