This is a rather technical examination of Jason Staples’ argument in Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites that when Paul speaks of Israel as “vessels of wrath,” he does not mean that the people are are the objects of God’s wrath; rather they are the instruments of God’s redemptive purposes. My view has been that Paul is saying that part of Israel really has become liable to destruction—much as Jesus foresaw destruction coming upon Jerusalem and the temple. But perhaps I’ve got it wrong.
Andrew Bunt provides a quick and lucid overview of the argument of Oren Martin’s book Bound for the Promised Land: The land promise in God’s redemptive plan (2015). I have not read the book. Martin thinks—assuming that Bunt has understood him correctly—that the land of Canaan was … ()
I have been reading Eric Mason’s book Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice. It’s not the book I was expecting it to be. It’s an honest, heartfelt attempt, written from within the black community, to connect modern imperatives of racial… ( | 5 comments)
Following on from the discussion of whether Paul includes Jesus in the divine identity in 1 Corinthians 8:6, let’s consider the claim that Paul identifies Jesus with YHWH when he says, “Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy (parazēloumen)? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor. 10:22). ( | 5 comments)
A lot of scholars think that Paul includes Jesus in the “divine identity” when he says that “for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ…” (1 Cor. 8:6). Richard Bauckham, for example, notes that it is now “commonly recognized” that Paul has generated here a Christianized version… ( | 17 comments)
Matthew Hartke describes himself on Twitter as a “Post-Christian Bible nerd endlessly fascinated with the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity.” I had a bit of a debate with him a few years back in an Unbelievable podcast about whether Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. I have some… ()
Here are three missional challenges that the modern evangelical church needs urgently to get to grips with: 1) resist the extreme individualism and narcissism of western culture; 2) tell a compelling, up-to-date-and-beyond story about the living God, the communities that serve him in the name of… ( | 4 comments)
Writing to Timothy, Paul (presumably) says that a woman should learn quietly in all submissiveness and not be allowed to teach and “exert influence over” (authentein) men because “Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and has come into… ()
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