Q. I wonder if you had thought much about Galatians being a circular letter written to several churches in south Galatia, separated by considerable distance. Are we to assume the agitators just retraced Paul’s steps and went to all of them? Were all of them facing the same problems with local Jews? Could this letter be mostly addressed to the church in Pisidian Antioch and the one in Iconium? Partly, I ask because too often we assume Paul is addressing... Read more

  Q. I quite agree with you that when Paul says people behaving like that as a settled course of life will not enter the kingdom, the present continual tense of the verb means an ongoing lifestyle or practice, not a one-off action, hopefully later repented of. The question I regularly get when I tell students this is— How much behavior like that counts as too much and so moral apostasy? What would you say? A. A very good question.... Read more

Q. I like the idea of Christian ethics as part of a rehumanizing process. Can you explain a bit more what you mean by that? I take the point that fleshly behavior is self-centered, and the fruit of the Spirit is other directed and creates community. A. The point of being Christian is to be a renewed human . . . ‘conformed to the image’ etc (Rom 8.29; Col 3.10). In Revelation 5 humans are rescued by the Lion/Lamb in... Read more

Q. I wonder if you have heard the view that the term in Gal. 5 pharmakeia from which we get pharmacy no doubt, actually means drugs , and in some case abortion producing drugs, which, not incidentally, one went to a sorcerer for. Indeed, the Brill exhaustive dictionary says clearly that the main meaning of pharmakeia is the use of drugs or potions. (see Brill p. 2256). Do you think Paul could be mentioning drugs here? And in the same... Read more

Q. I was glad to see your emphasis on the fact that the fruit of the Spirit is indeed a package deal, and is part of a community ethic, not a description of some sort of individual moral superman or superwoman. And indeed we must live out intentionally what the Spirit is working in us, every single day. It seems clear to me that the reason some modern individualistic Christians find these ethics onerous or merely aspirational is precisely because... Read more

Q. Sometimes I just don’t understand why some people are ministers in the church, because they don’t actually believe in the possibility of a person experiencing moral change in their lives by the grace of God. It is clear to me that Paul definitely does believe in this, but he doesn’t think such a conversion or change eliminates the tension between flesh and Spirit that is the tension in the Christian life. Outwardly, as Paul says elsewhere, we are wasting... Read more

I confess to liking Ryan Reynolds as an actor. I also confess that I am not a gamer, in fact I really dislike the violence and gory of so many video games. But this movie is actually about the creating of a game where violence does not drive the action.  Rather, good, likable characters do.  One such character in the game is Guy.  Guy is not a main character in the Free City game, he’s what is called an NPC... Read more

Q. One thing that emerges from your discussion of Gal. 5 is that you think the agitators are not in fact like zealous Saul the Pharisee was in terms of meticulous keeping of the whole Mosaic covenant, nor are they trying to impose the whole Law on the Galatians. You surmise that they merely want the Galatians to do the things that make them appear to be Jewish to outsiders so they can claim the Jewish exemption from pagan religious... Read more

  Q. The Galatians, and the Greco-Roman persons in the Empire in general were part of an agonistic culture, or as we would call it, a competitive culture where people strove to establish their honor, and did it in a way that was over against other families and groups. I think John Barclay and you are both right that this sort of social milieu was brought into the churches in Galatia and Paul is combating it with appeals to unity... Read more

  Q. One of the most helpful points you make in the discussion of Gal. 5 is that some conservative readings of the Bible (and its covenants as well) are frankly too flat, by which I mean they could not imagine a stage by stage plan of God to save humankind and all creation. They can’t imagine either that some things in the Mosaic Law, as Jesus says, were given due to the hardness of heart, but once the new... Read more