I sit on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ably edited by James Crossley and Anthony Le Donne. The editorial board is quite diverse (though could use a few more women) with Americans, Europeans, and even Australians. It also has people of many different religious affiliations, there are members who identify as Jewish, evangelical Christian, mainline Christian, agnostic, and atheist.  We disagree on just about everything when it comes to Jesus and the sources... Read more

Another forthcoming book from Bart Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, Feb 2018). Currently #1 at Amazon.com in Christian Church Growth (LOL) From the New York Times bestselling authority on early Christianity, the story of how Christianity grew from a religion of twenty or so peasants in rural Galilee to the dominant religion in the West in less than four hundred years. Christianity didn’t have to become the dominant religion in the West. It... Read more

Just saw the promo clip for the forthcoming movie Paul, Apostle of Christ, directed by Andrew Hyatt, starring James Faulker (Paul), Jim Caviezel (Luke), Joanna Whally (Priscilla), and John Lynch (Aquila). Might be a bit cringe-worthy, but hopefully still a good movie. Here’s some of the promos: Read more

Ryan P. O’Dowd Proverbs (Story of God Bible Commentary) Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017. By Lindsay Wilson Ryan O’Dowd may be known to readers as the co-author with Craig Bartholomew of a useful survey of OT wisdom literature (2011). Here in this commentary on Proverbs, we hear the solo voice of O’Dowd himself. As this is only the second OT commentary to appear in this series, it is worth looking at the distinctive features of the series itself. It is based... Read more

Last month I gave a talk at the Australian Christian Lobby’s “Embolden” conference on “The Thessalonian Strategy,” discussing how to do faith in a potentially hostile political environment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L2VJG6fuJU Read more

On Facebook, you can watch a video of my SEBTS library talk about “The NPP and the Local Church.” With a due plug of Scot McKnight’s and Jo Modica’s volume The Apostle Paul and the Christian Life. I try to break down what the NPP is/was, what was right and what was wrong, and why it matters for local churches today. Read more

All power to Larry Hurtado, he kicked the beehive of crazy, amateur, angry conspiracy theorists who deny that the historical Jesus existed. Read his blog posts here and here, and the comments show just how inane, vapid, and vacuous Jesus mythicism is. There are much better reasons offered by people for finding Christian faith (or any kind of belief in God) too much of a stretch.  The attempts to deny Jesus’ historical existence are, for anyone acquainted with the relevant evidence, blatantly... Read more

For the systematicians among you, the Tyndale Fellowship’s Christian Doctrine group has a call for papers for its conference in Cambridge on 27-29 June 2018. Celebrating the completion of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s 5-vol theology, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (Eerdmans), the Tyndale Fellowship Christian Doctrine group turns attention to this project’s ambition contribution. One of comparative theologies, developing a constructive Christian theological vision in dialogue with the Christian tradition, science, contemporary theology in global and contextual diversity, with Judaism,... Read more

If you are in Wake Forest tomorrow. Read more

I had the pleasure of speaking at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture and Kingdom Diversity) along with Provost Bruce Ashford about the Benedict Option promoted by Rod Dreher. In my talk, I spoke about various models of relating to a post-Christian society: the Religious Right, an exile mindset, “faithful presence,” and Dreher’s #BenOp. I critique those models before advocating my own, the Thessalonian Strategy (see my CT article). There is a great summary of my... Read more