Over at the Wheaton Blog, For Christ and His Kingdom, Susan Rieske reviews my Jesus is the Christ: The Messianic Testimony of the Gospels. Very nice review, quite positive, have to confess that I liked Susan’s conclusion: Bird is to be commended, as previously mentioned, for bringing contemporary research to bear on an age old discussion and doing so in way that brings the latter to life. His insightful analysis of the messianic concept in each of the individual books and... Read more

Here is a video I did with Eerdmans about my forthcoming book The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus. Interesting fact, the guy asking me the questions and politely laughing at my jokes is Jacob Thielman, nephew to the great Frank Thielman! Read more

2014 is the centenary anniversary celebration of Leon Morris’ birth. For those who don’t know – and you all should- Leon Morris is arguablyAustralia’s greatest biblical scholar. Morris is best known for his masterful works on the biblical teaching about the atonement as well as studies on the Gospel of John. Morris was also principal of Ridley College from 1964 to 1979. You can read more about him here. In honour of Leon Morri’s memory and his legacy in evangelical... Read more

A short, interesting, and generous account of Adam and Eve by Alister McGrath: Read more

In the British Church Times, Linda Woodhead, a sociologist of religion, has been thinking what might happen to the Church of England if church attendance keeps declining. She ponders that even if all Sunday services closed down, leaving only clergy remaining, the church’s most significant activities could still continue through clergy doing weddings, funerals, baptisms, being tour guides in cathedrals, and running Easter and Christmas services as required. To be honest, I genuinely think that in the mainline churches, this is... Read more

R. Michael Allen Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013. Available at Amazon.com In this book, R. Michael Allen (Knox Theological Seminary) engages a number of controversial theological issues about justification with a view to showing how the Reformed tradition has more than enough depth and diversity to deal with them effectively. Allen opens by noting Dawn DeVries’ observations about shifts in justification in recent years with (1) Hans Kueng’s attempt to show... Read more

I have to confess that one of the sermons series that I really enjoy listening to and reading over every now and then, is D.A. Carson’s series “The God Who is There” and the book that the sermons are based on The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010). I’ve routinely listened to pieces of this series as I prepare lectures for an on-line course on Knowing God and the accompanying resources that go... Read more

The Lenten season reminds us that the life of faith is a complex ball of grief and joy. With grief always being the first in sequence. Walter Bruuggemann gives me food for thought: Much of Christian piety and spirituality is romantic and unreal in its positiveness. As children of the Enlightenment, we  have censored and selected around the voice of darkness and disorientation, seeking to go from strength to strength, from victory to victory. But such a way ignores the... Read more

Michael Allen (Knox Theological Seminary) is interviewed by Logos about Karl Barth. Its a good interview and worth checking out, esp. if you’re curious as to what the “deal” is with evangelicals and Karl Barth. Allen has a new book coming out called  Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics: An Introduction and Reader, which no doubt will be worth getting your hands on. Sadly too many evangelicals have approached Barth through the lens of Carl Henry and Cornelius Van Til, who was overwhelmingly... Read more

I would like to invite all of my co-bloggers, friends, students, colleagues, and well-wishers to join me in a spiritual quest to make the time of Lent – which begins today – more solemn, more holy, and more meaningful, by giving up coffee. I sincerely believe that by giving up that morning cup of expresso and froth, that we’ll be drawn closer to the heart of God. So brethren and sisteren, let us cultivate the spiritual discipline of fasting and... Read more