A different sort of missional theology from Paul’s address to the “men of Athens” in Acts 17

Paul is in Athens, waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him. His spirit is troubled by the profusion of idols in the city, and he gets into lively disputes about the phenomenon with Jews and God-fearing gentiles in the synagogue on the Sabbath and for the rest of the week with philosophers and other layabouts in the agora. This is the real Paul—not the letter writer so much—of whom we get no more than a glimpse in Acts and in the reconstruction of his quarrels with the Jews in Romans.

Presumably, his message to the Jews was the apocalyptic one about YHWH’s impending judgment on the pagan world, which we will get to shortly, but we don’t hear what their response was. He has piqued the curiosity of the philosophers, however, and they invite him to tell them more about these novel eastern divinities, Jesus and Resurrection, that he has been going on about.

Read more...
Why is there no eschatological pilgrimage of the gentiles in Paul?
The idea of the “eschatological pilgrimage of the Gentiles” to a rebuilt temple and restored Zion is well attested in Isaiah especially but is found in other Old Testament and Hellenistic-Jewish writings. Here are three examples, but we could add Isaiah 56:6-7; 66:18-20; Zech. 14:16; Mic. 4:1-… ( | 2 comments)
Call yourself a Jew?
When Paul says, “if you call yourself a Jew” (Rom. 2:17), the traditional understanding has been that this is addressed to a Jew whom he is about to charge with hypocrisy: “You call yourself a Jew but you do this, that, and the other! Shame on you!” It is sometimes argued, however,… ()
Talking with Sam Tideman about the “Is Jesus YHWH?” debate between James White and Dale Tuggy
I had a great chat with Sam Tideman recently, following up on a number of posts addressing questions raised in a debate between James White and Dale Tuggy asking “Is Jesus Yahweh?” A previous conversation with Sam addressed “The Preexistence of Christ and Narrative Historical Theology.” I would… ( | 1 comment)
They will all wear out like a garment: rethinking the quotation of Psalm 102:25-27 in Hebrews 1
I had a go at explaining the place of the quotation from Psalm 102 as an apparent address to Christ as YHWH in a recent post on the “Is Jesus Yahweh?” debate between James White and Dale Tuggy, but I’m not sure I got it quite right. So I’m going to try again, at least in outline—I won’t repeat… ( | 3 comments)
“The Babylonian captivity figured out our spiritual bondage under sin and Satan”
Matthew Poole was a seventeenth century English Presbyterian minister. Towards the end of his life he started work on a commentary on the Bible called Annotations upon the Holy Bible. Wherein The Sacred Text is Inserted, and various Readings Annex’d, together with the Parallel Scriptures, the… ()
Now let’s go over this again: historical narratology and the horizons of the New Testament
I am writing this in answer to some questions sent to me about the reading of the New Testament presented on this blog and in my books. The specific point at issue is my contention that we now understand the New Testament best if we map most of the stuff of New Testament eschatology—the weird… ()
Did John think that Isaiah saw the glory of the exalted Jesus in the temple?
According to James White, when John says that “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory” (Jn. 12:41), the allusion is to the glory of YHWH revealed in the throne vision of Isaiah 6:1-3. Since John is speaking about Jesus in this passage, we may infer that John in some way identifies Jesus… ( | 6 comments)