Q. In some ways your take on dikaiosune as applied to the believer seems very much traditional— it means to be declared righteous on the basis of Christ’s faithfulness even unto death on the cross. In other words, it is about what is traditionally called justification, or ‘right standing with God’. One then wonders why John Piper and others have gone ballistic over your take on this crucial term. Did they just not understand your point? For me personally, I... Read more

Q. While I take your point about Christos being a title, not really just a name for Jesus, in Paul’s writings, when you go on to say not merely that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah or representative, but in some sense Jesus is Israel, and if you are ‘in Him’ you are in Israel, this seems a leap. The problem with Jesus=Israel, is, so far as I can see, Paul uses the term Israel, for example in Rom. 9-11 to mean... Read more

Q. p. 129 is an important page in your commentary where you make clear where Kinzer goes wrong. I think you are right that Paul is talking about the incredible change for JEWS like Peter and Paul, the redefinition of the status of Jews now that Jesus has died on the cross, and some of them have accepted Him as the crucified and risen Davidic messiah. This is why Paul goes on to say that even he, as a former... Read more

  Q. Let’s talk for a minute about the radical Jewish re-reading of Paul fostered by Mark Nanos, Paula Fredricksen etc. that suggests a two-track model of salvation for God’s people— Jews being faithful by keeping the Mosaic covenant, Gentiles by embracing Jesus. This even has been stretched by Nanos to Paul is talking about Gentiles in the context of the synagogue, not as a practicing community in house churches separate from the synagogue. Recently, I have read Mark Kinzer’s... Read more

Q. I was intrigued by your drawing on Teresa Morgan’s work on fides and iustitia. While I think she does a good job of making her case in regard to the Latin usage of those terms and the range of possible meanings, I was less convinced about the Greek terms that parallel those words, especially in the hands of a devout Jew like Paul. It seems to me that Paul is giving us in Greek his Jewish take on such... Read more

Q. I was intrigued to see you draw on the Psalms of Solomon to help explain Paul’s background and how he used to view not only who counted as righteous and sinners, but one could add, what the Messiah’s role would be when he came. So… I kept waiting for you to say something about Ps. Sol. 17-18 where we hear about a militaristic messiah ala David the warrior. If Saul had thought this way, clearly Gal. 2.15-21 makes clear... Read more

Q. One of the major arguments in your Galatians commentary, about which I think you are fundamentally right, is the issue is ecclesiology, though there are sub-themes involving soteriology and eschatology and Christology. The thing that strikes me about this is how ill-prepared post-Enlightenment folk, and especially Protestants are, to think about Galatians as NOT mainly having to do with how the individual gets saved or justified. Sociologists talk about corporate identity in that world, about how group identity is... Read more

Q. Early on you make the point that the term ‘Judaizer’ does not refer to what the agitators were up to in Antioch and Galatia, but rather to what Gentiles might or could do to join Judaism. They were Judaizing their lives. I wonder then what we should call ‘the men who came from James’ who were insisting not only that Peter not have table fellowship with Gentiles, but, if they are the same folk who went on to bewitch... Read more

What happens to a young girl who thinks she has a normal family including a younger sister, and the whole thing turns out to be a deep fake, so the parents can act as spies for a foreign government.  Then, what happens when one of these ‘sisters’ joins the Avengers and they sort of become her new family.  The story of Natasha (very ably played by Scarlet Johansson)  the super hero who left the dark side for the Avengers is... Read more

Q. I completely agree with you that Galatians is an early letter maybe even Paul’s earliest of the extant letters we have, and it seems clear it was written before the Acts 15 council. He seems to be swimming upstream, whereas if Acts 15 had already happened, he could simply have cited the decree to the Galatians and said— ‘see, the apostles all agree Gentiles don’t have to get circumcised and become Jews in order to be part of Jesus’... Read more