2011-07-13T19:34:41-04:00

In light of these five previous posts, I have five theses on the Church and Israel. (1) The church does not replace Israel, but is the representative of Israel in messianic age. Ethnic or empirical Israel is not so much replaced as expanded in scope to become a renewed messianic Israel. God is not finished with national Israel and salvation will yet avail for them. However, the locus of God’s covenanting and electing activity is clearly the church made up... Read more

2011-07-13T07:00:51-04:00

We are now in a post-New Perspective on Paul era. The primary response I see these days is a “yes, but …” kind of thing. Though I suspect that many will continue become enamored with the NPP as the hottest thing to come off the wire, or else many will still insist that the NPP are the barbarians at the gates of Reformed orthodoxy. So what have we learned from the NPP? I intend to do a couple of posts on this... Read more

2011-07-13T06:00:33-04:00

I want to make you aware of an interesting book that has been out for a couple of years [pub date 2009], but to this point has not received much scholarly attention—at least I’ve not been able to find even one review. This post is certainly not intended to be such. The book however makes a very bold if not a new claim. Love Sechrest, now a professor at Fuller, wrote her doctoral dissertation at Duke and it is now... Read more

2011-07-13T00:59:12-04:00

For perhaps the best ever article you’ll read about Anglicanism, read this piece over at First Things by Archbishop Henry Orombi, Primate of the Uganda Anglican Church. Here’s a taste: The Bible cannot appear to us a cadaver, merely to be dissected, analyzed, and critiqued, as has been the practice of much modern higher biblical criticism. Certainly we engage in biblical scholarship and criticism, but what is important to us is the power of the Word of God precisely as... Read more

2011-07-12T20:06:41-04:00

I caught a preview of the latest issue of JETS which includes articles by myself and Mark Seifrid on the New Perspective. Mark Seifrid, “The Near Word of Christ and the Distant Vision of N. T. Wright.” pp. 279-298 Michael F. Bird, “What is There Between Minneapolis and St. Andrews? A Third Way in the Piper-Wright Debate.” pp. 299-309 HT: Alan Bandy. Read more

2011-07-12T06:00:42-04:00

This is a quite extraordinary quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer about the Mosaic Law. He writes these lines in his exposition of Matthew 5:17-20. The is the law of the Old Covenant, not a new law, but the one old law, to which the rich young man and the tempting scribe were referred as the revealed will of God. It becomes a new commandment only because Christ binds his disciples to the law. His concern is not for a “better law”... Read more

2011-07-11T18:22:38-04:00

This is funny (apologies to my Catholic friends). Read more

2011-07-11T17:39:21-04:00

Over at The Strange Triumph of the Lamb, Nick Nowalk is progressively surveying definitions and descriptions of the “righteousness of God”. My Romans students who have a seminar on this might find this blog interesting! Read more

2011-07-11T14:32:36-04:00

Are you in need of an encouraging word today? Let this passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer pour over you. Christ is for you! Everything we have said thus far may be summed up in the phrase: Christ is “for us”, not only in his word and his attitude toward us, but in his bodily life. Christ stands bodily before God in the place that should be ours. He has stepped into our place. He suffers and dies for us, and is... Read more

2011-07-11T09:28:45-04:00

It is axiomatic in the Catholic letters that the election of Israel is extended to include the church. In the latter part of the New Testament, there is a clear emphasis on the church as the “elect” people of God who are partakers of the position and priviledges of Israel. Peter writes to the “elect exiles of the dispersion” (1 Pet 1:1), who are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Pet 2:9) because... Read more




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