Recent posts

Brant Pitre on the epiphany miracles: the stilling of the storm
Chapter two of Jesus and Divine Christology is about the “epiphany miracles.” Brant Pitre states the main purpose of the chapter quite bluntly: it is to “demolish the modern scholarly myth… that Jesus is not depicted as divine in the Synoptic Gospels” (40).There are three such… ( | 0 comments)
Brant Pitre: are the charges of blasphemy evidence that Jesus claimed to be divine?
I have just started reading Brant Pitre’s Jesus and Divine Christology (2024), in which he sets out to show that the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus believed he was divine because “Jesus himself spoke and acted as if he were divine during his lifetime”—only he did so in a very Jewish… ( | 5 comments)
The conceptual framework of Romans: salvation history or apocalyptic?
According to Douglas Moo, the theological or conceptual “framework within which Paul expresses his key ideas in Romans can be called salvation history” (D. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 1996, 25). What he means by this is that “God has accomplished redemption as part of a historical… ( | 0 comments)
How Tom Wright overshoots the heart of Romans
I have been reading Tom Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive Into Paul’s Greatest Letter (2023), wondering whether I should make it recommended reading for a course on Romans. I probably will but with caveats.My view is that Wright’s assessment of the traditional Protestant… ( | 0 comments)
Origen on the form of God
Nothing much to see here, just a footnote to my argument about Jesus being “in the form of a god,” but some people may find it interesting.The opening clause of the famous encomium celebrating the strange career of Jesus in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually translated “being in the form of God.” This… ( | 0 comments)
Some of the things I do and why I do them
From my limited perspective (other limited perspectives are available), it appears that the church in the West is changing or being changed quite dramatically. It is adapting to a marginalised and diminished presence by re-imagining the manner of its engagement with the world around it. We are… ( | 1 comment)
Is this how Paul thought “all Israel” might be saved in practice?
Under what circumstances did Paul imagine that “all Israel” would be saved? How did he think it would come about? I want to look at two passages here that point to national disaster as the circumstances and means by which such a reversal might happen. The second is the obvious one:For I do… ( | 5 comments)
Who would be rewarded on the day of God’s wrath against the Jew and the Greek?
Paul makes reference in Romans 2:7 to people who “by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality” (ESV). Who are they, what are they seeking, and what do they get on the day of God’s wrath? I ask because the question came up in an X/Twitter exchange, and I want to take the… ( | 5 comments)
Psalms of Solomon and Romans 1:1-17: The “Son of God” and the identity of Jesus
I really shouldn’t be going on about this, but I keep running into the same issue, and it is irksome. Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism (2015), edited by Blackwell, Goodrich, and Maston, ought to be a useful, if elementary, resource for exploring the abundant… ( | 1 comment)
Jesus and empire, state and church
There is an obvious contradiction—at least in the popular imagination—between the values of Jesus and the practices of Christendom, and it is not surprising that what is left of the Christendom church in the West now largely views its past with horror and shame. Surely, the conversion of the Roman… ( | 2 comments)
Am I a trinitarian or a unitarian? Not if I can help it…
I am writing this in hope of offering some encouragement to Liam, who is planning to go to university in September to study theology but is worried that he may be wasting his time.Liam is caught on the horns of a classic dilemma and at risk of falling torn and bruised between them. One horn is the… ( | 15 comments)
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… ( | 0 comments)
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;… ( | 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, in keeping with… ( | 0 comments)
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 all… ( | 5 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… ( | 0 comments)
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… ( | 0 comments)
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)
The disruptive dramas of Holy Week
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… ( | 1 comment)
Is Jesus Yahweh? “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain”
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… ( | 5 comments)