At this years coming SBL in Baltimore, the Biblical Greek Language and Linguistic Section is having a session on “The Perfect Storm,” looking at the debates about the perfect-tense form in Greek. I believe that Con Campbell, Stan Porter, and others are presenting (personally, I’m with Porter in seeing the perfect as essentially stative). Interestingly enough, in the latest issue of Tyndale Bulletin is a dissertation summary by Robert Crellin on “The Greek Perfect Active System: 200 BC – AD... Read more

S.R. Llewelyn and J.R. Harrison (eds.) with E.J. Bridge. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: Volume 10 Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Available at Amazon.com The NDIEC series should be on the shelves of everyone who is seriously interested in the history behind the New Testament and first centuries of the church. Put together by a team from Macquarie University, they have put compiled another collection of texts that illuminate the world of the apostles and the nascent church. It contains transcriptions from ancient... Read more

Congratulations to Richard Burridge (Kings College London) for winning the 2013 Ratzinger Prize! Richard is a great scholar and a committed churchman so it is good to see his work getting international recognition. According to the official press release: The recipients of this year’s Ratzinger Prize are the English Biblical scholar Richard A. Burridge, dean of King’s College London and minister in the Anglican Communion—the first non-Catholic to receive the award—and the German lay theologian Christian Schaller, professor of Dogmatic... Read more

This past week I’ve been speaking to different groups about gay marriage. I confess that I don’t actually enjoy talking about this topic, but as a resident theologian, I’m inevitably asked to help groups of pastors and churches come to some conclusion on this matter. It’s a big issue in Australia as it has been in the USA and UK. This week a senate motion to recognize same-sex marriages performed overseas was defeated in the Australian senate. But the issue... Read more

On Monday, Dr. Brian Rosner will deliver the inaugural Leon Morris Lecture in New Testament Studies on Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God. It will be based on Brian’s just-released-book, named, you guessed it, Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God. There is a good teaser in Brian’s earlier JSNT article, “Paul and the Law: What He Did Not Say.” If you’re in Melbourne, do go to it! Also, if you don’t know who Leon Morris,... Read more

Interesting article in CT about an Episcopal Baptist denomination in Georgia. No, not Georgia the American State, but Georgia the European nation. According to William Yoder: “There is a solemn procession to the altar. The choir is chanting. A bishop in a long, black robe and a full, gray beard swings an incense burner back and forth. We bow. We cross ourselves. It’s a typical Sunday service at the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia. “Yes. Baptist.” That is how Alexander Cuttino,... Read more

Over at Online Opinion, an Aussie e-journal of social and political debate, I have a piece entitled Maybe the ADF Needs to Recover a Sense of Chivalry, written in light recent reports of widespread sexism and abuse in the Australian Defence Force. I write at one point: In a modern sense, we could think of chivalry as that code of conduct which ensures the welfare of those entrusted to our protection. A resolve to protect those in a position of... Read more

I have an insatiably curiosity and its a problem. OK, that is an overstatement, but hear me out. I am now, finally, getting into my summer rhythm, which is so awesome. I love the summer. It is so revitalizing to me. It is a chance to get off the treadmill of semesters, papers, committee meetings, lectures and putting out small fires of administrative work. My summer is open, wide open. Well again that is an overstatement. There is family life,... Read more

Got my copy of Imitating God in Christ by Jason Hood and really liked this quote: If we are engaged in God’s work, ruling as his image-bearers, we should imitate the character he displays as he works. Divine compassion, beauty, holiness and justice should be mirrored in the labors of God’s people. We imitate his knowledge, even if our knowledge is not of the same sort as his. The preaching and teaching of God’s work should lead to the imitation of... Read more

In the earlier post, I had sketched Matthew Boulton’s argument for a subsessionist typology in his recent article “Supersession or Subsession? Exodus Typology, the Christian Eucharist and the Jewish Passover Meal” in SJT (66[1]: 18-29 [2013]). In that article Boulton wishes to correct the supersessionist Tendenz in the use of typology by biblical theologians. Rather than a “triumphalist ‘prophecy-fulfillment’ arrangement in which the ‘old’ is only valuable insofar as it serves as a signpost pointing to the ‘new’”, Boulton presents... Read more