My good friend David Capes was the 2014 Hayward Lecture Series speaker at Acadia Divinity College. His topic was New Testament Christology and three lecture videos have now been posted to Youtube. Check out excellent teaching from a foremost expert! (full disclosure – I have only watched the first introductory video – I will try to post again about the content when I have completed the series. I will be very interested in comments from interested viewers.) Read more

There are some very excellent academic commentaries on Luke out there (I have often relied on Green, Bock, and Nolland), but it is nice to see some forthcoming books that examine the work of the Third Evangelist from pastoral and theological perspectives. Justo Gonzalez, The Story Luke Tells: Luke’s Unique Witness to the Gospel (Eerdmans, March, 2015). This is an accessible thematic study, under 150 pages. Mikeal Parsons, Luke (Paideia; Baker, Feb, 2015). The Paideia series has really impressed me so far with... Read more

I have contributed a chapter to an exciting forthcoming textbook called Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism (Zondervan, June 2015). In my opinion, one of the greatest needs for Bible students is to properly understand the New Testament in its socio-historical context. This textbook aims at bringing portions of Romans into dialogue with a variety of illuminating early Jewish texts, authors, and inscriptions. It is meant to be very accessible to the uninitiated. Part of the fun is... Read more

George Fox Seminary (where I teach) created a nice little video that allows me to introduce my interest in the theology of the cross. Our videographer does outstanding work and I really enjoyed producing this mini-talk. I hope to teach a course on the cross, discipleship, and ministry in the not-too-distant future.   FoxTalks Session XV: Nijay Gupta from George Fox University on Vimeo. Read more

I wanted my first word about Charles Marsh’s Bonhoeffer biography (Strange Glory) to be a positive one, praising Marsh’s work for its eloquence, thoroughness, and frankness. It is a masterpiece in these regards. The one part that troubled me was a theme in the biography that others have noted as well – while Marsh does not refer to Bonhoeffer as gay/homosexual, he does portray Bonhoeffer’s feelings towards his friend and student Eberhard Bethge as sexual desire (passim, but see in... Read more

For Christmas, my wife kindly gave me a copy of Charles Marsh’s excellent new biography, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I flew through the 500+ tome in less than 10 days thanks to Marsh’s inviting writing style. Several good Bonhoeffer bios are available, but Marsh wanted to capture the person of Bonhoeffer in all his humanness – his style, his passions, his idiosyncrasies. For example, you get a taste for how Bonhoeffer was infatuated with fashion (including shoes) and music.... Read more

In an earlier post I mentioned that this fall has seen several Pauline commentaries published (including Seifrid on 2 Corinthians, Weima on 1-2 Thessalonians, and a revision of Fee’s NICNT 1 Corinthians). One such commentary is the second edition of the late Ralph P. Martin’s 2 Corinthians volume for the Word Biblical Commentary Series, now under the publisher Zondervan. Sometimes it is difficult to know what “revised” means when it comes to a commentary. Thankfully, between information in the preface... Read more

I was delighted to attend the review session of Richard Hays’ new little book Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Baylor, 2014) at SBL. But I was sad that I had not yet gotten a hold of the book  – until yesterday when a nice little package arrived. I was eager to dive right in, so I worked through the preface yesterday. Here are some of my notes. More to come – this is a kind of “progress... Read more

I went to the SBL session reviewing Dr. Richard B Hays’ new book Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Baylor Press, 2014). It was one of my favorite sessions this conference and not just for content. While it was informative and entertaining to hear the creative responses by Francis Watson, Markus Bockmuehl, and Marianne Meye Thompson, what struck me was how Hays responded to criticism. He was gracious and thankful – he admitted minor mistakes in clarity in... Read more

Apparently yesterday (I was not there) at the Evangelical Theological Society Douglas Moo (Wheaton) was presented with a festschrift (honorific writing). The editors (Matt Harmon and Jay Smith) and contributors did a great job of keeping this secret because details are nowhere to be found on the internet! Moo is a good guy (with whom I disagree much!), and well-deserving of this honor. From news on Facebook, here are some details I gathered. Studies in the Pauline Epistles, ed. Harmon and... Read more