Awhile ago I introduced the brand new second edition of the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (IVP Bible Dictionary)in a couple of posts. In the first I introduced the volume generally, and in the second I compared the article on the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” in the first and second editions, an important entry in the dictionary. In this final post on the DJG, I want to briefly compare the articles on the Gospel of Matthew in the... Read more

Those of us who learned Greek were told that the perfect tense form denotes a past event with an on-going effect. However, these days, leading grammarians and linguists have successfully shown that in the Greek language verbs were not so much concerned with the time of action but with the type of action, called “aspect.” At the most recent SBL meeting in Baltimore, there was a great session on “The Perfect Storm” featuring Buist Fanning, Stan Porter, and Con Campbell.... Read more

My good friend Nijay Gupta has his list of top books for 2013. Includes books by some good friends of mine like Brian Rosner, Paul and the Law and Alan Stanley (ed.), Four Views on the Role of Works at the Final Judgment, and Scot McKnight’s commentary on The Sermon On the Mount. Lucky for me that I made it on his list in a very specific category: Best Systematic Theology Introduction Written by a Red-Headed Australian Reformed New Testament Scholar As luck... Read more

When it came to the nature of justification, the Reformers were far from agreed on everything nor monolithic. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, and Bucer each had their own particular take of understanding justification in relation to God’s righteousness, its forensic nature, moral transformation, regeneration, good works, the Spirit, and election. Peter Leithart gives a good blog post about Martin Bucer. Among things I like are that Bucer did not regard the “righteousness of God” as the justification that we... Read more

Here is a short video by N.T. Wright about the biggest problem of the western church as “the scandal of disunity.” Read more

Over at Evangelical Textual Criticism, Tommy Wasserman has a tribute to Swedish scholar Birger Gerhardsson. In my view, Gerhardsson is the grandfather of a lot of what goes on in studies in oral traditional and orality of the Gospels. The impact of his 1961 thesis Memory and Manuscript is still felt and being fleshed out. He challenged the form critics on several fronts and I think, in course of time, he has won the argument  Jacob Neusner’s foreword  to the 1998 edition of... Read more

Over at his blog, Larry Hurtado provides some clarification about key positions on how christology developed in the early church. A great read which summarizes some big debates about the origins of christology. He concludes: To be sure, there was further development across the first several decades, and then across ensuring centuries, particularly as Christians sought to express their theological views in terms of the philosophical categories of the larger Roman environment in the second and third centuries CE.  But... Read more

British New Testament scholar, Steve Walton, is now blogging at Acts and More. Steve is a Luke-Acts specialist, working on two volume work on Acts for the WBC series, which we look earnestly forward to. He teaches at St. Mary’s University College and Cambridge Uni and loiters around Tyndale House as well. It’ll be a great place to keep up with Lucan scholarship and international volleyball! Be sure to add it to your blog feed! Read more

Trevin Wax gives some good reasons why teaching and preaching should be gospel-centered. A conclusion close to my heart! 1. Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. 2. Because the gospel is the power of God for sanctification. 3. Because the gospel provides the motivation for mission. Watch the short video: Read more

My colleague, Rhys Bezzant, has a cracking good book on Jonathan Edwards and the Church. Although Edwards is not known for his ecclesiology, he actually had a rich and vibrant view about church, and was not reticent about getting into debates about the nature of the church. Anyways, here is a blurb about the book: This book presents Edwards’s views on ecclesiology by tracking the development of his convictions during the course of his tumultuous career. Drawing on Reformation foundations... Read more