Recent posts

Paul’s letter to the Romans (1:19-2:29)
Romans 1:19-2:29Why does good news need to be heard regarding the “power of God for salvation”? Why does God have to justify himself by ensuring that the righteous person lives because of faith or faithfulness?The reason is that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and… ( | 6 comments)
The historical meaning of Jesus’ parable of the dragnet
Jesus tells a rather disturbing story about the judgment of his people at the end of the age of second temple Judaism. This is my very functional translation: Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a dragnet (sagēnēi) thrown into the sea, and it gathered from every kind (of fish).… ( | 0 comments)
Paul’s letter to the Romans (1:1-18)
Romans 1:1-18 Paul, apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1-7) Paul introduces himself to those in Rome who are “called to be saints” as a slave of Christ and an apostle, “set apart for the gospel of God.” The “gospel” is the proclamation of good news, anticipated in the Jewish scriptures,… ( | 7 comments)
What was the name which is above every name?
I take several chapters in my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul to argue that in the first part of the Christ encomium in Philippians 2:6-11 the direction of travel is ontologically flat: not from heaven to earth but from celebrity to… ( | 3 comments)
Patriarchy and the (not) naming of the woman by Adam
Christians who think that it is right and good to maintain a form a patriarchy, at least in church and home, will often argue that by naming the woman Adam exercises or asserts an innate, creational authority over her that is not abrogated by salvation. In search of a suitable helper for… ( | 2 comments)
Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus and spoke of him
John says that Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus (Jn. 12:41). Is this a reference back to the “glory” of God that Isaiah saw in the temple? Or is it something else? Well, I’m going to say that it was something else, not because I’m anti-trinitarian but because I don’t think that’s what John means at… ( | 0 comments)
Why we need a sort of Pentecostal eschatology today
I have been working through Craig Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (2016) to prepare some teaching materials on Pentecostal hermeneutics. It’s a fairly casual read, so far at least. I could really do with something a bit more technical. But it’s a good… ( | 0 comments)
Sin and the gospel re-explained
In an article on the Gospel Coalition website, adapted from a book about evangelism, Matt Smethurst attempts to explain the gospel. He suggests, to begin with, that we can view the gospel from two perspectives: a high level or aerial view, which reveals to us the overall shape of the biblical… ( | 11 comments)
Why theology is of no use to us now
Stephen Fowl thinks that it’s impossible to get from history to theology—to start with historical-criticism and arrive at an account of the being and intentions of the Triune God and of the various beliefs and practices that derive from that core Christian doctrine. So we have to start at the… ( | 0 comments)
“My Lord and my God!” Is this theology or rhetoric?
This is a brief re-examination of Thomas’ famous declaration “My Lord and my God” in John 20:28. I looked at this some years ago, noting the common argument that the wording of the confession reflects the “custom,” recorded in Suetonius and Dio Cassius, of addressing the emperor Domitian (AD 81-96… ( | 7 comments)
The New Historicism and the narrative-historical method
Probably, for most people interested in biblical studies, “historicism” is a bad word, associated either with a positivist historical-critical methodology that hammers the theological life out of a text or with a certain mode of nineteenth century German historical idealism that culminated in the… ( | 4 comments)
Stone Chapel podcast with David Capes
I did a couple of podcast episodes recently with David Capes for The Stone Chapel Podcasts, talking about my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. Episode 140 “In the Form of A God” with Andrew Perriman, Part 1 Episode 141 “In The Form of A God”… ( | 0 comments)
My reading of the Philippians encomium visualised
It is easy to visualise the traditional interpretation of Philippians 2:6-11 as a downward parabola or u-bend: Christ existed in heaven from eternity “in the form of God”; he descended into the world, becoming man and dying on the cross; then he is raised from the dead and restored to his position… ( | 13 comments)
In the form of a god: the anarthrous genitive construction
This is a dull, and frankly unnecessary, technical note on the genitive construction with a preposition en morphēi theou (ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ) in Philippians 2:6. I’ve had to look at this a bit more closely following a rather disjointed conversation with someone on Twitter who had different… ( | 12 comments)
In the form of a god: what does the lack of an article tell us?
John Baumberger has a question about my translation of en morphē theou in Philippians 2:6 as “in the form of a god.” He takes issue with the indefinite construction on a couple of grounds: 1. The word theos ‘without the definite article almost always refers to God himself (and… ( | 5 comments)
The downs and ups of Philippians 2:6-11
The famous passage about Christ in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually described as a “hymn,” and is usually taken to celebrate the inverted parabola of Christ’s descent from heaven, his incarnation as man, the nadir of his death on the cross, followed by his return to heaven and exaltation to a position… ( | 11 comments)
Beyond Easter, and how we might put an Adam typology to good use
Just for the sake of completeness, here is one final visual representation of the two-part significance of Easter. It’s now getting a bit overloaded, I know—two storylines, four landing points, and an unexpected back-reference to the flood; but I don’t want to give the impression that history has… ( | 0 comments)
The inversion of the Easter week stories diagrammatised
This is a brief addendum to the earlier post this week about the two meanings of Easter. A bit of an exchange on Facebook suggested to me that modern theologies of Easter are a striking inversion of what we find in the New Testament. I have tried to represent this graphically. The … ( | 0 comments)
The two meanings of Easter and what they tell us about the mission of the church today
We think of Easter week as one story: entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Last Supper, arrest and trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. Liturgical performance, with a convenient hiatus between Palm Sunday and the long East weekend, reinforces the point. But I will suggest here that it is actually… ( | 0 comments)
New CBQ article: the fullness of time and the present evil age
The current issue of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly includes my article “When the Fullness of the Time Came: Apocalyptic and Narrative Context in Galatians.” It’s only available to subscribers for the time being—and, of course, in libraries—but here’s the abstract and a brief overview of… ( | 2 comments)