THE NEW TESTAMENT IN ITS WORLD – WRIGHT AND BIRD, ZONDERVAN/SPCKAll of the following quotes are taken directly from “The New Testament In Its World,” by NT Wright and Michael Bird, Zondervan/SPCK INTRODUCTIONThe Thessalonian letters, among the earliest of Paul’s extant letters, are among the earliest writings of the whole New Testament, probably written within… Continue reading Thessalonians – The New Testament In Its World – Wright and Bird
The Conversion of Saint Paul by Domenico Morelli, 1876. The reason Paul was ‘doing theology’ was not that he happened to have the kind of brain that delighted in playing with and rearranging large, complex abstract ideas. He was doing theology because the life of God’s people depended on it, depended on his doing it… Continue reading A Primer on Pauline Theology
I believe that we need to read Paul with a sense of his own intense conviction that he was exploring a new country—as fertile, beautiful and exhilarating, above all as real and tangible in its working, as any that a sixteenth-century sailor might have run across in his voyages of discovery. Did Paul transform Christianity?… Continue reading The Story of Paul’s Life and Ministry
Light photographed as both a particle and wave –Energy-space photography of light confined on a nanowire, simultaneously shows both spatial interference and energy quantization. Source: Fabrizio Carbone/EPFL The historical datum now before us is a widely held, consistently shaped and highly influential belief: that Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead. This belief… Continue reading The Story of Easter according to the Apostle Paul, “The New Testament In Its World,” Chapter 13
Gates of Hell in the Musée d'Orsay, Auguste Rodin Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of school, he spoke such words… Continue reading Who Did Jesus Think He Was? Redux
The Carpenter's Nail 