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In the Australian state of Victoria (or the Socialist Republic of Victoria as its more fondly known in the current climate), the incumbent Labour Government has been defeated in the state legislative council with proposed laws which would inhibit houses of worship, schools, and charities from operating according to their faith, soundly defeated. There is a great article in the The Spectator by Simon Kennedy of The Institute for Civil Society: Freedom of Association: Sanity Succeeds on Spring Street. The Bill... Read more

At the ETS meeting in San Antonio, I was interviewed by Timothy George for the Beeson Podcast. It was a great time, Dr. Timothy George is my favourite Southern Baptist, I was very honored to be able to sit down and chat with Timothy about things I’ve been up to. I told a bit of my personal story and spoke about some of the books I’ve written over the years. Awesome experience … at least for me. You can listen... Read more

I just heard the news that American Methodist Theologian Thomas C. Oden has passed away. Oden was a former liberal who turned “orthodox” after discovering the church fathers. He was deep in liberalism, writing his dissertation on Freud and Bultmann – kerygma and counselling. But the church fathers turned him towards the light of the evangelical and apostolic faith, for which he became a key advocate. He exposed the suicide of liberalism in his book Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements which... Read more

Over at CT, is an encouraging article by Marybeth Davis Baggett on Why Being a Woman in Seminary is Worth the Work, basically outlining why women should go to seminary, what they can get out of it, and how they can be enriched by it. Loved her conclusion: Christian women—no less than men—are legatees of this philosophically and theologically profound heritage, one that marks out orthodox boundaries and models a time-tested, trustworthy method for biblical interpretation and cultural engagement. We... Read more

James D. G. Dunn The Acts of the Apostles Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014 [1996]. Available at Amazon.com While there are several exhaustive multi-volume commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, there is a certain strength to the brevity of any commentary that can do it in one volume, which James Dunn does in this book. According to Dunn, “The Acts of the Apostles is the most exciting book in the New Testament, probably the whole Christian Bible.” This book... Read more

Over at the Witherspoon Institute is a scintillating article by Steven Smith on Who’s on Which Side of the Lunch Counter? Civil Rights, Religious Accommodation, and the Challenges of Diversity. Here is the guts of his argument: In itself, the modern campaign for gay rights has been primarily inclusive in its aims. The goal has been to allow people who identify as LGBT to participate in education and employment without having to deny or conceal their sexual or gender orientation. In... Read more

Over at Biblical and Early Christian Studies, Christoph Heilig has a review of Bruce Winter’s The First Christians’ Responses to Emperor Worship, which is a fine read and a good entree into NT and empire studies. Winter’s basic approach to research can both be regarded as giving rise to the strengths as well as the weaknesses, or at least limitations, of his work in relation to the broader debate concerning “Paul and Empire”: On the one hand, his focus on primary... Read more

I’m very pleased that Fortress Press will publish a cheaper paperback version of God and the Faithfulness of Paul in March 2017 which is an amazing series of essays by an international cast of scholars evaluating N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God.  Seriously, the essays by folks like Larry Hurtado, Jorg Frey, Eckhard Schnabel and others are just excellent, plus Wright’s responses are great too, makes for an awesome discussion. N. T. Wright’s magnum opus Paul and the Faithfulness of God is... Read more

Iain Provan Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016. Available at Amazon.com By Lynsey Stepan Iain Provan’s Genesis commentary, Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception, addresses the difficult interpretive questions stemming from the narrative sections in an easy to understand format. Provan organizes his commentary by first laying out how Genesis has been read throughout history, and second offering a slightly altered schema for modern readers. Provan’s suggestion, while not new, is tremendously helpful particularly for reading the... Read more