It looks like the next phase in the study of Paul, after the New Perspective on Paul and Paul within Judaism, will be Paul (within Judaism) within paganism. See, for example, Paul Within Paganism: Restoring the Mediterranean Context to the Apostle, edited by Chantziantoniou, Fredriksen, and Young (2025), which presents “a florilegium of essays tracing the various ways in which Paul’s Jewish religious program is native to the ancient Mediterranean” (xi). The British New Testament Society conference this year will have a session on the book and related themes, to which I will be contributing.
Alan Hirsch argues in Right Here, Right Now (written with Lance Ford) that the future of Christianity in the West depends on the church becoming a people movement again: “Somehow and in some way, we need to loosen up and learn how to reactivate the massive potentials that lie rather… ( | 4 comments)
What is the parable of the prodigal son about? It was cited in a recent comment here as evidence that the gospel is all about sinners repenting and being reconciled to the Father—and that is certainly how it would typically be understood by evangelicals. There may be some disagreement over… ( | 19 comments)
At Holy Trinity Brompton this morning we prayed for—among other things and somewhat in passing—the “re-evangelization of the nations”. That’s a weighty and portentous phrase. What are we supposed to mean by it?
Holy Trinity Brompton is a church with an expansive vision, but I… ( | 5 comments)
I really like Scot McKnight’s book A New Vision for Israel. There are a couple of areas of “structural” disagreement, if you like. I touched on the question of the finality of Jesus’ understanding of the coming kingdom of God in a previous post, to which Scot helpfully… ()
The scope of Joel’s prophecy and its relation to Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost has come up in discussion relating to the judgment of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46. It seems to me that the traditional understanding of Pentecost simply as a formative event for the… ( | 6 comments)
I am reading Scot McKnight’s book A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context, and I’m very impressed so far with his decisive and really quite radical argument about Jesus and the kingdom. The book was published in 1999, and, frankly, I wonder whether… ( | 9 comments)
I have been teaching this week on eschatology (and empire), and a question put to me about the setting of the judgment of the nations described in Matthew 25:31-46 has made me look again at the passage. The scene is set with a dramatic account of the Son of Man coming in his glory, with all his… ( | 17 comments)
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