Recent posts

Ignatius of Antioch on the pre-existence of the exalted Christ
I don’t deal with this in the book, but I’m wondering whether the retrospective argument about the pre-existence of the exalted Christ gains a polemically heightened character in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107/108). Or to put it the other way round, is the marked concern to… ( | 7 comments)
In Gestalt eines Gottes: Die Vorexistenz des erhöhten Christus bei Paulus: Worum es in dem Buch geht und warum
This is a German translation of “In the form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul: what the book is about and why.” With many thanks to Helge Seekamp. Mein Buch In Gestalt eines Gottes: Die Vorexistenz des Erhöhten Christus bei Paulus ist seit einiger Zeit… ( | 0 comments)
In the form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul: what the book is about and why
My book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul has been available for a little while now, from the publisher and other major sources, both in print and as an ebook (Nook, Kindle). Here I want to give a bit more of a sense of what the book is about and… ( | 5 comments)
Notes on J. Richard Middleton’s The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1
I am coming to think that the current mainstream view regarding “image of God” in Genesis 1:26-27 is mistaken. The consensus is that behind the expression is the idea that God is king, that he rules the cosmos, and that he has delegated some part of that benign and constructive rule to men and… ( | 4 comments)
Our eco-theological blindspots and the climate crisis
Looking around for discussion of a theology of climate crisis, I came across a brief summary of the work of Gijsbert van den Brink, University Research Chair for Theology and Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The piece is by Matthew Wiley and is entitled “Life in the Anthropocene:… ( | 2 comments)
Biblical hermeneutics and the destabilising of the world
“It is a conviction of the church,” Matthew Malcolm writes in From Hermeneutics to Exegesis, “that it shares the same redemptive-historical location as the first recipients of the New Testament documents” (61). That is an important observation, but I think that the conviction is misguided… ( | 0 comments)
“Image of God” as eco-theological premise?
I argued in the previous post that the injunction to subdue the earth and rule over all living creatures in Genesis 1:26-28 cannot be construed in helpful modern terms as environmental stewardship or creation care. The language consistently evokes contexts of enslavement, violent suppression of… ( | 5 comments)
A mistake to let them subdue the earth and have dominion over it?
There is an argument that the Bible is partly to blame for the current environmental crisis because humanity was instructed from the get-go to subdue the earth and have dominion over all living creatures (Gen. 1:26-28). The historian Lynn White famously argued in a 1967 article, “The Historical… ( | 2 comments)
New book coming soon: In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul
I have a new book coming out with Wipf & Stock before the end of the year. It’s called In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. It looks like it will be the first in a new series of Studies in Early Christology, edited by Michael Bird, Scott Harrower, and… ( | 8 comments)
Where is the promise of his coming?
Christopher M. Hays and C. A. Strine have proposed a solution to the problem that Jesus seemingly promised to come back within a generation and didn’t. In a first post on Pete Enns’ The Bible for Normal People site they accept the fact that “Jesus told his disciples that he would come back soon… ( | 4 comments)
Ten things the church can learn about missions from a narrative-historical perspective
I follow the output of the Gospel Coalition site on the look out for material that I can use to illustrate the differences between, in this case, conservative theological readings of the New Testament and a narrative-historical reading. I do the same, naturally, for liberal-progressive thinkers,… ( | 1 comment)
How to pray the prayer of Jabez
There’s an odd little story about a man called Jabez lodged in the middle of the twenty-three verses that make up the list of the descendants of Judah in 1 Chronicles 4. It was made very famous twenty years ago by Bruce Wilkinson’s best-selling book The Prayer of Jabez, which exposed a… ( | 0 comments)
Falling sideways: why not much changed when Adam and Eve sinned
What happens when Adam and Eve disobey God and eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? What are the consequences of their sin? How does it change things? The common assumption is that the “fall” is a catastrophic ontological event that corrupts not only humanity but the whole… ( | 5 comments)
How did Jesus’ disciples imagine that he would “redeem Israel”?
Shortly after the death of Jesus, two from the band of his disciples are met by the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24:13-35). He asks them what they are talking about, and, a little surprised by the ignorance of the fellow, they update him on what has just transpired in Jerusalem. It would… ( | 18 comments)
Why the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost marked an end, not a beginning
One of the reasons why we routinely miss the point of Peter’s explanation of what happened on the day of Pentecost is, I think, that the canonical arrangement of books encourages us to read Acts as the beginning of something new rather than as a direct continuation of what went before. The New… ( | 3 comments)
Jamie Davies on the apocalyptic Paul: from interpretation to theology
Jamie Davies makes J. Louis Martyn the pivot point of his retrospective summary of the history of modern investigations into the thought of the “apocalyptic Paul.” Martyn is the terminus ad quem of the longer history of research going back to Johannes Weiss and the terminus a quo… ( | 2 comments)
Jamie Davies on the apocalyptic Paul: the J. Louis Martyn school
In the second chapter of The Apocalyptic Paul: Retrospect and Prospect, Jamie Davies introduces what is effectively a “school” of modern interpreters who have built on J. Louis Martyn’s account of Paul’s apocalyptic thought: Martinus de Boer, Leander Keck, Alexandra Brown, Beverly Gaventa… ( | 1 comment)
Jamie Davies on the apocalyptic Paul: from Weiss to Martyn
Jamie Davies’ book The Apocalyptic Paul: Retrospect and Prospect comes in two parts: a look back down the long road that has led to attempts to assimilate the “apocalyptic Paul” into systematic theologies, and a look forward to see where that road might take us next. I’m not sure how far I… ( | 0 comments)
The narrative vocabulary of rape in the Old Testament and the counter-example of Amnon and Tamar
I asked in the previous post about blaming Bathsheba, “If it was a rape, why isn’t it presented as a rape?” James McGrath asks to the contrary, if we call Amnon’s assault of Tamar “rape,” why do we not apply the same category to David’s sexual encounter with Bathsheba? “Where in the story is… ( | 3 comments)
No one’s blaming Bathsheba
James McGrath made this comment in response to my treatment of Bathsheba’s bathing in my previous two posts (see the links below): I found myself unable to keep reading after you blamed Bathsheba for washing herself after the end of her menstruation as the Law mandates, in a place that should… ( | 3 comments)