I should have gone to the B&H breakfast at ETS, because Tom Schreiner gave some godly words of advice to young Christian scholars about the exclusivity of faith in Christ, the dangers of seeking the praise of others, the need for humility, and why we have to live like Jesus. Pretty dense for a 15 minute devotional! Listen to it at Denny Burk‘s blog or else read the whole thing at the Gospel Coalition. I leave you with Schreiner’s words: “Finally,... Read more

Some videos of N.T. Wright at Moody Bible Institute have been put up (HT: John Goodrich). These are basically lectures on his books Simply Jesus and How God Became King.   Read more

The narrative shape of a Gospel reveals the theology of the Gospel. As the semester finishes up in my Gospel of John course, students have completed the major project for the  called the “Synthesis of John”. Basically the synthesis assignment requires students to think about the meaning of every episode in John’s Gospel and then relate those meanings to the one before and after, building up from the ground of the narrative the message of the whole Gospel. At the... Read more

We began the Advent devotions this week. The highlights of having an Advent devotion with four-year olds are numerous. First, the church new what it was doing with the candles. My children are enamored with the lighting and blowing out of the candle. Against my wife’s better judgment, I have one of the children help me light the candle as we begin. This involves having them hold the match with my hand over theirs. We strike it and then they... Read more

Some of you might remember the accusations made by Norm Geisler and Al Mohler that Michael Licona denies inerrancy because of his openness to a symbolic reading of Matt 27:52-53.  At ETS I had the pleasure of having breakfast with Michael and he also outed me at an ETS session as someone who advocates an interpretation of Matt 27:52-53 similar to his apocalyptic poetry suggestion. A central point I would raise against Michael critics is that they preach the inerrancy... Read more

I’m a teacher and I speak in churches a fair bit. Yet I’ve always been perplexed as to how academic, highbrow, and rigorous one’s preaching should. Now for me preaching at college chapel is one thing, where I know most of the students, but speaking at a local church where people range from toddlers to retirees is a big mix. On the one hand, I don’t want to preach esoteric theological doctrines, go into the minutia of Hebrew and Greek... Read more

Scot McKnight has been blogging through Justification: Five Views and he offers some generous and critical comments on my “progressive reformed view”. At the risk of being self-congratulatory, I think the best compliment I’ve ever received as a Reformed exegete is this one: “He’s Reformed but he’s got a new perspective kind of Reformed theology of Paul. He takes ‘reformed and always reforming’ seriously. Most Reformed don’t.” Read more

Urban and City Ministry is a big gig these days. Especially with people like Tim Keller arguing for the strategic importance of urban centers as conduits for evangelism. However, I was startled when I discovered that Roland Allen noted that a similar push was underway in his own day in the early 20th century, and he offers a word of caution about the types of ministries we erect in large urban centers: It is not enough for the church to... Read more

I’m about to start writing an article on Salvation-History, Apocalypticism, and Galatians. The natural place to begin with of course is Gal 1.4-5: “He gave himself for our sins, so he could deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.  To God be the glory forever and always! Amen” (CEB). Here’s my thought: Paul theologizes out of an apocalyptic framework as he envisions God’s redeeming action as a divine power that invades and... Read more

In John Howard Yoder’s Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World (Herald Press, 1992), the first practice he describes he calls “Binding and Loosing”- taken the phrase from Matt 18:18: Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven” The particular practice that Yoder has in mind is the practice of “winning”, that is restoring, an offender back into fellowship through a restorative dialogue. If your brother or sister sins, go and reprove that person... Read more