Ok, so I’m back from hiatus working through Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. To be honest I feel like the whole thing is passé. As of now the book and the issues raised by it have been repeatedly commented on ad nauseum. Just last week Michael posted the solid recent review by Nijay Gupta. Still, the issues are weighty and there are few reviews that have... Read more
On our last day in Turkey, on Wednesday of this week, we visited the ancient site of Aphrodisias. The city does not appear in the New Testament but it is smack dab in the middle of the seven churches of Revelation and Paul’s cities. The picture above was taken in the restored majestic city gate called the Tetrapylon. In Aphrodisias an important inscription was found in the late the Twentieth century. Published only in 1987 by Reynolds and Tannenbaum (Cambridge... Read more
In the latest issue of Expository Times (122.8 [2011]) there are a couple of book reviews of: James Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence by T. Scott Manor. James F. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context by Larry Hurtado. This is really a review of the Master (Dunn) and his Apprentice (McGrath) on early Christian Christology (McGrath was one of Dunn’s doctoral students). McGrath and Dunn generally believe that... Read more
Todd Billings has a cool piece on The Promise of Catholic Calvinism. I can relate to this. I remember one time saying something in class about the Trinity and afterwards a student came up to me rather concerned and asked: “I didn’t think we believed all that Catholic stuff like the Trinity?” I was aghast and retorted, “Oh yes we do!”. I also remember a couple of people in a former church I attended being rather agitated by the fact... Read more
From Frederik Mulder’s blog Resurrection Hope (HT Chris Hays) I’ve learned of a forthcoming book by Markus Vinzent (who blogs here) called Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity and the Making of the New Testament. Mulder summaries Vinzent’s thesis as follows: In short, if I understood Vinzent correctly, he wants to argue that belief in the resurrection of Jesus was of no significance after Paul died, until the likes of Irenaeus and Tertullian challenged Marcion’s interpretation of the resurrection. Marcion is... Read more
Evangelicals are crucicentric. Like Paul they preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). David Bebbington noted that in the nineteenth interdenominational newspaper the The British Weekly the most frequently preached text was Gal 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer life, but Christ lives in me. The life I life in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”.[1] Worship music from Isaac... Read more
Colossae is one of the few New Testament sites in Turkey that has yet to be excavated. While there have been plans in the works to excavate the site for quite some time (notably Dr. Michael Trainor of Flanders University in Australia), at this point no work has been undertaken. Currently its acropolis is a mound rising from the ground something like 50 yards (that’s an eyeball estimate) in the middle of a wheat field. Colossae is situated in the... Read more
. . . the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Messiah Paul preached . . . and middle school potty humor. These are the public toilets in Ephesus. Read more
As we all know, 2011 is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (KJB). And what a wonderfully happy birthday it is for a translation with such a distinguished history and influence in the realm of the English speaking world. Now anyone who has been in church circles long enough will have met some very peculiar folks with very strong views about the King James Bible of 1611. What such zealous albeit ignorant chaps don’t know is that the... Read more
Over at CT, Rodger Olson has a short review of Ken Stewart’s book Ten Myths About Calvinism. According to Olson: Stewart chides major personalities of the current Calvinist upsurge for thinking as though it “appeared Melchizedek-like, ‘without genealogy.’?” He names two heroes of the mostly 20-something crowd of new Calvinists, John Piper and Mark Driscoll, as culprits of this de-historicized vision of contemporary Calvinism. Stewart concludes that the new Calvinists need to recognize how their movement “stands in succession to... Read more
Euangelion
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In