BEN: I found your reading of Matthew’s birth narrative in light of Isaiah 63 and Ps. 51 interesting, but was unconvinced that the Evangelist was talking about Mary’s own holy spirit. The absence of the definite article in Greek happens for a variety of reasons, including the mere position of the noun in the sentence, whether it is before or after the verb and whether it is the subject or object of the verb….. but it is an interesting theory.... Read more

BEN: I really enjoy your way with words. You write like a person who has had a good English lit degree, which I was fortunate enough to have in college. Tell us how you acquired, developed , learned this sort of winsome wordsmithing. JACK: Thank you, Ben. An author-friend, David Laskin, once told me about his experience as an English lit major in college (which I was not). The professor told him that his prose should match the character of... Read more

BEN: In your first chapter on the birth narratives, you allude to several of your previous books about the Holy Spirit, including the Holy Spirit in the OT. It appears to me that we may differ on whether the OT actually refers to the third person of the Trinity. I would take the references to the spirit in the OT as references to Yahweh’s living presence, active in the world and in God’s people. I don’t think the writers were... Read more

BEN: A practical question— why no bibliography in this book? It is after all a book published by Baker Academic, not merely Baker generic? I found that confusing. I realize there are a few references to your other works in the few footnotes sprinkled throughout, but on the important topic of Jesus and the Spirit a bibliography for further reading would be very helpful. JACK: Good question, Ben. You are probably right. Maybe I should leave it at that. But,... Read more

BEN: It is the measure of a good book that it causes a person to rethink some things that one has taken for granted, and to look at familiar Biblical texts in fresh ways, teasing the mind into active thought. I would call this ‘good trouble’ to borrow a phrase from the dearly departed John Lewis. It looks to me like one of the main aims of your stimulating new book is to trouble the comfortable and complacent rather than... Read more

Jack Levison is not a one trick pony. But he certainly has focused a lot of his scholarly work, and his more popular writings on the Holy Spirit. When we do the dialogue starting in the next post, we will ask him why.  In his most recent book, an Unconventional God which focuses on the Gospels presentation of the Spirit he presents us time and again with fresh insights into the four different presentations of this subject in the four... Read more

Peter Gomes came to Harvard in 1970, and in 1974, the year I got there he had just been named preacher to the University, serving Sunday by Sunday in Memorial Chapel.  I was a student in the BTI, the Boston Theological Institute which allowed me to take courses at Gordon-Conwell and at Harvard, which I indeed did. But as a Methodist who got a job at South Hamilton UMC, alas I was on the North Shore on Sunday mornings and... Read more

https://nccumc.fm/general/2020/09/watercooler-christianity-episode-17-the-bible-and-culture-w-ben-witherington/ Read more

  “If sin is simply ignorance, then education will put it to flight. If sin is simply bad behavior, then punishment and rehabilitation will put it right; but if sin is fundamental to the human condition, a fact of who we are, a part, if you will, of our essential DNA, then this may help to explain why the advances in education, penology, and science have failed to stem the essential cussedness of human beings and the persistence of evil... Read more

https://www.facebook.com/ATSChapel/videos/357002778984500/?comment_id=357055918979186 Read more