Recent posts

Norway's day of fire and the challenge of Christian formation

There was an interview with a Lutheran priest on the radio this morning from the cathedral in Oslo. He spoke of how he had preached the peace of Christ every week… and then described the dreadful shock of learning that the bombing and killings had been carried out not by radical… (24 Jul 2011 | 5 comments)

The state of theology and the role of freelance theologians

James K.A. Smith, who stayed in our house in the Hague with his family a few years back, wrote last week about the state of contemporary theology, complaining in particular about the “balkanization” of professional theology today. He attributes this—in part, at least—to a shift in the way… (22 Jul 2011 | 4 comments)

Putting the past and the future back into hermeneutics

Jeannine K. Brown has a very sensible introductory chapter to her book Scripture as Communication, in which she provides some straightforward definitions of the key terms in this field of study. So “hermeneutics” is the “analysis of what we do when we seek to understand the Bible,… (14 Jul 2011 | 2 comments)

Tim Gombis on the New Perspective (and why it doesn't go far enough)

The limitations of the New Perspective on Paul in its standard form can be illustrated from a piece by Tim Gombis. Tim strongly affirms the New Perspective and nicely expresses his bemusement over the “fear-mongering and hysteria” that the approach has generated in certain quarters. But when you… (11 Jul 2011 | 10 comments)

Which way did he go? The coming of the Son of Man and the theology of crisis

Two papers by the same person given at the SBL International Meeting in London this week cut across each other in a rather alarming fashion, in my view, creating a dangerous hermeneutical intersection, with the risk of a serious theological pile-up. Well, yes, that’s overstating it, but the… (7 Jul 2011 | 0 comments)

Matthew Montonini's review of The Future of the People of God

I hope it’s not too immodest to draw attention to a review of my book The Future of the People of God by Matthew Montonini that begins: Many books one reads, especially in the area of biblical studies, are solid and sane, but very few have the potential to shift… (2 Jul 2011 | 0 comments)

History and theologies: schematization number 6

Actually, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve attempted to schematize the relationship between history and theology. But I think it is central to the current theological task, so another attempt won’t go amiss. Modern evangelical theology is largely an abstraction. It is a very… (29 Jun 2011 | 8 comments)

My small contribution to the SBL International Meeting in London

I will be at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in London next week. First time to go to one of these things. I will be presenting a paper in the Paul and Pauline Literature section on Monday afternoon on “Sibylline Oracles and the Judgment of the Greeks”, but the other… (27 Jun 2011 | 6 comments)

Out of Egypt I called my son: the rabbit in the hat trick

There are a number of well known “misreadings” of prophecy in the New Testament, where the writer, in his enthusiasm to prove that Jesus is Israel’s messiah, appears to have found a meaning in the text that simply is not there—rather as a magician pulls a rabbit out of an empty hat. It’… (24 Jun 2011 | 4 comments)

Is the global church following the Western church over the edge?

Phil Wood, who writes an Anabaptist blog from the UK, made this comment yesterday in response to The Church is dead?: I was talking a little while ago with a friend who has a senior role in an American Mennonite Conference. We had a long discussion when I said that in Britain we were… (23 Jun 2011 | 8 comments)

The church is dead?

In a post on Out of Ur Skye Jethani discusses reports of the decline of the Southern Baptist Convention and of the evangelical church in North America more generally: “50 churches are closing every week, church attendance is not keeping pace with population growth, and the average age of church… (22 Jun 2011 | 1 comment)

The Gentiles are saved by the salvation of Israel

It is a basic error of modern evangelicalism that it has over-compressed the biblical narrative in order to provide a simple, user-friendly “gospel” for the practical purposes of personal evangelism, pastoral instruction, and the highly subjective forms of worship that prevail in our churches. My… (19 Jun 2011 | 16 comments)

Paul’s argument about the atonement of Israel in Romans 3-4

This is a close examination of the place of Romans 3:24-25 in Paul’s argument about the fate of the Jews in chapter 3 as a whole. It is a response to objections made to my post on atonement that when Paul speaks here of a redemption in Christ Jesus, etc., he does not discriminate… (17 Jun 2011 | 2 comments)

Atonement, without the theoretical nonsense

At the simplest level what we mean by “atonement” is that Jesus died for my sins in order to reconcile me to a holy God. But when the church attempts to explain how Jesus’ death on the cross does this, we quickly find ourselves entangled in a number of competing theories: the… (15 Jun 2011 | 17 comments)

I came to cast a fire on the earth

There is no question that Pentecost is a “wondrous and challenging feast”, which should put “to the lie a lazy, sleepy, hidden, and tepid Christian life”. I quote from a Meditation on the Feast of Pentecost by Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington. But the Monsignor then sharpens the… (12 Jun 2011 | 2 comments)