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 all… (
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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… (
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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… (
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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… (
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How should Good Friday be observed? With mournful solemnity because this is the death of Jesus? Or with subdued but joyful celebration because this is the death of Jesus for our sins?The question came up in church yesterday in connection with a joint churches walk of witness… (
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I’m not sure how much more I can do with the debate between James White and Dale Tuggy over the question of whether Jesus is regarded by the writers of the New Testament to be, in some sense, Yahweh. Tuggy’s approach doesn’t lend itself to the same sort of analysis, and after that it all gets a bit… (
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The last passage that James White puts forward in support of his view that the New Testament identifies Jesus with Yahweh is 1 Peter 3:13-17*:And who is harming you if you should be zealots of the good? But if indeed you should suffer because of righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear… (
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The third passage that White considers in his opening presentation in the “Is Jesus Yahweh?” debate with Dale Tuggy is what he calls the “hymn to Christ as to God” in Philippians 2:6-11. It’s not a hymn and it’s not addressed “to Christ.” It’s effectively an encomium or paean, perhaps a condensed… (
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The first passage which James White considers in his debate with Dale Tuggy is Hebrews 1:10-12, in which the writer directly applies Psalm 102:25-27 to the Son. You can find my treatment of the second passage, which I did first, here.The lines from the psalm are a statement about the transcendent… (
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For no particular reason, I have started listening to a recent debate between James White and Dale Tuggy on the question “Is Jesus Yahweh?” I’m thinking I’ll pass an impartial eye over contributions made on both sides, just to see what we can learn, starting with White’s claim that when John says… (
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The Bible tells the story of the building and rebuilding of the people of God. I think that the church today is having to rebuild again, and I have been looking for a simple image or metaphor that captures the process and the basic components. This tower of five wooden blocks is about as simple as… (
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In his new book The New Anabaptists: Practices for Emerging Communities (2024), Stuart Murray says that the Anabaptist vision is “profoundly and resolutely Christocentric” to a degree not found in other traditions. Evangelicals, for example, make much of the birth and death of Jesus but… (
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Jesus says in John 8:58: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Raymond Brown says that ‘No clearer implication of divinity is found in the Gospel tradition.’1 This has been much debated, and I’m not here especially interested in the immediate christological meaning. It’s the background to the statement… (
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In their “manifesto for theological interpretation,” Craig Bartholomew and Heath Thomas assert the priority of theological interpretation over historical-critical interpretation.1 History must be understood theologically as the arena in which the painful and hopeful redemptive narrative of the… (
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In the previous post on the parable of the good Samaritan, I noted that “robbers” (lēistai) is likely to have had political overtones and suggested that, particularly given the remarkable parallel with 2 Chronicles 28:8-15, the parable could be read as an indictment of the miserable state… (
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I came across this intriguing perspective on Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan in an article by Amy-Jill Levine in the Biblical Archaeology Review (2012). She dismisses a number of what she regards as misinterpretations of the parable of the Good Samaritan and comes to this conclusion:… (
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I wrote most of this on a flight back from Doha on Christmas Eve. My wife has been at COP 28 in Dubai and at hydrogen conferences in Oman and Qatar—so plenty of opportunities to reflect on climate change from a very different angle. We also got to church a few times, where no one was talking about… (
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I won’t have time to write anything else this week, so here I’ve written up what started as a response to some further comments made by Edward Babinski regarding Paul’s supposed belief in an imminent “final cosmic judgment.”
Babinski argues that the belief was prevalent in second temple… (
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The latest issue of The Bulletin for Biblical Research (33.3, 2023) has my article on the subjection of the creature or created material to the futility of idolatry. It’s an argument that I made here in outline a few years ago. You need a subscription or institutional access to view it,… (
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In his 2016 NIGTC commentary on Romans, Richard Longenecker provides a summary of what he regards as the key themes that Paul “considered distinctive to his own proclamation of the Christian gospel” (1045-46). They strike me, for the most part, as being expressive of a Reformed outlook. I have… (
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