Dr. Beverly Gaventa recently gave the “Lund Lecture” at Northpark on the subject of Romans. The official title of her lecture was: “What Part of the Word ‘All’ Don’t We Understand?” (This is Lecture 1; there is a second lecture on grace and ethics in Romans). This lecture was essentially an articulation of her apocalyptic reading of Romans with an emphasis on divine agency in salvation. Gaventa criticizes approaches to Romans that are “transactional” (God does this, we do that).... Read more

This weekend I happily read through a good deal of John Byron’s new 1-2 Thessalonians commentary for the Zondervan series called the “The Story of God” (ed. Scot McKnight). In some ways, this is the NIV Application Commentary series for a post-modern generation, and a new era of scholarship that is especially interested in narratives and worldview-story theology in Scripture. Three things really impressed me with John’s commentary and are, hopefully, a hallmark of the series. (1) Well-informed exegetical decisions – You can tell... Read more

Since N.T. Wright’s new book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, was released a short while back, there has been a flow of reviews, mostly positive with small criticisms or concerns. But we were bound to see more negative reviews with stronger pushback as Paulinists persevered to complete reading the book and found it wanting in various aspects. Alexandra Brown wrote a critical review recently for Christian Century. Some of you may know that Brown includes herself broadly within the “Paul... Read more

New and Recent Paul and His Life-Transforming Theology: A Concise Introduction (Roger Mohrlang, Wipf & Stock, 2013), This is a thematic introduction, rather than a survey of his letters (though the appendix) does include brief summaries of his letters). Mohrlang’s work is very accessible to beginning students. Paul: Windows on His Thought & His World (Maria Pascuzzi, Anselm Academic, 2014. Pascuzzi is quite interested in properly situating Paul in his socio-historical, religious, and political environment, and she does seem to be... Read more

I have the great honor of lecturing on the Sermon on the Mount later today. I love this material, not least because of the outstanding theological reflection from people like Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Bonhoeffer, Stott, and more recently scholars like Dale Allison, Charles Talbert, and Scot McKnight. A thought popped in my head today about thinking about the beatitudes in terms of speech-act theory (transformative performative utterances). I had a hunch that I wasn’t the first person to come... Read more

Several years ago I reviewed for RBL Cor Bennema’s Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John (Paternoster, 2009). I thought that it was a helpful work, especially methodologically, and just needed filled out a bit. Cor does a great job in this second edition addressing concerns of reviewers and offering a stronger work overall. One will notice two major elements of this edition – (1) Cor’s discussion is more detailed, which leads to a second edition almost double the... Read more

Recently Review of Biblical Literature published a review of my 2011 book, Prepare, Succeed, Advance: A Guidebook for Getting a PhD in Biblical Studies and Beyond (Wipf & Stock). The reviewer was Michael Suh, a doctoral student at Emory. Mike made a number of encouraging, positive comments, for which I am thankful. He also had some minor suggestions, which are all worthwhile considerations. He notes that American schools may require an interview with the candidate and that there is some prep work involved.... Read more

Check out my review of Paul and Scripture for RBL. A very handy resource for those who are interested in Paul’s use of the Old Testament.  Read more

I am doing an informal study on attitudes/opinions about the authorship of 2 Thessalonians. Please cast your vote! [polldaddy poll=8342625] Read more

We are still working our way through the Gospels in the NT Christology course that I am teaching this term. As I was researching for the lecture this week, especially on the question of the nature of Matthew’s Christology, I was struck by and impressed with this comment from Ulrich Luz: Matthew advocates a Christology ‘from above’, but not in the sense later espoused by the Old Church. It is not his primary intent to define the figure of Jesus... Read more