Someone recently asked me what are the newish books to read for someone who wants to get back into Pauline studies. It made me think about what books in recent years have I liked, enjoyed, and learned from. Well, looking at 2014-19, here are the books I’d recommend: Main Books 1. N.T. Wright – Paul and the Faithfulness of God. NTW’s magnum opus on Paul, now nearly 5 years old, quite the bombshell, a truly exhaustive attempt to explain Paul in his... Read more
Peter Carnley Resurrection in Retrospect: A Critical Examination of the Theology of N. T. Wright Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019. Available at Wipf & Stock. Look, I am biased, but I think N.T. Wright’s Resurrection of the Son of God is the best book on the resurrection and probably the best tome on the topic in church history (that said, I think Dale Allison’s big essay in Resurrecting Jesus, is a great minority report too). Australian Anglican Archbishop Peter Carnley wrote his own... Read more
Benjamin T. Conner Disabling Mission, Enabling Witness: Exploring Missiology through the Lens of Disability Studies Missiological Engagements; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2018. Available at IVP. Benjamin T. Conner (Western Theological Seminary) has written a very good multi-disciplinary study that incorporates disability studies and missiology. It is filled with wonderful and moving anecdotes about disabled people in our churches, their highs and lows, and what the churches can do for them and with them. Conner’s aim is to “stimulate a conversation... Read more
I had the pleasure of talking with Brandon Smith over on B&H’s Church Grammar podcast. There were yapped about: How to prepare for a PhD The Bird/Wright book New Testament in its World. The second edition of Evangelical Theology. The Bird/Harrower book, Trinity without Hierarchy. Lots of fun, if you don’t already, subscribe to the podcast, they have lots of great people on it! Read more
Despite all the kafuffle as to why the Gospels were written (ranging from debates in a Matthean community, synagogue expulsions, identity formation, counter the rise of Gnosticism, etc.), I still think one of the best reasons calling for the Gospels to be written is to tell the story of Jesus for a generation who did not know any eyewitnesses or have access to first-hand accounts of the Jesus tradition. As Bob Gundry writes: “Why were the Gospels written? A high... Read more
Luke Timothy Johnson lists ten characteristics shared in all of the canonical Gospels: 1. All four Gospels are realistic narratives 2. All four Gospels have specific historical roots in first-century Palestine. 3. All four Gospels explicitly connect the story of Jesus to that of Israel, using the texts and stories of the Torah and Prophets to express the identity and role of Jesus. 4. All four Gospels emphasize the way that humans respond to Jesus. 5. All the Gospels climax... Read more
Eckhard J. Schnabel Jesus in Jerusalem: the Last Days. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018. Hardback., pp. 680. Available at Eerdmans. Professor Eckhard Schnabel (Mary F. Rockefeller Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) has produced the most comprehensive study of passion week since Raymond E. Brown’s The Death of the Messiah published some 25 years ago. Schnabel offers detailed analysis of: (1) Every person mentioned, from Jesus to the man with the sponge at Golgotha; (2) Every place nominated... Read more
Over at Canon Fodder, Michael Kruger asks: Is the New Perspective on Paul a Product of Our Current Cultural Moment? Kruger wonders if the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) – with its denial by some proponents that Paul was not interested in the problem of individual sin and guilt, but with nationalism and ethnocentrism – is a somewhat culturally contingent view developed in the post-holocaust era. In which case, the NPP is less driven by historical exegesis than it is with communitarian... Read more
Here is my interview with Dr. Edwina Murphy about her book The Bishop and the Apostle: Cyprian’s Pastoral Exegesis of Paul (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018). Who was Cyprian and why should we care? Cyprian was bishop of Carthage in North Africa in the middle of the third century. North Africa was very influential in the development of western theology – before Cyprian was Tertullian, who gave us the language for the Trinity, and after him was Augustine, perhaps the most influential... Read more
Over at the Quillette Podcast, Toby Young interviews Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, about his experience of being mobbed by students, activists, and even colleagues. They discuss what motivates academic outrage mobs and what can be done to defend free speech at British and American universities. The fuss is over Biggar’s research project pertaining to “The Ethics of Empire,” which is not an apology for empire, as much as an exploration of how empires are... Read more
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