Its been a while since I posted some of my writing on here. In the past I have blamed this kind of absence on laziness, but this time I can say that it has been for good reasons. I recently moved to Waco, TX to begin a PhD program in New Testament at Baylor University. All things considered the transition has gone pretty well so far. I am still in the settling-in phase of the transition and completed a month-long... Read more

If you have spent any time reading this blog, you’ll have probably noticed that I have not posted anything since mid-January. This is do in part to laziness, in part to having done a good deal of traveling over the last couple of months, and in part to some big life changes that have been happening for me. First a little bit of backstory. This time last year, I was in the midst of the most stressful period of my... Read more

I was recently invited to write up some of my reflections on how Christians should respond to the subject of nation-states by the good folks over at Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy. They are hosting a series of guest columns on the subject from various voices in the American Christian writing and blogging sphere. Each of the posts comes at the question from a few different angles. Since my training is in biblical studies I looked at what... Read more

I’ve had trouble writing this. The murders committed at the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha (Hebrew: “Light of Joy”) synagogue on Oct. 27th, just short of a week ago, have left me feeling numb. Normally I have quite a few thoughts on the trending cultural and political rumblings. This time though, I’m left with little to say. That is probably a good thing, since a tragedy that is as tinged with malevolence and sorrow as this one requires silence before... Read more

I have refrained from commenting on the last few weeks in American politics. This has largely been for selfish reasons: the constant news coverage, be it televised or “Twitterized,” has been, quite frankly, exhausting and I just did not have the energy to comment on any of it. Of course I am talking about the media circus surrounding the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. While the crazed nature of the event has been there from... Read more

A recent blog post by British NT scholar Ian Paul laments the lack of men in Western churches. While one has to speak in quite general terms on this topic and thus speak cautiously (both Paul and myself, for instance, do not fit the general trend, as we have academic theological training and are deeply religious, as are many other Christian men), it is still necessary to see that, at least in the Western Church since the Reformation period, male participation... Read more

Modern Western Christians largely ignore the biblical texts relating to divine judgment. One need only look at the neglect of preaching on the Old Testament in American churches, particularly the prophets, or the carefully edited Jesus who only ever seems to preach the Beatitudes and never anything related to the defeat of evil and eschatological judgment upon the corrupt powers, human and non-human, that have distorted God’s creation. We do not like talk of judgment and we cannot understand why... Read more

David Bentley Hart recently wrote a fascinating essay on the nature of the resurrection body over at Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal. The background of the essay is an ongoing debate that Hart has been having with N.T. Wright over their respective translations of the New Testament. Wright published his own translation, The Kingdom New Testament (HarperOne, 2011) a few years back. It is a very dynamic translation that often verges on paraphrase, but is close to the New Living... Read more