If you are going to regard marriage as nothing more than a legal fiction whereby the state recognizes a relationship between two persons so that said persons can have certain legal rights and recognitions, then to be honest, you have evacuated yourself of any moral or legal argument against polyamory. This issue has recently come up in the gay marriage debate in Australia. The Australian Newspaper reports that: (more…) Read more

Chris Tilling points out that the videos from the King’s College Conference Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul: A conference critically engaging Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God, are available on-line. If you are wanting to get a dose of Campbell’s book and discover what all of the fuss is about, these videos are a very good way to start. Read more

When talking to students about studying the Bible, I often tell them that they should ignore the chapter divisions because they were added latter. I have found on many occasions that the chapter divisions obscure accurate reading of the text. One case in point is the Nicodemus story in John 3. The actually story begins in John 2:23-25. Neglecting to read these few verses together with the Nicodemus story will surely set a reader on the wrong foot from the... Read more

My good friend and exegetical provocateur, Peter Enns, asks the question Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical? He answers, “No,” because Paul understood and used the Old Testament very different to the way that many evangelicals use and understand it. According to Enns, the reasons why Paul would not find a welcome from many evangelical seminaries and Bible studies is because: For Evangelicals, the Old Testament leads to the Gospel story. For Paul, the Old Testament is transformed by the Gospel.... Read more

OBJECTIONS TO SAME SEX MARRIAGE Okay, no surprises, I’m not a fan of gay marriage. I have two non-theological arguments against it: (1) It reduces marriage to a legal fiction. Marriage has traditionally or historically been a union between man and woman for the purpose of preventing promiscuity and promoting procreation and life-long partnership. Marriage creates healthy families and healthy families creates healthy societies. Philosophers from Aristotle to Confucius have recognized the importance of the marriage-family bond for society. Same-sex... Read more

For the smart phone users out there (non-iPhone), Danny Zacharias’ useful app ParseGreek is now available on Android. ΠαrsεGrεεk is designed to help both beginning students and advanced students. Advanced students can quiz themselves by frequency and other criteria. For beginning students, ΠαrsεGrεεk has been designed to be compatible with today’s top intro grammars: – William Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek (2009) – N. Clayton Croy, Biblical Greek Primer (1999) – James Hewett, New Testament Greek (2009) – David Alan... Read more

Things to click around the blogosophere: Peter Leithart has much to say on Protestantism and Catholicism, esp. his Too catholic to be Catholic and the respond here. Over at TGC, Tim Keller endorses Simon Gathercole’s essay on the Kingdom of God. And Justin Taylor promises us a book that will hopefully solve the dispensational vs. covenantal debate. Tim Gombis makes the case against having lap tops in class (my students would riot if I ordered this). Celucien Joseph also joins... Read more

A 2,700 year old seal that has the name “Bethlehem” was found recently by Israeli archaeologists and announced today. The tiny clay seal’s existence and age provide vivid evidence that Bethlehem was not just the name of a fabled biblical town, but also a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem, archaeologists said. Source: ABC News Read more

Famous quote from Oscar Cullmann: “the f0untainhead of all false biblical interpretation and of all heresy is invariably the isolation and the absolutising of one single passage.” (Oscar Cullmann, The State in the New Testament, 47). Read more

James K. A. Smith of Calvin College (who is actually in Australia right now to deliver the New College Lectures on “Imagining the Kingdom: On Christian Discipleship and Action”) has a provocative article in Calvin Theological Journal entitled, “Reforming Public Theology: Two Kingdoms or Two Cities.” You know it’s a provocative article because it commences with the words, “Based on voices emerging from some corners of the Reformed tradition, you would think that the future of Calvinism is Lutheran. At... Read more