Over at Crux Sola, Nijay is announcing the chance to win a copy of E.P. Sanders’ new book on Paul which will be reviewed at IBR on 18 Nov (which you all know is my birthday). Here’s the deal: If you are planning on going to the session at IBR (I’m trusting your honesty!),please RSVP for free on Facebook. Then leave a comment on Nijay’s blog post or the original post (he will take comments in either place). The deadline for entering is Monday, March 21,... Read more

I just got my copy of The Apostle Paul and the Christian Life: Ethical and Missional Implications of the New Perspective edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph Modica. While the NPP debate is now a bit passe, esp. when the “apocalyptic Paul” and the “Paul within Judaism” views are now the center of attention, it is worthwhile to pause for a moment and think about the NPP contributed positively and practically to the church in terms of ethics and mission. Generally speaking,... Read more

Found this great quote from Tim Keller about the access of the grace we through Christ: However, in light of my own parenting experience, I’d like to tweak it a bit: “The only person who can barge in on a king while he’s on the toilet to ask what’s taking him so long, discuss mine-craft, complain about siblings, and to demand a toasted sandwich is a child of the king. We have that kind of access.”   Read more

The Australian Bible Society has a newspaper called Eternity and they’ve done a story where I give my testimony about how I came to faith. As a young teenager, Michael Bird was so anti-religion he would write poetry mocking belief in God. He saw Christianity “as a way of oppressing people, a purely human construct.” Read more

Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism by Gabriele Boccaccini (Editor) Carlos A. Segovia (Editor) published by Fortress. Available 1st May 2016. See the preface here. The decades-long effort to understand the apostle Paul within his Jewish context is now firmly established in scholarship on early Judaism, as well as on Paul. The latest fruit of sustained analysis appears in the essays gathered here, from leading international scholars who take account of the latest investigations... Read more

John Goldingay Exodus and Leviticus for Everyone London: SPCK, 2010 Available at Amazon.com By Laura Paul The very first line of the introduction to John Goldingay’s Exodus and Leviticus for Everyone begins by noting that, “as far as Jesus and the New Testament writers were concerned, the Jewish Scriptures that Christians call the “Old Testament” were the Scriptures,” and they were ‘for everyone’. He continues by quoting 2 Timothy 2:16-17, noting that for the NT writers the Old Testament, as... Read more

For those of you who dare to read, study, teach, and preach from the General Epistles, the latest installment in the NCCS is Andrew M. Mbuvi, Jude and 2 Peter (NCCS; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015). This is a great volume, written by an African scholar (now teaching at Shaw University), with a fresh translation, making great use of historical backgrounds (esp. drawing on Phil Harland’s work on Greco-Roman associations), sensible exegesis, and the sections on Fusing the Horizons draw on Andrew’s own experiences of... Read more

Russell Moore is quickly becoming my second favourite Southern Baptist (behind, Timothy George – peace be upon him!), because he’s doing some good stuff like this excellent lecture on The Gospel vs. Sunday Morning Social Darwinianism. If I had to make one ironic criticism of so much American evangelicalism, its that people who don’t believe in biological Darwinianism (monkeys into people) strangely believe in social Darwinianism with Christian tinting (God helps those who help themselves, so every many for himself). This... Read more

I just saw this today, Morna D. Hooker, “Another Look at πίστις Χριστοῦ,” SJT 69 (2016): 46-62. The debate regarding the meaning of πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Pauline epistles continues and is important because of its implications for theology. In the phrase there is a double ambiguity, which touches not only the significance of the genitive, but also the meaning of πίστις. A brief look at some key texts in Romans suggests that the phrase refers primarily to the faith/faithfulness of Christ,... Read more

David H. Wenkel Shining Like the Sun: A Biblical Theology of Meeting God Face to Face Wooster, OH: Weaver, 2016. Available at Amazon.com David Wenkel (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is an adjunct professor of Bible at Moody Bible Institute and one of my former PhD students. He is the author of Joy in Luke-Acts: The Intersection of Rhetoric, Narrative, and Emotion (Paternoster). He is a gifted writer and expresses ideas very well. In this book, he basically gives a biblical theology of... Read more