2015-06-10T21:59:03-04:00

In Aussie evangelical circles there is a debate going on about the church going into a cultural exile and what we should do about it. The first is by Steve McAlpine over at TGC-A on Stage Two Exile: Are You Ready For It? He argues that we need to face a culture in which we not simply ignored but despised: We need to be able to pick our way through language minefields without blowing our legs off. And that will... Read more

2015-06-15T07:36:41-04:00

In this video Richard Hays dialogues with Lynn Cohick, David Capes, and Carey Newman about his book Reading Backwards. A great line up with some great discussion. HT: Nijay Gupta. Read more

2015-06-10T01:36:04-04:00

I wrote this short piece for the Harvard Christian fellowship journal Icthus on Kyrios Christos: The Lordship of Jesus Christ Today. To profess that Jesus is Lord is to make no empty claim. It is the singular most important confession that a person can make about who Jesus is and about their relationship to Jesus. To identify Jesus as Lord is to state that God the Father has appointed the crucified and risen man, Jesus of Nazareth, as the master... Read more

2015-06-11T00:40:29-04:00

Over at the Missio Alliance, Pastor William Walker has an article on Payment or Forgiveness: Putting the Gospel Back into the Atonement. In the article, Walker claims that folks like Wright and McKnight have brought a great corrective to evangelical theology by trying to integrate the big-picture story of the kingdom with the theology of Jesus’ death (and here I’d add the excellent work of Jeremy Treat too). However, Walker thinks that they have not gone far enough and they have not addressed the major... Read more

2015-06-12T09:22:50-04:00

I want to thank Mike for posting something on this exciting area of Pauline research. I want to also commend my friend Mark Nanos for his perseverance after many years of feeling ignored and out alone on a boat. Mark the shore is coming to you! I’m an evangelical to my core and the label “radical” in this context is just a step away from heretical. It sits along side words like “novel”. These are not compliments within evangelical circles. It... Read more

2015-06-11T05:24:08-04:00

At the moment the state of Pauline scholarship could be divided into four basic camps: (1) Traditional Protestant. Paul was preacher of grace that stands in contrasts to the legalism/nomism of second temple Judaism. In some versions, this is accompanied with an implied or even explicit supersessionist view of the church as replacing Israel. (2) The New Perspective on Paul. The problem with Judaism was not legalism, but ethnocentrism. Paul was arguing that Jews need to accept that God has acted... Read more

2015-06-10T19:52:44-04:00

Spend a 10-week semester in Ridley’s Eastern Mediterranean Program based in the resort city of Antalya Turkey including a study tour of Israel and archaeological field trips throughout Turkey. In a very exciting development for Ridley College, we have established an off-shore campus on the coast of Turkey on the Mediterranean coast in the city of Antalya. Ridley College has developed a partnership with the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya Turkey to offer a very special study program in... Read more

2015-06-07T22:46:21-04:00

It’s not often that religion gets top tier billing in the Aussie news cycle , but it did this week with the uproar over Hillsong inviting Mark Driscoll to speak at their annual conference which is, incidentally, the biggest Christian conference in the country. Over at ABC is the headine: Controversial pastor Mark Driscoll who likened women to ‘penis homes’ no longer attending Hillsong Australian conference. In a statement, Hillsong founder Brian Houston said he had heard of some of Mr Driscoll’s statement... Read more

2015-06-09T15:52:19-04:00

Here’s another insightful quote from Matthias Konradt’s recent book Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew (Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity) on the difference between “Israel” and the “church” in Matthew. Jesus’ people (ὁ λαὁς αὐτου) and his church (μου ἡ ἐκκλησία) are not identical. Rather, the narrative indicates that Israel and ecclesia are situated on different soteriological levels: Israel appears as the addressee or recipient of God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ (Matt 2.6; 4.16, 23; 15.24)–and... Read more

2015-06-03T20:42:23-04:00

One of my favourite stories from the Babylonian Talmud: It has been taught: On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument for his teaching about the cleanness of ovens made with sand, but the other rabbis did not accept his teaching. So R. Eliezer said: ‘If the halakhah agrees with me, let this carob tree prove it!’ And immediately the carob tree was uprooted and thrown a hundred yards out of its place – some said it was thrown... Read more




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