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.
The main challenge of New Testament theology at the moment, as the church struggles more or less self-consciously to come to terms with its modern exile, is to tell and retell the story of which Jesus is part – to tell it both critically and hopefully, in a way that brings out its complexity… ()
What is the historical frame of reference of Jesus’ parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins? Tradition has taught us to read this as a story about a final consummation at the second coming of Jesus, at some uncertain point in our own future. Taken in isolation from the story that… ( | 5 comments)
For much of the last decade the tide of popular-level evangelical theology – by which I mean theology as it engages constructively with the life and mission of the church – has been moving strongly in an emerging direction. At least, that has been my perception. Over the last couple of years,… ( | 2 comments)
This is why I don’t like systematic theologies. I picked up a copy of John M. Frame’s Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An introduction to systematic theology today – it’s amazing what you can find in Dubai, as long as it’s Reformed. The book is a classic example of… ( | 5 comments)
In the discussion prompted by my post on ‘The parables of delay and the question of dual fulfilment’ paulf argued that it’s impossible to resolve the tension in Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse between the early references to the destruction of Jerusalem and the later statement about the Son of… ( | 11 comments)
The Biologos Foundation, which ‘addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life’, has come up with a statement of faith, shamelessly cribbed from 1 Corinthians 15:1-5: … ()
There has been a lot of debate recently about the contested identity of the evangelical movement in America. We have been aware for some time of the strength of the neo-Reformed reaction against the emerging movement. I wrote a piece a while back about the depressing war between Emergents and… ( | 2 comments)
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