The words “faith” and “believe” appear a lot in our culture. From Kenny Rogers’ moving country music ballad “She believes in me” to the raunchy pop lyrics of George Michael’s “I Gotta Have Faith,” the words “faith” and “believe” resonate with our deepest and inner most desires. Politicians will frequently appeal to people to believe in their policies and to trust in their promises. Marriage is really a faith-bond between two people who have come to know, trust, and believe... Read more

Preston Sprinkle, Fight: A Christian Case for Nonviolence (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2013). Preston, what led you to write this book? I mean, you come from a conservative Christian context, typical “guns and religion” culture, “praise the Lord and pass the ammo,” that kind of thing, so how did you get to where you are? That’s right, Mike. Not only do I come from such a culture, but I’m still in one! I’m a Reformed, Evangelical, socially conservative, country-music listening, gun-owning Christian.... Read more

Duke Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has some new stuff on the net and is currently in Australia. Over at ABC Religion and Ethics, is his piece Going on: Why a Theologian Can Never Retire. Over at First Things, Hauerwas gives advice to Christian students going over to college in Go with God. Currently, Hauerwas is in Sydney delivering the New College Lectures on The Work of Theology: Thinking, Writing, and Acting Politically.   Read more

Brian Rosner, Principal of Ridley College Melbourne, recently won an award for Best Theological Article by the Australasian Religious Press Association Award for his piece on Greed as False Religion. Read it here. Greed is idolatry in that, like the literal worship of idols, it represents an attack on God’s exclusive rights to human love, trust and service.  Material things can replace God in the human heart and set us on a course that is opposed to him, even arousing... Read more

One of the best essays I’ve ever read on Romans is Andrew Lincoln, “From Wrath to Justification: Tradition, Gospel, and Audience in the Theology of Romans 1:18–4:25,” in Pauline Theology: Volume III Romans, eds. D.M. Hay and E.E. Johnson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 130-59. I esp. like his conclusion: This essay has traced three main coordinates in the theology of Rom 1:18–4:25—tradition, which provides most of the symbol system within which the argument takes place; gospel, which supplies the convictions by which the... Read more

Over at CT is an interview with N.T. Wright by Andrew Byres about Wright’s new book on the Psalms. The Psalter is the prayer book Jesus made his own. We can see in the Gospels and in the early church that Jesus and his first followers were soaked in the Psalms, using them to express how they understood what God was doing. For us to distance ourselves from the Psalms inevitably means distancing ourselves from Jesus.The Psalms contain unique poetry... Read more

What continues to amaze me about publishing in the digital age is how I can see reviews of my books before I’ve even received my own copy! Conrade Yap of Vancouver offers a review over at Panorama of a Book Saint which is very positive. He concludes: I warmly recommend this book for teaching, preaching, and for anyone who calls himself an evangelical. I agree with the author that evangelical theology is a gospelizing drama. So dance away with Christ,... Read more

Zondervan’s new academic catalogue is out and it has some choice books on it. Read it on-line here. Read more

Below is a 25 minute interview I did with N.T. Wright about his forthcoming book Paul and the Faithfulness of God.   NB: Apologies to my New Zealand friends (I’m still bitter about the Bledisloe Cup). More info about the book can be found on the SPCK and Fortress websites. Read more

A typical tale on some accounts of Christian origins goes like this: In the beginning the church was gloriously diverse, there was no normative Christianity, various trajectories road the ever evolving waves of the Jesus tradition wherever it took them, and it led to a beautifully pluralistic array of Christianities … until the blessed diversity of the early churches was quashed by a bunch of arrogant and cantankerous bishops in the second and third centuries who sought to impose their... Read more