When Paul says that God put forward the death of Jesus as—in whatever sense—an “atonement” (Rom. 3:25), he has in mind specifically the salvation of the Jews. He is talking to Jews here, who are subject to the wrath of God (3:1-8); he has… ()
The Christ encomium in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually divided into two parts: humbling in 2:6-8 and exaltation in 2:9-11. But here I want to suggest that once it has become apparent to onlooking Greeks that Christ Jesus, for all his god-like wisdom… ()
The last time I wrote about Crispin Fletcher-Louis’ “monster book” The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, and Civic Virtues I got a ticking off for not having read the whole book. I have since … ( | 3 comments)
There are three main interpretive paradigms for understanding Paul’s writings available today within mainstream, predominantly Protestant, scholarship. The diagram below names the paradigms, briefly notes the defining characteristics, and mentions… ()
Here is the question. When Paul says, “for us one God the Father…, and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:6), are the terms “God… Lord” between them a reference to the shemaʿ: “Hear, Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 8:6 LXX… ( | 7 comments)
The NIV is unusual in translating en morphēi theou hyparchōn in Philippians 2:6 as “being in very nature God,” but the translation nevertheless reflects a widespread and longstanding assumption that to be “in the form of God” means to share… ( | 7 comments)
My argument about the other encomium, in Colossians 1:15-20, is that it makes Christ Jesus the beginning of a new political-religious order, in which government in heaven and government on earth have been reconciled.1Hitherto the rule of… ( | 4 comments)
Crispin Fletcher-Louis has written a monster book—nearly a thousand pages—about the Christ encomium in Philippians 2:6-11: The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, and Civic Virtues (Wipf &… ( | 2 comments)
A couple of weeks back, I gave a short presentation at the SBL Global Virtual Meeting setting out the central argument about the opening lines of the Philippians Christ encomium from my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted… ()
In his book Messianic High Christology: New Testament Variants of Second Temple Judaism (2021), Ruben Bühner sets out to demonstrate that a high christology is compatible with Jewish messianism. The title says it all. The title may turn out… ( | 19 comments)
In traditional Reformed interpretation, Romans 12:1-15:7 is regarded simply as a piece of Christian parenesis—that is, practical and ethical instruction or exhortation to be followed in all times, in all places. The letter tends to get… ()
I don’t want to make this an issue about trinitarianism; it is to my mind simply a matter of literary-historical perspective. Seriously. But what was the author of the Johannine letters—let’s call him John—getting at when he warned that “… ( | 4 comments)
At the beginning of Euripides’ play Bacchae, the god Dionysus—the god of “wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre,” according to Wikipedia—enters and… ()
The New Testament gospel came in two parts—two proclamations distinct from each other with respect to content, audience, and geographical reach.The first proclamation was addressed to Israel. It was that the God of Israel would soon “judge” his… ( | 6 comments)
There is an argument that there is a third creation account in the Old Testament, in addition to the two creation accounts of Genesis 1-2, in which God as storm deity defeats the chaos monster of the sea in order for dry land to emerge.Dahood,… ()
I was at a fairly mainstream but non-traditional Anglican Church in east London on Sunday—mostly singles and young families. We had a good, thoughtful, and well presented sermon about the offence taken by the people of Nazareth at the wisdom and… ()
Ever wondered why the Jerusalem crowds turned against Jesus so abruptly—cheering him into the city at the start of the week, yelling for him to be crucified at the end of it? Lots of scholars think it all very improbable. We’ll get to that in a… ()
I saw this book in the Al-Faisal Museum for Arab-Islamic Art in Riyadh. It is described as a manuscript that sheds light on the “most important teaching methods employed by scholars and educators of Arab-Islamic civilization.” It’s not dated, but it… ()
Did Paul proclaim a universal gospel? “Of course he did,” you mutter. Or: “Of course he did, you nutter!” What use is a non-universal gospel?Well, on the train from Jeddah to Medina, I came across this paragraph in Neil Elliott’s Paul the Jew… ( | 2 comments)
According to the classic definition, an “evangelical” is a person who believes in and acts upon the “gospel”—in New Testament Greek the euangelion. As understood by evangelicals, the gospel is a statement about the significance of Jesus’… ( | 1 comment)
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