In this post, I want to commend Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s two chapters on Social Justice: “Making Sense of Social Justice: Exposition” (6) and “Making Sense of Social Justice: Application” (7) in their book What’s the Mission of the Church?. These chapters usefully center of a pendulum that has swung far in one direction for some time. This will perhaps alienate me from some readers, but I have to agree with DeYoung and Gilbert that the Bible’s message is... Read more

In reading Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s discussion of the Jubilee year from Leviticus 25, it reminded me of something I discovered while working on my Ph.D. thesis. In studying the concept of “messianism”, I came across the idea of “Sabbatical Messianism” (you probably never heard of this, I hadn’t at the time). (more…) Read more

I’m a firm believer that more needs to be done to make  evangelical churches aware of the plight of Arab Christians in the Middle East, esp. those in Palestine (see my review of The Jerusalem Testament). A few weeks ago a group of lecturers and pastors in Brisbane had lunch with Ellie Hadad the president of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon which was very illuminating, some big things happening there. Also,  Joel Watts points to a cool conference... Read more

A while back I posted about the CEB’s decision to interpret tou huiou tou anthropou (lit. “the son of the man”) as “the Human One”. This is not entirely new.  Herman C. Waetjen in his under read but useful Mark commentary A Re-Ordering of Power: A Socio-Political Reading of Mark’s Gospel translates it as “the Human Being”. Any way, Joel Green, NT editor for the CEB has a short video explaining the decision to translate the phrase the way that it appears. HT:... Read more

Some of my Pauline Theology/Romans class wrote an essay on the “wretched man” in Romans 7. They probably could have done with this book about a week or two ago! Perspectives on Our Struggle with Sin: Three Views of Romans 7 By: Chad Owen Brand, Terry Wilder More in Perspectives Series B&H Academic / 2011 / Paperback   Read more

I was pleased to notice today that Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert are beginning to answer questions about their book over at Kevin’s blog. Here’s the opening paragraph from their post: On Tuesday, Trevin Wax put forth “five nagging questions” about our book What Is the Mission of the Church? Greg and I both know and like Trevin. He is a friend. We are glad he has gently raised some concerns with our book; we’d like to gently answer and... Read more

Okay, time for my annual list of things to do and remember at ETS and SBL. If you see me eating buffalo wings and drinking a glass of shiraz, it means that I just arrived, say “Hi”. Go to the local San Fran marriage registry office and ask, “Is your policy really, ‘If you can carry it, you can marry it?'” Attend the Liberty University breakfast at ETS wearing a rainbow flag as a cape. (more…) Read more

Something to ponder ahead of next week:   HT: Elke Speliopoulos Read more

James McGrath (Lady Gaga Professor of Biblical Studies at Butler University) has a good article at B&I on Unity, Diversity, and Information Literacy in Biblical Studies. He notes that it is important that what we properly inform our students about the true nature of the diversity in scholarship. I also liked this quote: For in our digital age, it is not the memorization of facts that is crucial, but the cultivation of the skills needed to locate and identify reliable... Read more

Everybody’s favourite evangelical theologian (well at least mine) is leaving Wheaton College to return to Trinity International University. See the news from TIU here. At ETS there will be a session on KJV’s book Remythologizing God which I would go to if there wasn’t already a session on at the same time concerning Galatians and Salvation-History! Why are all the good sessions always concurrent ??? Read more