I did an interview with Eerdword as part of their On My Bookshelf series. I list five books that have influenced me or that I have really, really enjoyed.   Read more

I’m very pleased to introduce to you the brand new book by my friends Todd Wilson and Gerald Hiestand The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision. For those who know they have a vocational call within the church, but have felt oddly shaped in the role because of the “theological bent” you have – sorta of square theologically curious peg in a round ministry hole – this book can serve as a chisel to assist in reshaping the shape of ministry expectations... Read more

N.T. Wright gives a “Talk at Google” on his book Simply Good News. Read more

Great stuff from Kevin Vanhoozer and Center for Pastor Theologians: “theology is about preserving the integrity of the gospel.” Read more

Exactly ten years ago today I began the blog Euangelion as a type of open note book to post my thoughts about biblical studies, theology, and the Christian faith. We’ve had well over a million hits, thousands of blog posts, and oodles of comments. There’s been some changes along the way, I finished my Ph.D; taught at HTC, BST, and Ridley College; I wrote a few books;  we’ve mode from Blogger.com to Patheos in 2011; and Joel Willitts has joined... Read more

Over at The Guardian, John Gray writes on What Scares the New Atheists, a great read: In 1929, the Thinker’s Library, a series established by the Rationalist Press Association to advance secular thinking and counter the influence of religion in Britain, published an English translation of the German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1899 book The Riddle of the Universe. Celebrated as “the German Darwin”, Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; The... Read more

Find here my RBL review of : Greek Patristic and Eastern Orthodox Interpretations of Romans Patte, Daniel and Vasile Mihoc, editors London: Bloomsbury, 2013 pp. vi + 228. $39.9 “In sum, a commendable volume on Greek patristic interpretations of Romans and a fine sampling of Eastern Orthodox hermeneutics. The volume evidences the rich insights made available through the Romans through History and Culture series.” Read more

Justin Marc Smith has a great little article over at Biblical Interpretation on Genre Matters: What Kind of Bioi are the Canonical Gospels? Why does any of this matter? If we understand the canonical gospels to be of a certain type of literature, then new possibilities are opened for interpretation. Often, the writers of Contemporary biographies had a personal relationship with their subject. Isocrates was friendly (if not friends) with Evagoras. Xenophon had a relationship with Agesilaus as he served under him... Read more

My friend Dr. Jason Sexton has a good piece on Children of the Abyss about juvenile incarceration which is worth reading. I’m confronted with it as my children get older. They often wonder about my childhood, where I grew up, where my tattoos came from, what constituted my friendships, how I grew up. A lot goes unspoken, but they wonder and appreciate a warm friendship I maintain with one of my former cell-mates. What is this profound friendship, easily quickened and rekindled with... Read more

E.P. Sanders, Paul: The Apostles’ Life, Letters, and Thought. Decades after setting the study of Paul on a profoundly new footing with Paul and Palestinian Judaism(Fortress Press, 1977), E. P. Sanders now offers an expansive introduction to the apostle, navigating some of the thorniest issues in scholarship in language accessible to the novice and seasoned scholar alike. Always careful to distinguish what we can know historically from what we may only conjecture, and these from dogmatically driven misrepresentations, Sanders sketches a fresh... Read more