My buddy and home-boy, Preston Sprinkle (Eternity Bible College, Idaho) has a cracking good article on homosexuality in Romans 1 in the latest issue of BBR. Preston M. Sprinkle, “Romans 1 and Homosexuality: A Critical Review of James Brownson’s Bible, Gender, Sexuality,” BBR 24.4 (2014): 515-28. James Brownson argued that none of Paul’s prohibitions about homoerotic practices pertain to consensual and monogamous gay and lesbian relations. In contrast – and contra Brownson – Sprinkle points out several things: (1) Paul nowhere... Read more

Somehow I missed this, it is N.T. Wright’s video for the Humanum 2014 Conference in Rome about marriage and family. Gets more interesting after 6:30 mins. Read more

Over at WSJ was an article about two brothers, both brought up Southern Baptist, but one brother ended becoming a Catholic priest, and the other brother became an Anglican bishop. Al Mohler seized on this story  as reason for making sure that children growing up in Baptist churches have a good theological grounding, less they leave the fold when they have deep and pressing questions, and end up going the route of these two brothers. In the course of his discussion Mohler’s sentiments... Read more

Stephen Young has a recent journal article entitled, “Paul’s Ethnic Discourse on ‘Faith’: Christ’s Faith and Gentile Access to the Judean god in Rom 3:21-5:1” in a recent issue of HTR but readable at Academia.edu.  In a nutshell, Young claims that Rom 5:1 is about how Gentiles have access to the Judean god through the faithfulness of Christ. Young concludes that: While I do not claim to have offered definitive arguments for understanding Rom 5:1’s dikaiothentes oun ek pisteos in terms of Christ’s... Read more

George Kalantzis & Gregory W. Lee Christian Political Witness Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014. Available at Amazon.com Reviewed by Graham S. Scott Christian Political Witness is a fascinating collection of essays extending from the 23rd Wheaton Theology Conference (April 2013), whose theme was the relationships between the Christian faith, the church, and the wider world. The twelve essays provide contributions from eleven United States-based academics, two of whom are women, representing a range of universities, colleges, and seminaries. The twelfth... Read more

A very interesting interview over at America: The National Catholic Review where American comedian Stephen Colbert is interviewed about his faith. Read more

Tom Wright provides some wonderful reflections in his obituary for Charles Cranfield. My own personal gratitude to Cranfield dates to one evening in the early 1970s when I had been reading other writers on ‘Paul and the Law’, and had found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the idea, popular at the time, that Paul had seen the Mosaic Law as a bad thing now happily abolished through the gospel. (This went, of course, with the liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s,... Read more

I know I’m late on this, but while scanning through the latest issue of BAR I saw an add for Bart Ehrman’s lecture series How Jesus Became God available through The Great Courses. The opening promo certainly does whet the appetite a bit … if you’re into that kind of thing.   Read more

There’s a truly sad story about domestic violence and the church in the SMH. Ten years ago I was in the middle of a situation that an anti-domestic expert called “intimate partner terrorism” on Q&A this week. My then husband was supposedly a Christian, a very pious, rather obsessive one. He was a great amateur preacher, very encouraging to his friends and evangelistically inclined. He led Bible studies. He wanted to train for the ministry. He just had one little problem. He... Read more

I just heard via the BNTC FB page the sad news that Charles E. B. Cranfield passed away. Cranfield will be best remembered for his two volume ICC commentary on Romans published in 1975-79. While some of you young whipper-snappers might not remember, once upon a time the only substantial Romans commentaries around in English were by Dodd, Barrett, Lenski, Kasemann, Bruce, and Cranfield. If you did Greek exegesis courses on Romans between 1975-1995, then odds are that your go... Read more