The answer must be—- to punish us for our sins, which are many. BW3 Read more

My family have always been big Beethoven lovers, and of course who doesn’t love the last portion of his Ninth Symphony, commonly called ‘the Ode to Joy’. Hopefully Dad is listening to this even now performed by the heavenly choir. He would have been 100 years old right about now, were he still with us. Happy Birthday Dad, sure do miss you. Your Son, BW3 Read more

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Here is a helpful blog post on Revelation by my friend and colleague Larry Hurtado. See what you think. BW3 Prompted by a recent guest lecture on the Book of Revelation given here, I pondered to myself again how unusual the book is. We (scholars) typically associate Revelation with a body of ancient texts that we classify as “apocalyptic” writings. But, actually, Revelation stands out in a number of interesting features that may signal something historically significant. Typically, for example,… Read more

Q11. BEN: I wonder if you have had occasion to read John Barclay’s masterful study Paul and the Gift, as he has quite a lot to say about Paul’s views on grace and benefaction, not always agreeing with you. You push hard for the view that the author of the Pastorals is rejecting the notion of human benefactors and wants to insist that only God is a true benefactor. I take it that this is part of your equally hard… Read more

Here is an excellent sermon by one of our best Methodist preachers….. which I happened to be present for at the Woodlands UMC…. Read more

If you’ve been to the South, but never been to a swamp shack, well…. you haven’t truly been to all the South. I mean at a swamp shack the ‘gators don’t do the eating, they get eaten, much to their own chagrin. Now Buzzard Billy’s is not unique to Waco, it’s something of a chain, and it is a chain that has roots in Cajun and Creole country, and the cooking down on the Bayou and in New Orleans. Can… Read more

After the Bible, the book, or collection of books most read, studied, performed around the world, whether in English or not, is of course Shakespeare. And the impact has been, and continues to be enormous. If you don’t know the Bible and Shakespeare, and you’re an English-speaking person,then you are a functional illiterate when it comes to the history of the English language and the formation of Western culture. This is not a judgment, it’s just a fact. So here,… Read more