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In Matthew Bates’s influential Salvation by Allegiance Alone (2017) and Gospel Allegiance (2019), Bates seeks to define the gospel based on the NT’s own summary texts. He concludes that the content of the gospel consists of a series of 8 or 10 “Christ events” and is centered on Jesus’ kingship. Bates assumes and builds upon … Read more
“Why has this new race or way of living come into existence now and not before?” the Epistle to Diognetus asks and then sets Christians in contrast to Greeks and Jews. Other apologetic texts from the second-century suggest similar contrasts, using ethnic and racial language to describe Christian identity. This raises a question regarding Christians … Read more
The church has long struggled with the sexual language in the Song of Songs. Both the rabbis and church fathers primarily interpreted it allegorically rather than wrestling with the sexual exegesis and ethics of the Song. Many within the modern church have rejected an overt allegorical interpretation, but they still apply the Song of Songs … Read more
Matthew 9:18–26 recounts the stories of a bleeding woman and a young girl, and this narrative has become a focal point of homilies, sermons, religious art, songs, and social movements. Varying interpretations of this passage abound throughout church history, and although many of these interpretations typically express more than a simple correlation between faith and … Read more
This paper reexamines a widely accepted assumption in New Testament scholarship—that the Synoptic Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus as eschatological judge parallels the figure of the Son of Man in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 En. 37–71). Scholars such as Daniel A. Kirk (A Man Attested by God) and Bart D. Ehrman (How Jesus Became God) … Read more
Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533) has long been recognized as a masterpiece of art history. Diplomat Jean de Dinteville and Bishop Georges de Selves pose for this work before a green damask curtain upon an ornate mosaic floor. Their youthful confidence exudes from the canvas as they stand amidst an array of treasures … Read more
John Calvin’s doctrine of covenant has received substantial scholarly attention from historians and theologians who have examined its development and significance from multiple perspectives (such as Perry Miller, Heinrich Heppe, Everett Emerson, Leonard Trinterud, Richard Muller, Olivier Millet, and Wayne Baker). Peter Lillback’s The Binding of God (2001) remains the most thorough study of Calvin’s … Read more
Much scholarship on the ancient church has been too concerned with its relationship to the Graeco-Roman context (Harnack, Wilken, etc.). Scholars note where early Christians use genres and ideas made available to them by a preexisting social milieu (Brown, Brakke). In objection, some have raised how Christians have transformed genres and ideas (Petitfils, Hagner). For … Read more
Mark 9:42-49 contains several difficult statements from Jesus, most of them concerned with his metaphorical references to ‘salt’ and ‘fire.’ He says that “everyone will be salted with fire,” having just said that hell is a place where “the fire is not quenched” (v. 48). But in v. 50, he says that this fire which … Read more
Evangelical scholarship rightly argues that the book of Proverbs coheres with the theology of the Old Testament. However, less attention has been given to the possibility that the authors of Proverbs utilized earlier OT Scripture, and in what ways they may have done so. Prov 3:11–12 provides one example of the book’s familiarity with prior … Read more