BEN: One of the big ticket issues one confronts in Paul is the notion of the bondage of sin. It leads to questions like— if before Christ everyone was in the bondage of sin, what were all those commandments about in the OT, and why were there actually people called righteous back then and back there? Was God grading on a curve in the OT, but not so much now since we have the renovating presence of the Spirit? I... Read more

BEN: You give an excellent example on p. 135 of the ‘gospel of self-esteem’. I was blown away that this is actually an articulation of a student’s credo or prayer in your secondary schools. That deserves a wow!! How does a Christian, in love, deconstruct what is wrong with such formulations without sounding like Dr. No, or some sort of cosmic meany that wants to squash our children’s hopes and dreams of self-expression and accomplishment? PATRICK: I remember listening that... Read more

BEN: What do you think Paul really means when he says love is the fulfillment of the Law? I ask this especially because it seems to me that by the Law of Christ, he does not simply mean Christ’s take on the Mosaic Law. The Law of Christ seems to involve: 1) some reaffirmation of some of the OT commandments; 2) the new imperatives of Christ himself as redone in the latter part of Rom. 12 and 13, and 3)... Read more

BEN: P. 114 is one of the more important diagnoses in the book of what is wrong with the way Western culture views love. Love as a legal right, non-traditional marriage arrangements as a legal right. But the Bible says love is a gift, not a right. It’s not something owed to us by society or the world. I like the quote from Simon May “Whereas becoming even a fairly competent artists or gardener or editor or plumber or banker... Read more

BEN: Another of your main themes is that love is inherently interpersonal. You even predicate this of God, talking about the relationships within the Trinity. I remember the famous saying of Vic Furnish that the love the NT is talking about is not like a heat-seeking missile that is attracted to something inherently targetable and likable in the object of the love. I understand what you are saying here, but since we are all called to love our neighbor as... Read more

BEN: On pp. 86-87 you rightly note that agape rarely occurs in the LXX of the OT and where it does occur, it does not refer to God’s love. And yet agape and its cognates are all over the NT– quite the contrast. You suggest this is to be explained by the fact that a deeper understanding of love, presumably due to the Christ event, led to the preference for a term for love that didn’t carry previous baggage or... Read more

BEN: Thanks for the good exposition on the Song of Songs. You are so right that the later Christian allegorizing of the text, spurred on by an ascetic and non-Jewish approach to sexual love, has done that text no justice. It reminds me of the advice we got in junior high at church in regard to the raging hormones, which amounted to this oxymoron: ‘sex is dirty, save it for the one you really love’. Your book does one of... Read more

In the wake of the spread of the corona virus, many, perhaps most churches, out of an abundance of caution, have either canceled worship services entirely, or live streamed a performance by the worship team and pastors to an empty building, but with watchers online. This may be an example of making the best out of a bad situation, but what it is not is congregational worship. Worship is not supposed to be the performance of a few on the... Read more

BEN: Yes, God’s people are to love, even love their enemies, because that is the character of God himself, but since God is also a righteous and holy God that wants justice amongst his people and in the world, it seems to me that while love is not a social program in the Bible, nonetheless, it is a viewed, perhaps as a byproduct, as a means to change society for the better. Yes we love the marginalized because God loves... Read more

BEN: Let’s talk about the circumcision of the heart, an important idea in both the OT (p. 37) and the NT. On the face of it, the text of Deut. 10.16ff. indicates that God’s people must circumcise their own hearts— they must repent, not be hard-hearted etc. and turn back to God and thus be able to love God. But in the NT this act of internal circumcision seems to be the work of the Spirit. It seems to be... Read more