2011-07-23T07:13:06-04:00

This week I took the plunge and entered the Kindle universe by purchasing my first Kindle. To be honest I’ve avoided Kindle for a long time and been more than reluctant because I didn’t think I’d use it much. I am a old-school read books on paper kind of a guy. I love to read with a pencil in my hand and mark things up–this is true of even non-academic genres like biography. Even if I can get an article... Read more

2011-07-20T02:10:49-04:00

Prof. Lynn Cohick (Wheaton College) presented the first inaugural Eric Liddell lecture on theology and mission at Crossway College in Brisbane, Australia. The lecture is entitled, “The Apostle Paul and Eric Liddell –  Prisoners of Christ,” and it is available in both audio and in PDF (note, I can’t open it in Google Chrome for some reason, but it’s fine in Mozilla and Explorer). It was a great comparison of the Apostle Paul and the Scottish Missionary Eric Liddell on the... Read more

2011-07-19T08:33:17-04:00

I’m writing a chapter on Matthew and Empire for a book Joe Modica and Scot McKnight are editing for IVP called Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not! Evaluating Empire Studies Today. Besides myself other contributors include Mike Bird (Romans) and Lynn Cohick (Philippians), Allan Bevere (Colossians-Philemon), Drew Strait (Acts), Dean Pinter (Luke), Dwight Sheets (Revelation), Andy Couch (Conclusion), Judith Diehl (Scholarly survey) and David Nystrom (Roman Empire Ideology). We hope it will be an accessible evaluation of the popular trend... Read more

2011-07-18T20:32:57-04:00

I had just been accepted into the Ph.D. program at Cambridge. But, of course, your status on official documents for your first year was something demoralizing, along the lines of “unregistered for any degree in the first instance”. This is typical Cambridge speak. Sometime in the early part of the summer, my supervisor sat me down and told me, in so many words, that I was a terrible writer—and that was only a bit of the very difficult conversation. I... Read more

2011-07-18T18:09:54-04:00

Over at CT, Jason Hood has an interesting post on The End of Church Planting? where he argues that a missionary model of sending a “team” might be better than a model that relies exclusively on entrepreneurial pastors to plant churches. Read more

2011-07-18T07:22:39-04:00

I’m teaching a course on “Church, Ministry, and Sacraments”. Over the course of the semester I’m bringing in various guests including an Orthodox Priest, Anglican Minister, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal to explain what their tradition believes about church structure, scripture, sacraments, and other churches. I was fortunate enough to get Michael Barber (from The Sacred Page) to make a 40 minute video about Catholicism which I showed to my students. My aim was to get them to hear about... Read more

2011-07-18T06:57:22-04:00

What have we learned from the New Perspective, what gains are we to keep? 1. A more balanced view of Judaism. You only have to compare Rudolf Bultmann’s famous chapter on “Jewish legalism” with 1QH from the Dead Sea Scrolls to know that (a) Protestant views of Judaism have been heavily jaundiced by caricatures of Judaism, and (b) Ancient Judaism was not a cesspool of legalistic merit theology. A brief look even at Philo shows that Jews debated whether God’s... Read more

2011-07-17T07:53:09-04:00

Karla and I are celebrating 18 years of marriage this month. She had a long layover in San Diego this weekend (remember she’s a Flight Attendant for AA) and I went along. We took a boat to Coronado, biked around the island, and took a bike taxi around the San Diego harbor. Great way to celebrate! I’m blessed with an awesome wife and two great kids! Read more

2011-07-16T00:13:05-04:00

Over at Think Theology, Luke Geraty has a sympathetic summary of my recent JETS article on navigating a way between Piper and Wright. I should also mention that I’m contributor to the forthcoming IVP book Justification: Five Views where I give this “modified Reformed perspective” more air time. Read more

2011-07-14T00:32:33-04:00

Luke Timothy Johnson Sharing Possessions: What Faith Demands (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). Available at Amazon.com This book is by well-known Catholic scholar Luke Timothy Johnson (Emory Uni).  It is the second edition of a volume that was designed to be an accessible version of his Ph.D thesis. Interestingly enough, it was written at a time when Johnson made a transition from being a benedictine monk with “community possessions” to being a husband and father with seven children... Read more




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