I’m reading over the new festschift for I. Howard Marshall and I came across this quote by James Dunn: “Even with careful discussion, there remains a danger of perpetuating a myth which idealizes the first Christian generation as the perfect church or golden age of the church by assuming that all Christians of that period were enthusiastic and compelling evangelists. No doubt there were many such, and proportionally many more than today. And the impact of such passages as Matt... Read more

Who were the “evangelists” in the early church and what did they do? My good friend John Dickson caused a bit of a stir when he argued that Paul did not expect all congregations to replicate his evangelistic activity as this role was limited to specially gifted individuals like himself (with responses from folks like Robert Plummer and I. Howard Marshall). I remember having a discussion on this topic with my Doktorvater, Rick Strelan, where he stated that “evangelists” were... Read more

I continue to have a fascination with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was rekindled again this spring when I attended the Wheaton Theology Conference which focused on Bonhoeffer. This summer, as last, I’m reading both his works and a biography. I’ve read both Metaxas and Schingensiepen biographies and this summer I’m wading through the classic biography by Bonhoeffer’s best friend Eberhard Bethge. However I’m more narrow in my study by specifying the three-year period of Bonhoeffer’s life in Zingst and Finkenwalde. Alongside... Read more

Today I leave for a month long trip to Europe. I have three significant opportunities that have conveniently come together in back-to-back-to-back weeks. Cambridge, England First, I will be in Cambridge, our old stomping grounds, to participate in a meeting sponsored by the IRLBR (International Research Library for Biblical Research) in consultation with IBR. This will be week long “Summer Summit” of a select group of emerging evangelical scholars focusing on the topic “What is the Gospel: Cross or Kingdom?”.... Read more

David Congdon has a series on “Trinity, Gender, and Subordination” over at The Fire and the Rose. I loved his first post, especially these remarks: In responding to the evangelical position on trinity and gender, I will first articulate what I think is the most persuasive version of the eternal subordination of the Son, viz. the position advanced by Barth. I will demonstrate that Barth’s account, despite its apparent similarities to the complementarian argument, absolutely precludes drawing any conclusions about... Read more

This made me laugh: Read more

The late Martin Hengel in his Johannine Question (p. 81) wrote: His ‘school’ or sphere of activity is to be placed firmly in the context of the Christian communities of Asia Minor in the last decades of the first century. The Apocalypse could be an earlier work, the nucleus of which was written in the time after the shock of the Neronian persecution, the beginning of the Judean war, the murder of Nero and the civil war; possibly it was... Read more

Chris Tilling’s Ph.D thesis is now published by Mohr Siebeck as Paul’s Divine Christology. The blurb reads: Chris Tilling makes a fresh contribution to the debate about whether or not Paul’s Christology is divine. To this end he analyses the Pauline data that details the relation between the risen Lord and Christians. With reference to contemporary debates regarding ‘Jewish monotheism’, he argues that the Pauline Christ-relation corresponds – as a pattern – solely to language concerning YHWH’s relation to Israel... Read more

Paul Barnett Paul: A Pastor’s Heart in Second Corinthians Sydney: Aquila, 2012. Available from CEP. This book by Paul Barnett, former Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, is his third work on 2 Corinthians. Barnett has already written commentaries on 2 Corinthians for the BST and NICNT series respectively. (See also his other fairly recent Corinthian book, The Corinthian Question: Why Did the Church Oppose Paul?). In this volume, we have not so much a commentary as such, but a series of studies on... Read more

Here is a short clip from an Aussie morning news talk show about same sex marriage featuring a Catholic and Anglican bishop. A bit of furor was created when the show opted to advocate in favour of same sex marriage as this violated standards for public news shows. But it’s a good discussion with good questions being asked of the bishops. Read more