I teach at North Park University. I love where I teach. I love where I teach mostly because of the colleagues alongside whom I have the privilege of serving. One of them is Bradley Nassif. Brad is one of the most humble men you’ll ever meet. But Brad is also an extremely courageous man. A man with strong convictions. Brad is an Orthodox Evangelical Christian. He is Syrian by ethnicity (man he knows his Middle-Eastern food! Go with him some... Read more

In this video, Matthew R. Malcom introduces some interesting developments about a new center for biblical theology in Perth, Western Australia. Read more

I’m continuing my paraphrase of Romans, here is the latest part on Rom 5.1-11: Therefore, since we’ve are declared to be righteous by faith, let us have peace with God through the peace-making work of the Lord Jesus the Messiah. Through him we have acquired a backstage pass by this faith into God’s lavish grace, a grace in which we can stand and brag about the hope of the glorious splendour of God. Not only that, but because of this... Read more

The Theological Engagement with Californian Culture Project is having its next symposium on 24-25 April 2014 at UC Berkley. There is a call for papers until 15 December. Sounds like a cool place to go cowabunga for Jesus! Read more

Part Scholarships for PhD Studies Highland Theological College UHI The Highland Theological College UHI (www.htc.uhi.ac.uk) is pleased to offer two part-scholarships for applicants from outwith the EU applying for full-time, residential PhD studies at the College. These scholarships offer a 50% reduction in fees over the three years of full-time PhD studies.  We are particularly seeking proposals in the area of theological anthropology and we would favour applications that cross the theological disciplines to combine, for example, biblical and systematic... Read more

Candida Moss (University of Notre Dame) created a bit of furor with her book The Myth of Persecution– see my earlier blog post here – where she claimed that many persecution stories, both ancient and modern, were entirely fictive. Moss’ concern is principally the martyr complex and martyr rhetoric of the political right in the USA. However, her book really cheesed off people who took her to mean that she was down playing or denying the real persecution of Christians around the... Read more

I’ve been preparing a lecture on Paul and Women the last couple of days and I told Karla that I’m now definitely in the “Mutuality” (Egalitarian) camp. I’m finally willing to come out and nail my flag on the mast of the “Mutuality” (Egalitarian) position. This has been a direction I’ve been moving toward over the last decade since completing my Ph.D. and getting a job at North Park University. In the lead up to interviews that year (I interviewed,... Read more

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy... Read more

David A. deSilva Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation’s Warnings Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2013. Available at Amazon.com According to the blurb: Amid the fervor of popular apocalyptic “end-time” speculation, David deSilva invites readers to encounter Revelation as a word written to seven real congregations living under the shadow of the Roman empire.  He shows how John “lifts the veil” from the public story by which Rome promotes the legitimacy and benefits of its rule, calling his readers to withdraw from participating in... Read more

In the new volume of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works, Vol. 14: Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935-37, there are some very interesting (to me) observations made by Jürgen Henkys in the “Editor’s Afterward to the German Edition”. In particular, I note five particularly interesting observations Henkys’s makes about what emerges from the present collection. (1) Finkenwalde was a protest and a prophetic discipleship against and in relationship to the dramatic take over of the German Church by the Nazis and the response of... Read more