Guest: Dr. Jennifer Singletary is Assistant Research Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Jewish Studies at Penn State University. Her work explores ancient ideas regarding superhuman beings, methods used to communicate with them, relationships among religious specialists, and cognitive approaches to religion and linguistics. Her first book, Objects, Qualities, and Attributes as Deities in the Ancient Near East (Brill, 2025), examines deified objects, qualities, and attributes in the ancient Near East. She is currently working on her second book, Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, which is under contract with the Cambridge Elements series, the Ancient Near Eastern World and the Bible. Her third book project (under contract with Brill) investigates the strategies that ancient diviners, including prophets, used to discredit their rivals or work cooperatively with their peers in Old Babylonian Mari, Neo-Assyria, and the Hebrew Bible. Her research on this topic was recently featured in an article in Archaeology magazine. She is also the area editor for the Early Alphabetic and Northwest Semitic section of Prayer in the Ancient World (Brill) and a series editor for the Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean book series (Eisenbrauns). (adapted from the Penn State website)

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Guest: Malcolm Foley (PhD, Baylor University, MDiv, Yale Divinity School) is a pastor, historian, and speaker who serves as special adviser to the president for campus engagement at Baylor University. He has written for Christianity Today, The Anxious Bench, and Mere Orthodoxy. Foley copastors Mosaic Waco, a multicultural church in Waco, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Desiree. In addition to the Anti-Greed Gospel, he is currently working on a second book which will, among other things, argue, with the guidance of the Greek and Byzantine Fathers, that the hope of deification is what jettisons our lesser hopes of material wealth, political power, and cultural influence.

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Guest: Professor Dr. Irvine Sheblazm, Ph.D, Ph.D., is a theologian and a scientist with degrees from prominent institutions. He runs the “Center for Excellence” in the Lake District in the UK. He is the author of many many books, including:

• The Cheerful Taker: A New Economics for Pauline Christians in a Changing World (2025)
• Abraham's Bosom, Paul, and the Decline of Postmodernism (2024).
• Child Rearing with the Apostle Paul and the Book of Revelation (2022).
• The Emotionally Healthy Paul: Inner Emotional Intelligence with the Apostle Paul.  

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Guest: Dr. Brian Toews is retired Professor of Bible at Cairn University in Philadelphia, where he also served as Provost. He earned his BA in Linguistics from UCLA, ThM and MDiv from the Talbot School of Theology (Biola University), and PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA. He's the author of Voices of the Sages: Old Testament Wisdom in Dialogue (McGahan, 2025). 

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Check out the new song from our producer Jason Stark! -

Guest: Dr. Carmen Imes is an associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. She is the author of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (IVP Academic), Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters (IVP Academic), and Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters (IVP Academic), as well as several other academic works. Her primary areas of expertise are Exodus and the Psalms. Carmen has a YouTube channel where she releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos and other videos, and she also writes on several popular level sites including Christianity Today, Substack, The Well, and The Politics of Scripture blog.

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This episode is part three of an ongoing series with Marty Folsom on making Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics accessible to “everyone”, without domesticating its theological depth or imaginative force. See HERE for vol. 1, and HERE for vol. 2.

Guest: Marty Folsom has been Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies for over 30 years in New Zealand and Seattle. He is most famous for his “Face to Face” trilogy on relational theology, which emphasizes “personal relationship”. Apart from authoring numerous articles, he has also been a therapist for 24 years. Today we discuss his new book, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone Vol 3 (Zondervan Academic). This is the third volume of five in total.

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Guest: Dr. Ingrid Faro is Professor of Old Testament and Coordinator of the MA in Old Testament–Jerusalem University College Program at Northern Seminary. She's currently the interim president. Ingrid is an author and international speaker on topics including deconstructing evil, navigating suffering, forgiveness, lament, abuse and power dynamics, women in the Bible and ministry, Genesis, and Ecclesiastes. Ingrid is the author of Evil in Genesis (Lexham), co-author of Honest Answers (Kregal), Demystifying Evil (IVP Academic), and the topic of this episode, Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation (Zondervan).

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Guest: Rev Dr. Mark Scarlata is Tutor and Senior Lecturer in Old Testament at St. Mellitus College, UK. He's the author of numerous books, including Outside of Eden: Cain in the Ancient Versions of Gen. 4:1-16 (T&T Clark 2012), Am I My Brother's Keeper? Christian Citizenship in a Globalized Society (Wipf & Stock/Cascade), The Abiding Presence (SCM Press, 2018), Sabbath Rest: The Beauty of God's Rhythm for a Digital World (SCM Press, 2019), Journey Through the World of Leviticus: Holiness, Sacrifice, and the Rock Badger (Wipf & Stock, 2021),  The Theology of Leviticus (CUP, 2025), and the book of focus for this episode, Wine, Soil, and Salvation in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament (CUP, 2025). He is also the Vicar-Chaplain at St. Edward, King and Martyr, Cambridge where he serves as a priest in one of the oldest churches in Cambridge that was integral in the English Reformation. He is the director of the St. Edward’s Institute for Christian Thought which seeks to nurture Christian scholars and bring theology to the heart of the church. (an edited version of his St. Mellitus page).

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Author: Paul Sloan is Associate Professor of Early Christianity at Houston Christian University. He received his PhD in New Testament from The University of St Andrews. His research interests include Leviticus, the sacrificial system, sacred space, and the reception of those motifs in 2nd Temple texts. He's the author of Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism (Baker Academic, 2025).

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Guest: Dr. Dru Johnson is the Templeton senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall (University of Oxford), adjunct professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, MI (previously a professor at The King’s College in New York City),  director of the Abrahamic Theistic Origins Project, director of the Center for Hebraic Thought, editor at The Biblical Mind, host of The Biblical Mind podcast, and co-host of the OnScript Podcast. He’s written a bunch of books, including Human Rites, Knowledge By Ritual, Scripture's Knowing, and What Hath Darwin to do with Scripture?

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Guest: Cor Bennema teaches New Testament and heads the research department at London School of Theology. Prior to this he taught for 11 years in India. His research focuses on the Johannine writings, the canonical Gospels, character in biblical narrative, and early Christian ethics. He has published widely for both the church and the academy.

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Poem Attribution: “Those Winter Sundays,” Copyright © 1966 by Robert Hayden. From COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT HAYDEN by Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Company.

Strawn also discusses Sharon Olds' poem "The Preparing" from her 2002 collection Balladz.

About: In Parallel is a new podcast that explores biblical and contemporary poetry. Please subscribe wherever you listen (Apple Podcasts, Spotify). For more information about the podcast, see HERE and to learn more about Brent, see HERE.

Help Support In Parallel: Visit our Donate Page if you want to support this show.

Guest: Matthew Novenson is the Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to his latest offering, Dr. Novenson has authored several other influential monographs including Christ among the Messiahs (Oxford University Press, 2012), The Grammar of Messianism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Paul, Then and Now (Eerdmans, 2022). This is Matt's third time on the podcast, and you can check out his other Onscript episodes on The Grammar of Messianism and Paul, Then and Now.

Book (from the publisher's website): The apostle Paul was a Jew. He was born, lived, undertook his apostolic work, and died within the milieu of ancient Judaism. And yet, many readers have found, and continue to find, Paul's thought so radical, so Christian, even so anti-Jewish – despite the fact that it, too, is Jewish through and through. This paradox, and the question how we are to explain it, are the foci of Matthew Novenson's groundbreaking book. The solution, says the author, lies in Paul's particular understanding of time. This too is altogether Jewish, with the twist that Paul sees the end of history as present, not future. In the wake of Christ's resurrection, Jews are perfected in righteousness and – like the angels – enabled to live forever, in fulfilment of God's ancient promises to the patriarchs. What is more, gentiles are included in the same pneumatic existence promised to the Jews. This peculiar combination of ethnicity and eschatology yields something that looks not quite like Judaism or Christianity as we are used to thinking of them.

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Guest: Dr. Gary E. Schnittjer is Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Cairn University in Philadelphia. He's the author of several books, including Torah Story (now in its 2nd ed.), Old Testament Narrative Books: The Israel Story, Old Testament Use of Old Testament, and he has a major commentary forthcoming on Ezra-Nehemiah with Baker Academic. He's also the author of the book How to Study the Bible's Use of the Bible: Seven Hermeneutical Choices for the Old and New Testaments, which he co-authored with Matt Harmon. Gary is also a frequent podcast guest, and he hosts a Substack that you can check out called Carpenter's Student (sign up for free!).

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Sign up to Carpenter's Student, Gary's Free Substack HERE

Guest: Chris McKinny is Associate Professor of Biblical Archaeology at Lipscomb University. He is a host on the Biblical World podcast. Most recently, he was Director of Research at Gesher media, where he helped produce a documentary on the Ark of the Covenant. Passionate about the archaeology, history, and geography of the Biblical world, he has written extensively on these subjects in both academic and popular publications. Chris is a senior staff member at the Tel Burna Archaeological project and regularly leads study tours to the lands of the Bible. He is the author of My People as Your People: A Textual and Archaeological Analysis of the Reign of Jehoshaphat (Peter Lang, 2016), and has co-edited several volumes, including The Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages of Southern Canaan (De Gruyter, 2018) and Tell it in Gath: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Israel: Essays in Honor of Aren M. Maeir on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday (Zaphon, 2018). He teaches regularly at Jerusalem University College.

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Image Attribution:  Charles K. Wilkinson | Festival Scene, Tomb of Amenmose | New Kingdom, Ramesside | The Metropolitan Museum of Art ca. 1295–1213 B.C. 

Guest: Gregory Lee is Associate Professor of Theology and Urban Studies at Wheaton College. He's the author of Today When Your Hear His Voice: Scripture, the Covenants, and the People of God (Eerdmans, 2016) and The Essential 'City of God' (Baker, 2025), covered in this episode. He's also the co-editor of Christian Political Witness (IVP, 2014).

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Guest/Co-Host: Kyle Keimer is know to listeners of our Biblical World podcast, and follow THIS link to get to know him more.

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Image Attribution: By illustrators of the 1890 Holman Bible - http://thebiblerevival.com/clipart/1890holmanbible/bw/altarofincensealtarofburnt-offeringlaver.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9424389

Guest: Michelle Knight is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She's s the author of The Prophet’s Anthem: The Song of Deborah and Barak in the Narrative of Judges (BUP, 2024). She also serves as Senior Reviewer for the Historical Books for the New Living Translation. Her current research interests include narrative criticism, theology of the Old Testament, the Former Prophets (esp. Joshua and Judges), and poetry in biblical narrative. 

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Guest: Dr. Malka Simkovich is the Editor-in-Chief of The Jewish Publication Society and Visiting Professor at Yeshiva University’s Revel Graduate School for Jewish Studies. Before taking up the role at JPS, she was the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies at Catholic Theological Union from 2014–2024. She’s the author of The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria (Lexington, 2016), Discovering Second Temple Literature (JPS, 2018). Her most recent book is Letters From Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity (PSU Press/Eisenbrauns, 2024), the subject of the present episode. She's also the author of many scholarly and popular articles.

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Guest: Dr. Sheblazm is an accomplished scientist and theologian, and a long-time friend of the podcast. He's the author of many works, including Faultlines in the Horizon, Feathers on the Nose, Paul's Theology of Universalism, A Life Living (A Theological Memoir), Child Rearing with the Apostle Paul, and much more, including his newest work, The Cheerful Taker: A New Economics for Pauline Christians in a Changing World, published by Sheblazm Press, 2025. Of course Dr. Shblazm has doctorates from prestigious online universities, and runs the Centre for Excellence in the Lake District of England.

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The Book: Nijay Gupta, The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul's Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025). Pauline scholars have long debated the so-called center of Paul’s theology, focusing on themes like justification by faith, reconciliation, union with Christ, and the apocalyptic triumph of God in Christ. In this innovative study, Nijay Gupta offers a new perspective that emphasizes Paul’s understanding of love at the heart of the gospel he preached.

Through careful examination of the historical, cultural, and linguistic milieu in which Paul was working, Gupta identifies what is unique and important in Paul’s theology of love. In so doing, Gupta helps readers develop a deeper appreciation for the extent to which love permeates Paul’s understanding of the triune God, the gospel, the community, and the mission and lifestyle of God’s people.. (Publisher’s description).

Guest: Nijay K. Gupta (PhD, Durham) is professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary where he holds the Julius R. Mantey Chair of New Testament. He has written numerous books, including recent titles such as Tell Her Story (IVP Academic) and Galatians (The Story of God Commentary series by Zondervan Academic). He has been our guest on OnScript several times, most recently for Strange Religion (Brazos, 2024) and Paul and the Language of Faith (Eerdmans, 2020). Gupta has a substack called Engaging Scripture.

OnScript’s Review: “Love is an emotional knot. Nijay Gupta disentangles love by using Scripture and other resources to tease out its beautiful strands. When we discover the quality of love that is at the heart of the gospel, not only is Paul’s theology clarified, but our affections are changed. Disciples who yearn for a greater love for God and neighbor will rejoice over The Affections of Christ Jesus.”—Matthew W. Bates, author of Beyond the Salvation Wars; professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary.

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Guest: Timothy Brookins is Professor of Early Christianity at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. In addition to the book featured in this episode, Rediscovering The Wisdom of the Corinthians: Paul, Stoicism, and Spiritual Hierarchy (Eerdmans, 2024), he's the author of Ancient Rhetoric and the Style of Paul's Letters (Cascade, 2022), First and Second Thessalonians (Baker, 2021); Reading 1 Corinthians (Smyth & Helwys, 2020); 1 Corinthians: A Handbook on the Greek Text. 2 Vols (Baylor, 2016), and Corinthian Wisdom, Stoic Philosophy, and the Ancient Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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Guest Host: For more about Mark, his podcast, speaking, and writing, visit his site – https://www.markglanville.org.

Check out Blue Note Theology

Check out our episode with Makoto Fujimura

Guest: Fr. John Behr was appointed to the Regius Chair in Humanity at the University of Aberdeen in the summer of 2020, having taught at St Vladimir’s Seminary since 1995, serving there as Dean from 2007–17. His early work was on asceticism and anthropology, focusing on St Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria (OUP 2000). He is currently writing a series of books on “The Formation of Christian Theology”, two volumes of which have already appeared: vol. 1, The Way to Nicaea (SVS Press 2001) and vol. 2 The Nicene Faith (SVS Press 2003). On the basis of these two volumes, he published a synthetic work, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (SVS 2006). This was followed by an edition and translation of the fragments of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, setting them in their historical and theological context (OUP 2011). More recently he published a more poetic and meditative work entitled Becoming Human: Theological Anthropology in Word and Image (SVS Press, 2013) and a full study of St Irenaeus: St Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (OUP, 2013). He also completed a new critical edition and translation of Origen’s On First Principles, together with an extensive introduction, for OUP (2017), and John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (OUP 2019). Most recently, he published a new translation of Gregory of Nyssa's On the Human Image of God (aka On the Making of Humanity). (adapted from the University of Aberdeen website).

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In this episode that we're sharing, Mark unfolds a vision for leadership in post-Christian church communities. His guest is Wynston Minckler, a top acoustic bass player. Mark and Wynston show how jazz bands are “leader-full” communities, offering a fresh and exciting pathway for church leadership. Join in, and hear what is sounds like when jazz musicians play like a bunch of alpha leaders!

Host: For more about Mark, his podcast, speaking, and writing, visit his site - https://www.markglanville.org.

Guest: Dr. Daniela C. Augustine is Reader in World Christianity and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK). She is editor with C.E.W. Green of The Politics of the Spirit: Pentecostal Reflections on Public Responsibility and the Common Good (Seymour Press, 2023), and is the author of The Spirit and the Common Good: Shared Flourishing in the Image of God (Eerdmans, 2019). Her research and publications are in the fields of theological ethics and public theology, focusing through pneumatological, anthropological and ecclesiological lenses on the subjects of social transformation, theology of economics, religion and culture, and eco-theology. Her work also engages Eastern Orthodox theology (with particular interest in Orthodox liturgical and sacramental theology), Pentecostal theology, and ecumenical studies in World Christianity, as well as continental philosophy (especially the thought of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas).

Her current projects include: an investigation of the liturgical pneumatology of Alexander Schmemann conducted in conjunction with my habilitation work at the University of Heidelberg; and a research in spirituality of urban sustainability, focusing on the intersections of building communal trust, cultivation of social capital and achieving sustainable economic growth that promotes reverent consumption and ecological stewardship in pursuit of the common good. (from her Univ of Birmingham academic page).

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The Book: Brant Pitre, Jesus and Divine Christology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024), was the recent recipient of Nijay Gupta's "Book of the Year" award. Did Jesus see himself as divine? Since the beginning of the quest for the historical Jesus, scholars have dismissed the idea that Jesus could have identified himself as God. Such high Christology is frequently depicted as an invention of the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, centuries later. Yet recent research has shown that the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus already regarded him as divine.

Brant Pitre tackles this paradox in his bold new monograph. Pitre challenges this widespread assumption and makes a robust case that Jesus did consider himself divine. Carefully explicating the Gospels in the context of Second Temple Judaism, Pitre shows how Jesus used riddles, questions, and scriptural allusions to reveal the apocalyptic secret of his divinity. Moreover, Pitre explains how Jesus acts as if he is divine in both the Synoptics and the Gospel of John. Carefully weighing the historical evidence, Pitre argues that the origins of early high Christology can be traced to the historical Jesus’s words and actions.

Jesus and Divine Christology sheds light on long-neglected yet key evidence that the historical Jesus saw himself as divine. Scholars and students of the New Testament—and anyone curious about the Jewish context of early Christianity—will find Pitre’s argument a necessary and provocative corrective to a critically underexamined topic. (Publisher’s description).

Guest: Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at The Augustine Institute in St Louis. Dr. Pitre is the author of numerous titles, including Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans), as well as Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary (Image, 2018), Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist (Doubleday, 2011). He has also co-authored, along with Michael Barber and John Kincaid, Paul: A New Covenant Jew (Eerdmans)..

OnScript’s Review: “Finally! By showing from history that Jesus made divine claims about himself, Brant Pitre has compelled the prodigal quest for the historical Jesus to return home. This book should be received with open arms, because it is both necessary and convincing.” —Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity; professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary.

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In our conversation, we delve into Crispin’s background, from his studies at Oxford during the heady days of E. P. Sanders, N. T. Wright, and Rowan Williams, to his teaching roles at Durham, King’s College London, and Nottingham, and his founding of Westminster Theological Centre. Now focused almost entirely on research and writing, Crispin is at the cutting edge of discussions relating to early Christology. We discuss why Philippians 2:6–11 became a thousand-page exploration, the wider textual frame of the letter, and Crispin’s navigation of Paul as a Jewish thinker within the broader Mediterranean world. Topics include Christ as a divine shape-shifter, the metaphysical implications of to einai isa theō, Paul’s innovative reworking of Greco-Roman concepts of divinity and virtue, and much more besides.

Crispin’s book has a dedicated website: www.divineheartset.com. There you can buy a digital copy, find reviews and additional resources, including links to videos in which Crispin summarises the book by chapter and section. 

Guest: Dr. Crispin Fletcher-Louis completed his doctoral work on angels in Luke and Acts and has taught at Durham, King’s College London, and Nottingham. As the founder of Westminster Theological Centre and a postgraduate supervisor at the University of Gloucestershire, Crispin has spent decades researching and writing early Christology, publishing numerous important books and essays.

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Guest: Rabbi Shai Held is a philosopher, theologian, and Bible scholar, and is President and Dean at the Hadar Institute.  He received the prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America and by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the fifty most prominent Jews in the world. Rabbi Held is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (2013), The Heart of Torah, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2017), and Judaism is About Love (2024) and he is the host of Hadar's newest podcast, Answers WithHeld. (from the Hadar Website).

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Hosts: Matthew Lynch (Ph.D., Emory University) is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Regent College, and is a co-founder of OnScript. He’s the author of Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, 2020), Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods (Penn State University Press/Eisenbrauns, 2021) and Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God (IVP). Matt is particularly interested in helping students grasp the theological and literary contours of the Old Testament, wrestle through its ethical and historical challenges, and understand its ongoing significance. With Matt Bates, he’s the co-founder of OnScript.

Dru Johnson (Ph.D., University of St Andrews) is the Templeton Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, adjunct professor at Hope College, and the director of the Center for Hebraic Thought. His main area of research has focused on the philosophical and intellectual world of biblical literature. His recent books include What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture? Comparing Conceptual Worlds of the Bible and Evolution (IVP Academic); Biblical Philosophy: A Hebraic Approach to the Old and New Testaments (Cambridge University Press); Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, andSacraments (Eerdmans); The Universal Story: Genesis 1–11 (Lexham); Epistemology and Biblical Theology: From the Pentateuch to Mark’s Gospel (Routledge); and Knowledge by Ritual: A Biblical Prolegomenon to Sacramental Theology (Eisenbrauns). More at his website: drujohnson.com. He is an editor for the Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism monograph series, so you can also send him proposals for monographs!

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Image Attribution: By Illustrator of Henry Davenport Northrop's 'Treasures of the Bible', 1894 - http://www.lavistachurchofchrist.org/Pictures/Treasures%20of%20the%20Bible%20(Moses)/target20a.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6611903

Guest: Jonathan Rowlands is Graduate Tutor, Lecturer in Theology, and Lead Tutor for Assessment at St. Mellitus College. He is the author of The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus Research (London: Routledge, 2022) and his second monograph - Reading Holy Scripture: Rethinking Theological Interpretation of Christian Scripture – is forthcoming with T&T Clark. His research has appeared in Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Novum Testamentum, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Modern Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Journal of Theological Interpretation, and Journal of Pentecostal Theology. He has also written for more accessible publications such as Church Times, Premier Christianity, and Seen & Unseen, and is a contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought programme.

Song: "Travel Light" by Jason Stark. Enjoy Jason's new song on various platforms. Links available HERE.

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The Book: Esau McCaulley (Editor), Janette H. Ok (Co-editor), Osvaldo Padilla (Co-editor), Amy L. B. Peeler (Co-editor), The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary (IVP Academic, 2024). In a first-of-its-kind volume, The New Testament in Color offers biblical commentary that is:

• Multiethnic
• Diverse
• Contextual
• Informative
• Reflective
• Prophetic
• Inspiring

“I wish someone had handed The New Testament in Color to me twenty-five years ago, and I hope many will read it now.” ―Nijay Gupta, bestselling author of Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church.

Historically, Bible commentaries have focused on the particular concerns of a limited segment of the church, all too often missing fresh questions and perspectives that are fruitful for biblical interpretation. Listening to scholars from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities offers us an opportunity to explore the Bible from a wider angle, a better vantage point.

The New Testament in Color is a one-volume commentary on the New Testament written by a multiethnic team of scholars holding orthodox Christian beliefs. Each scholar brings exegetical expertise coupled with a unique interpretive lens to illuminate the ways social location and biblical interpretation work together. Theologically orthodox and multiethnically contextual, The New Testament in Color fills a gap in biblical understanding for both the academy and the church. Who we are and where God placed us―it's all useful for better understanding his Word. (Publisher’s description).

Guests:

Rev. and Dr. Esau McCaulley is the Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology and a contributing opinion writer on religion for the NYT. He has previously been our guest on OnScript for his book, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP Academic). He also penned a memoir, How Far to the Promised Land (Convergent Books). Dr. McCaulley holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from the University of St. Andrews, 2017.

Rev. and Dr. Amy Peeler. Amy is the Kenneth T. Wessner Professor of New Testament at Wheaton, where she serves in the Graduate program. She holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. She has previously been our guest on OnScript for her book, Women and the Gender of God (Eerdmans). She also has a new commentary on Hebrews (Eerdmans) in the Commentaries for Christian Formation Series.

OnScript’s Review: The New Testament envisions the gathering of people from all tribes, tongues, and nations under the banner of King Jesus. The New Testament in Color provides a unique blend of theory and commentary from a multiethnic perspective. It exposes the guild's monochromatic biases, allowing us to reframe the New Testament in accordance with its multiculture aims. I'm eager to use it in the seminary classroom. — Matthew W. Bates, author of Why the Gospel?; professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary.

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Guest: (modified from Keefer's Academia.edu site) Dr. Arthur Keefer is Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Australia and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Divinity (Trinity College, Melbourne) in the field of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. He also serves as a Presbyterian Minister at The Scots' Church, Melbourne.

His research focuses on the interpretation of the HB/OT within its ancient Near Eastern context and in its relation to ancient and contemporary philosophy. He's the author of The Book of Proverbs and Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Ecclesiastes and the Meaning of Life in the Ancient World (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and Proverbs 1-9 as an Introduction to the Book of Proverbs (Bloomsbury, 2020). He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature  (Cambridge, 2022) and serves as Book Review Editor for the Journal of Theological Studies. He is currently producing long-term projects on OT ethics and the ethics of narrative.

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Guest: Dr. Michael Rhodes is Lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand. He's the author of Formative Feasting (Peter Lang), Practicing the King's Economy (Baker; co-authored with Robby Holt),  and the book we're discussing today, Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World (IVP Academic). He also co-edited a book called Reparations and the Theological Disciplines (Lexington) and has another book called Justice Unto Victory under contract with IVP. For more on Michael's writing and interests, see his faculty page.

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Guest (from the publisher's website): L. Ann Jervis (ThD, Wycliffe College) is emerita professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada. She is a member of the Centre for Ethics at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. She has served on various editorial boards, including Journal of Biblical Literature and New Testament Studies. Jervis is author of The Heart of the Gospel, The Purpose of Romans, a commentary on Galatians, and Paul and Time (Baker Academic). She is also a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Book (from the Baker Academic website): Standard interpretations are that Paul modified his inherited Jewish apocalyptic sequential two-age temporality. Paul solved the conundrum of Christ’s resurrection occurring without the resurrection of the righteous by asserting that the ages are not sequential but rather that they overlap. Believers live in already-not yet temporality.

In this groundbreaking book, Ann Jervis instead proposes that Paul thought not in terms of two ages but in terms of life in this age or life in Christ. Humans apart from Christ live in this age, whereas believers live entirely in the temporality of Christ.

Christ’s temporality, like God’s, is time in which change occurs, at least between Christ and God and creation. Their temporality is tensed, but the tenses are nonsequential. The past is in their present, as is the future. However, this is not a changeless now but a now in which change occurs (though not in the way that human chronological time perceives change). Those joined to Christ live Christ’s temporality while also living chronological time.

In clear writing, Jervis engages both philosophical and traditional biblical understandings of time. Her inquiry is motivated and informed by the long-standing recognition of the centrality of union with Christ for Paul. Jervis points out that union with Christ has significant temporal implications.

Living Christ’s time transforms believers’ suffering, sinning, and physical dying. While in the present evil age these are instruments purposed for destruction, in Christ they are transformed in service of God’s life. Living Christ’s time also changes the significance of the eschaton. It is less important to those in Christ than it is for creation, for those joined to the One over whom death has no dominion are already released from bondage to corruption.

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What is it about Barth’s Church Dogmatics that is considered so important? What’s the “big deal”? And how to approach such a massive set of volumes? How to navigate around the highways and byways of this text that sprawls almost 8,500 pages and 6,000,000 words? How to avoid misunderstanding? Marty Folsom has begun penning a “Church Dogmatics for Everyone”, which sets out, first in broad brush strokes and then in more detail, the first volume of Barth’s important project. Chris Tilling talks with the author about the background of this project, what Marty Folsom hopes to achieve and why the Church Dogmatics.

Guest: Marty Folsom has been Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies for 30 years in New Zealand and Seattle. He is most famous for his “Face to Face” trilogy on relational theology, which emphasises “personal relationship”. Apart from authoring numerous articles, he has also been a therapist for 24 years. Today we discuss his new book, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone (Vol. 2 - The Doctrine of God) (Zondervan Academic), with contributions from Chris Tilling, David Guretzki, Earl Palmer, Wyatt Houtz, Andrew Howie, James Houston, Ross Hastings, and Jeremy Begbie. This is the second volume of six.

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If you enjoyed this episode ... have a listen to our interview with Marty about Volume 1. 

Guest: Dr. Jodi Magness is Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Magness’ research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Jerusalem, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Her most recent books are Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades (New York: Oxford University, March 2024); and Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: A Reevaluation Nearly a Century After Sukenik’s Schweich Lectures. The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 2022 (London: The British Academy/Oxford University Press, June 2024). Three of Magness’ books have won awards: Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton: Princeton University, 2019) was selected as a finalist for the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in the category of History, the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award; The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002; revised edition 2021) won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society’s Award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology in 2001-2002 and was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Book for 2003” by Choice Magazine; and The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) was awarded the 2006 Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize in the category of non-fiction on the archaeology of Israel. Her other books include The 2003-2007 Excavations in the Late Roman Fort at Yotvata (co-authored with G. Davies) (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015); The Archaeology of the Holy Land from the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple to the Muslim Conquest (New York: Cambridge University, 2012); and Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). In addition, Magness has published dozens of articles in journals and edited volumes. (from the UNC website)

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Guest: Dr Austin Stevenson is assistant professor of theology at Palm Beach Atlantic University and co-host of the Faith at the Frontiers podcast. Before joining the faculty at PBA, Austin was a junior research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He holds an MA and ThM in theology from Regent College (Vancouver, BC), and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. His research specializes in the ressourcement of classical Christian thought in conversation with an interdisciplinary range of topics, including theological hermeneutics, New Testament studies, public health, literature, and the natural sciences.

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The Book: Jason A. Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The gospel promoted by Paul has for many generations stirred passionate debate. That gospel proclaimed equal salvific access to Jews and gentiles alike. But on what basis? In making sense of such a remarkable step forward in religious history, Jason Staples reexamines texts that have proven thoroughly resistant to easy comprehension. He traces Paul's inclusive theology to a hidden strand of thinking in the earlier story of Israel. Postexilic southern Judah, he argues, did not simply appropriate the identity of the fallen northern kingdom of Israel. Instead, Judah maintained a notion of 'Israel' as referring both to the north and the ongoing reality of a broad, pan-Israelite sensibility to which the descendants of both ancient kingdoms belonged. Paul's concomitant belief was that northern Israel's exile meant assimilation among the nations – effectively a people's death – and that its restoration paradoxically required gentile inclusion to resurrect a greater 'Israel' from the dead. (Publisher’s description).

Guest: Jason A. Staples (Ph.D., UNC-Chapel Hill) is an author, historian, speaker, journalist, voice actor, and former American football coach. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NC State University. In additon to Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, he is also the author of The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2021), as well as numerous journal articles. You can connect with him on X/Twitter (@JasonStaples).

OnScript’s Review: Enormously important and theologically productive. In Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, Jason Staples shows--again and again--how seemingly isolated puzzles in Paul's letters can be explained coherently within a Second Temple framework of restoration. As the Holy Spirit transforms individuals amid the nations, the twelve tribes of Israel are being raised from the dead. An astonishing contribution. — Matthew W. Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone; professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary.

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The Book: Jason A. Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The gospel promoted by Paul has for many generations stirred passionate debate. That gospel proclaimed equal salvific access to Jews and gentiles alike. But on what basis? In making sense of such a remarkable step forward in religious history, Jason Staples reexamines texts that have proven thoroughly resistant to easy comprehension. He traces Paul's inclusive theology to a hidden strand of thinking in the earlier story of Israel. Postexilic southern Judah, he argues, did not simply appropriate the identity of the fallen northern kingdom of Israel. Instead, Judah maintained a notion of 'Israel' as referring both to the north and the ongoing reality of a broad, pan-Israelite sensibility to which the descendants of both ancient kingdoms belonged. Paul's concomitant belief was that northern Israel's exile meant assimilation among the nations – effectively a people's death – and that its restoration paradoxically required gentile inclusion to resurrect a greater 'Israel' from the dead. (Publisher’s description).

Guest: Jason A. Staples (Ph.D., UNC-Chapel Hill) is an author, historian, speaker, journalist, voice actor, and former American football coach. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NC State University. In additon to Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, he is also the author of The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2021), as well as numerous journal articles. You can connect with him on X/Twitter (@JasonStaples).

OnScript’s Review: Enormously important and theologically productive. In Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, Jason Staples shows--again and again--how seemingly isolated puzzles in Paul's letters can be explained coherently within a Second Temple framework of restoration. As the Holy Spirit transforms individuals amid the nations, the twelve tribes of Israel are being raised from the dead. An astonishing contribution. — Matthew W. Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone; professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary.

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Guest: Matthew Martens is a trial lawyer and partner at an international law firm in D.C., and has spent most of his 25+-year legal career practicing criminal law as a federal prosecutor and defense attorney. He was a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the U.S. Supreme court and was a political appointee in the criminal division of the US Justice Department. At his law practice website for Wilmer Hale, it says that “He is one of the few lawyers who has appeared—and won—at trial at “all four tables”: civil plaintiff, civil defendant, criminal prosecution and criminal defendant.” He’s the author of the book we’re discussing today, entitled, Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal (Crossway, 2023).

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The Book: Michael Patrick Barber, The Historical Jesus and the Temple: Memory, Methodology, and the Gospel of Matthew (Cambridge University Press, 2024). In this book, Michael Patrick Barber examines the role of the Jerusalem temple in the teaching of the historical Jesus. Drawing on recent discussions about and memory research in Jesus studies, he advances a fresh approach to reconstructing Jesus' teaching. Barber argues that Jesus did not reject the temple's validity but that he likely participated in and endorsed its rites. Moreover, he locates Jesus' teaching within Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, showing that Jesus' message about the coming kingdom and his disciples' place in it likely involved important temple and priestly traditions that have been ignored by the quest. Barber also highlights new developments in scholarship on the Gospel of Matthew to show that its Jewish perspective offers valuable but overlooked clues about the kinds of concerns that would have likely shaped Jesus' outlook. A bold approach to a key topic in biblical studies, Barber's book is a pioneering contribution to Jesus scholarship. (Publisher's description).

Guest: Michael Patrick Barber (PhD Fuller Theological Seminary) is Professor of Sacred Scripture and Theology at the Augustine Institute. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and publications, including Paul, A New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology (Eerdmans, 2019), co-written with Brant Pitre and John Kincaid. In addition to his academic research, Dr. Barber has written public-facing works, most recently, The True Meaning of Christmas: The Birth of Jesus and the Origins of the Season. He also writes for the website, TheSacredPage.com, and can be found on Twitter (@MichaelPBarber).

OnScript's Review: In this important contribution to the quest for the historical Jesus, Michael Barber shows the deree to which previous attempts have been hampered by an anti-liturgical bias. What emerges is a more thoroughly Jewish Jesus who had a complex relationship with the temple and its system. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity; professor of theology at Quincy University.

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The Book: Nijay K. Gupta, Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling (Brazos, 2024). The first Christians were weird. Just how weird is often lost on today's believers. Within Roman society, the earliest Christians stood out for the oddness of their beliefs and practices. They believed unusual things, worshiped God in strange ways, and lived a unique lifestyle. They practiced a whole new way of thinking about and doing religion that would have been seen as bizarre and dangerous when compared to Roman religion and most other religions of the ancient world. Award-winning author, blogger, speaker, and New Testament teacher Nijay Gupta traces the emerging Christian faith in its Roman context in this accessible and engaging book. Christianity would have been seen as radical in the Roman world, but some found this new religion attractive and compelling. The first Christians dared to be different, pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, transformed how people thought about religion, and started a movement that grew like wildfire. Brought to life with numerous images, this book shows how the example of the earliest Christians can offer today's believers encouragement and hope. (Publisher's description).

Guest: Nijay K. Gupta (PhD, Durham) is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He has written numerous books, including recent titles such as Tell Her Story (IVP Academic), Galatians (in The Story of God Commentary series by Zondervan Academic), Galatians (in the Word Biblical themes series) and Paul and the Language of Faith (Eerdmans). Gupta blogs at www.cruxsolablog.com and can be found on X/Twitter (@NijayKGupta).

OnScript's Review: Let's keep it authentically weird. Roman religion was odd: talking statues, meaningful entrails, warring gods. In Strange Religion, Nijay Gupta shows how ancient Christianity was equally weird yet oddly attractive in the Roman world. If the contemporary church can look to the earliest church's strange way of life, it will remain compellingly different today. Highly recommended. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of Why the Gospel?; professor of theology at Quincy University.

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Guest:  Brent Strawn is D. Moody Smith Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Law at Duke Divinity and Duke University. He’s the author of numerous books, including The Old Testament is Dying (Baker) Honest to God Preaching (Fortress), The Old Testament: A Concise Introduction (Routledge), Lies My Preacher Told Me (WJK Press), and The Incomparable God: Readings in Biblical Theology (Eerdmans). He's the editor of many books and resources, including the award-winning The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law (Oxford, 2015). He’s also hosted In Parallel, an offshoot of OnScript that looks at the resonances between biblical and modern poetry.

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Guest: Garrick Allen is Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism (Theology & Religious Studies) at the University of Glasgow. His first book, The Book of Revelation and Early Jewish Textual Culture (Cambridge 2017), was awarded the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise 2019 and his essay "Monks, Manuscripts, Muhammad, and Digital Editions of the New Testament," published also in a chapter in his book Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation (Oxford 2020), was awarded the Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship by the Society of Biblical Literature (2018). His most recent book is Words Are Not Enough: Paratexts, Manuscripts, and the Real New Testament (Eerdmans, 2024).

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Guest: Dr. Sheblazm is the best tendencies in all of us ... what we wish we were on a good day.

Endorsements: 

If you enjoyed this episode … why not check out the good Dr.’s other episodes, HERE, HERE, HERE,  HERE, HERE, and HERE.

The Book: Tom Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political  Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (SPCK/Zondervan, 2024). Should Christians be politically withdrawn, avoiding participation in politics to maintain their prophetic voice and to keep from being used as political pawns? Or should Christians be actively involved, seeking to utilize political systems to control the levers of power?

In Jesus and the Powers, N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird call Christians everywhere to discern the nature of Christian witness in fractured political environments. In an age of ascending autocracies, in a time of fear and fragmentation, amid carnage and crises, Jesus is king, and Jesus’s kingdom remains the object of the church's witness and work. (Publisher's description, abridged).

Guests: N.T. Wright is Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University. 

Mike Bird is Academic Dean, Postgraduate Coordinator, and Lecturer in Theology at Ridley College at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia.

OnScript's Review of Jesus and the Powers: The gospel is that Jesus is king. And, yes, this is a political claim. But what should that mean for our politics today? Wright and Bird make a powerful Christian case for liberal democracies as the least worst option, because they protect liberties, curb evil, and create space to love our neighbors well. Discover how Christians can participate wisely in government to help it remain God's servant. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of Why the Gospel?; professor of theology, Quincy University

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Guest: Professor David Tombs took up the Director role at the Centre and the Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues in January 2015. David is an Anglican lay theologian and his work focusses on contextual and liberation theologies, theologies of reconciliation, and the cross. He also writes on how churches can make better responses to spiritual and sexual abuses. His research has pioneered the study of crucifixion as a form of torture, an instrument of state terror, and an open opportunity for sexual harm. His numerous publications include Latin American Liberation Theology (Brill 2002), Explorations in Reconciliation (co-edited with Joseph Liechty, Routledge 2006), When Did We See You Naked?: Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse (co-edited with Jayme Reaves and Rocío Figueroa, SCM 2021), and The Crucifixion of Jesus: Torture, Sexual Abuse, and the Scandal of the Cross (Routledge, 2023).

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Guest: Nathan MacDonald is Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament at Cambridge University. He taught Old Testament previously at St. Andrews University, and was the recipient of a Sofja-Kovalevskaja Prize which enabled him to lead a research team on Early Jewish Monotheisms at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 2009–2014. He's the author of numerous books, including Deuteronomy and the Meaning of ‘Monotheism’ (Mohr Siebeck, 2003; 2nd edition 2012), Priestly Rule: Polemic and Biblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44 (de Gruyter, 2015), What did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Eerdmans, 2008), Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament (Oxford University Press, 2008), and the book we're discussing in this interview, The Making of the Tabernacle and the Construction of Priestly Hegemony (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Hosts: Chris McKinny and Kyle Keimer

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Photo Attribution: The Lion Gate at Hattusa - Photo by Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany - The Lion Gate flanked by two towers, located at the southwest of the city, the lions were put at the entrance of the city to ward off evil, Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123588439

Guest: Dr. Sandra Glahn is Professor of Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary. She's the author of over 20 books, including Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible (Kregel, 2017), Latte with Luke (AMG, 2022), and Nobody's Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament (IVP Academic, 2023), and she is the co-editor of Sanctified Sexuality: Valuing Sex in an Oversexed World (Kregel, 2020). She has also written eleven Bible studies in the Coffee Cup Bible Study series. A regular blogger at Engage, bible.org’s site for women in Christian leadership, she is the owner of Aspire Productions, and served as editor-in-chief for Kindred Spirit from 1999 to 2016. She and her husband have one adult daughter. (adapted from the DTS website)

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Guest: Jason Staples is Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University. Jason A. Staples is a specialist in Ancient Mediterranean Religions, focusing primarily on Early Judaism and Christian Origins. He is the author of The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity​​​​​​​ (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His second book will focus on Israel in the writings of the apostle Paul. (from the NC State University site)

Host: Lynn Cohick

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Guest: Dr. Carmen Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University. She received her Ph.D. at Wheaton College, after serving on the mission field in the Philippines. She’s the author of Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai: A Re-Examination of the Name Command of the Decalogue (Eisenbrauns) and a more popular level version of that book in Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (IVP). Most recently, she's written Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters (IVP), which we're discussing today. She also creates Torah Tuesday videos, so check those out on YouTube.

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Guest:  Dr. Kristine Garroway is Professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College, at the LA campus. She's excavated at Ashkelon, Tel Dor, and Tel Dan, and is the author of Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household (Eisenbrauns 2014) and Growing up in Ancient Israel (SBL 2018), and has another book forthcoming, The Cult of the Child: The Death and Burial of Children in Ancient Israel (OUP). We'll be discussing Growing Up in Ancient Israel, which won the BAR 2019 Publication Award for Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible.

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Guest: Dr. Jenny Matheny is Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. Jenny has wide-ranging interests in gender studies, trauma studies, and areas like dress hermeneutics. She's the author of Joshua, in the Illustrated Hebrew-English Old Testament Series (GlossaHouse, 2019), Judges 19–21 and Ruth: Canon as a Voice of Answerability (Brill, 2022), and has two forthcoming books, Ḥesed and the Core of Old Testament Theology (Baker Academic, forthcoming) and Clothing, Dress, and Nudity in the Five Scrolls (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

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Guest: Lisa Powell is Professor of Theology at St. Ambrose University, and is the author of The Disabled God Revisited: Trinity, Christology, and Liberation (T&T Clark, 2023) and Inconclusive Theologies: Sor Juana, Kierkegaard, and Theological Discourse (Mercer: Mercer University Press, 2013). 

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Guest: Dr. Erin Raffety is a cultural anthropologist, a Presbyterian pastor, and an ethnographic researcher who has studied foster families in China, Christian congregations in the United States, and people with disabilities around the world. Raffety teaches and researches at Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University. Her most recent book, discussed in this episode, is  From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership (Baylor), explores the importance of nurturing and receiving the ministry of people with disabilities in the church. Erin is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Princeton University, and is a proud parent of a daughter with multiple disabilities. (adapted from Erin's website).

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Guest: Matthew V. Novenson holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, and is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on Messianism, first-century Judaism, and has emerged as a leading scholar in Pauline studies. Matt's other books include Christ Among the Messiahs, and The Grammar of Messianism. and he has also recently edited the very fine Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies (OUP, 2022), which is an essential resource for students.

Book: (from the publisher's website: Reckoning with the hermeneutical struggle to make sense of Paul as both a historical figure and a canonical muse. Matthew Novenson has become a leading advocate for the continuing relevance of historical-critical readings of Paul even as some New Testament scholars have turned to purely theological or political approaches. In this collection of a decade’s worth of essays, Novenson puts contextual understandings of Paul’s letters into conversation with their Christian reception history.

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Guest: Wolf Gruner is the Shapell Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and professor of history at the University of Southern California. He is the founding director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and the author of ten books on the Holocaust, including The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia,  Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis, and many others, including the book under discussion in this episode, Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale University Press, 2023). He lives in Los Angeles, CA. He's a member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, and is co-founder of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies.

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Guest: Matt Lynch is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Regent College, and a co-founder and host on OnScript! He's the author of First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods (Eisenbrauns), Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible: A Literary and Cultural Study (Cambridge, 2020), and Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles: Temple, Priesthood, and Kingship in Post-Exilic Perspective (Mohr Siebeck, 2014). His most recent book is Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God (IVP, 2023).

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The Book: Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer, Origins of New Testament Christology: An Introduction to the Traditions and Titles Applied to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023). The early followers of Jesus drew from Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions and titles to help them understand and articulate who Jesus was. This book opens a window into the Christology of the first century by helping readers understand the eleven most significant titles for Jesus in the New Testament: Lord, Son of Man, Messiah, Prophet, Suffering Servant, Son of God, Last Adam, Passover Lamb, Savior, Word, and High Priest. The authors trace the history of each title in the Old Testament, Second Temple literature, and Greco-Roman literature and look at the context in which the New Testament writers retrieved these traditions to communicate their understanding of Christ. The result is a robust portrait that is closely tied to the sacred traditions of Israel and beyond that took on new significance in light of Jesus Christ. This accessible and up-to-date exegetical study defends an early "high" Christology and argues that the titles of Jesus invariably point to an understanding of Jesus as God. In the process, it will help readers appreciate the biblical witness to the person of Jesus. (Publisher's description).

Stanley Porter has a number of different titles at McMaster Divinity College (Hamilton, Ontario). Stan is the President and Dean, Professor of New Testament, and Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview. He has written and edited many books. Some of his most well-known work pertains to linguistics with respect to NT Greek.

Bryan Dyer holds a PhD from McMaster Divinity College in New Testament and is acquisitions editor at Baker Academic. Bryan is also a part-time faculty member of religion at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the co-editor of numerous volumes and the author of a monograph on Hebrews, Suffering in the Face of Death (T&T Clark).

OnScript's Review: The Christology of the New Testament relates to its Jewish and Greco-Roman environment in complex ways. Some studies reduce Jesus in light of his background. Porter and Dyer have done the opposite. As they uncover each facet, an ever richer portrait of Jesus emerges. Students and scholars alike will appreciate its clarity, organization, up-to-date scholarship, and wisdom. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity; Professor of Theology, Quincy University

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Guest: Ted A. Smith is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity and Associate Dean of Faculty at Emory University. He's the author of three books: The End of Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2023), Weird John Brown (Stanford, 2015), and The New Measures (Cambridge, 2007). Together these books try to think theologically about core American Protestant institutions, practices, values, and rhetoric in a time when they are unraveling. Smith has also edited books on sexuality and ordination, contemporary issues in preaching, and economic inequality, along with a series of books on theological education.

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The Book: Brandon D. Smith, The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John's Apocalypse (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022). How should we read the book of Revelation? Interpreting Scripture faithfully is a challenge with regard to any text and for any reader of the Bible. But perhaps no text confronts and confuses readers as much as the book of Revelation. With its vivid imagery and rich prophetic language, John's Apocalypse provokes and stirs our imaginations. Theologian and biblical scholar Brandon Smith brings clarity to this question by reading the book of Revelation primarily as John's vision of the triune God. In conversation with early church theologians, including Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, and the Cappadocians, as well as modern biblical scholarship, Smith shows how John's vision can help us worship the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Publisher's description, abridged).

Guest: Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology and New Testament at Cedarville University, a Christian University in Ohio. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Theology from Ridley College (Melbourne), M.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies from Criswell College, and a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Dallas Baptist University. Smith is the author of several books. He has also written The Biblical Trinity (Lexham) and has a forthcoming book on hermeneutics that I’ve already read and can recommend, Taught by God (B&H Academic). Brandon is also the founder and the co-host of the podcast Church Grammar.

OnScript's Review: Brandon Smith offers a robust description of how Revelation contributed to the early church's Trinitarian theology and how Revelation can be better understood in light of the doctrine of the Trinity. What emerges is a beautiful portrait of the one God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--as the one God works to make all things new. Highly recommended. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity; professor of theology, Quincy University

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Guest: Kyle Keimer is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University, where he was Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, History, and Language of Ancient Israel. He also lectures at Jerusalem University College. For over 20 years he has been excavating in Israel and Cyprus and was co-director of the Khirbet el-Rai excavations. He loves digging as much as he loves working with ancient texts, especially the books of 1-2 Samuel and Isaiah. His research currently focuses on the early Israelite monarchy in text and archaeology. He’s co-edited Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East (Routledge) and The Ancient Israelite World (Routledge), and he's published articles in various journals. His UCLA Ph.D. dissertation was on "The Socioeconomic Impact of Hezekiah’s Preparations for Rebellion."

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Guest: Dr. Glenn Butner is Assistant Professor of Theology & Christian Ministry at Sterling College. He specializes in theology and in social ethics, having experienced the need to connect both disciplines when after serving as a chaplain in a prison complex and as a board member for the Kefa Project, which uses sports ministry to reach homeless and at risk children in Rwanda. He has written three books. Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Baker Academic, 2022), which won the Award of Merit in Academic Theology in Christianity Today's 2023 book awards. He has also written Jesus the Refugee: Modern Solidarity and Ancient Injustice (Fortress, 2023), the focus of our episode today, and The Son who Learned Obedience: A Theological Case Against the Eternal Submission of the Son (Pickwick, 2018). Glenn lives in Sterling with his wife Lydia and their three children, Elias, Ezra, and Sophia. (from the Sterling College website).

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Guest: David Moffitt is Reader in New Testament at the University of St. Andrews, where he has been since 2013, having taught previously at Duke Divinity School and Campbell University Divinity School.  Much of his scholarship has been on atonement in the book of Hebrews, including a very influential monograph entitled Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Brill, 2011), for which he won the Manfred T. Lautenschläger prize in 2013. He's also the author of Rethinking the Atonement (Baker Academic) and the co-author of New Testament Basics (Fortress).

Book (from the publisher's website): Traditional views on the atonement tend to be reductive, focusing solely on Jesus's death on the cross. In his 2011 groundbreaking book Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews, David Moffitt challenged that paradigm, showing how the atonement is a fuller process. It involves not only Jesus's death but also his resurrection, ascension, offering, and exaltation. In the succeeding years, Moffitt has continued to expand and clarify his thinking on this issue. This book offers a more fulsome articulation of his work on the atonement that reflects his recent thinking on the topic. Moffitt continues to challenge reductive views of the atonement, primarily from the book of Hebrews, but he engages other New Testament passages as well. He offers fresh insights on sacrifice and atonement, the importance of resurrection and ascension, Jesus's role as priest, and a new perspective on Hebrews. This important book brings Moffitt's award-winning and influential scholarship to a broader audience.

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Guest: Jonathan Lyonhart received his PhD from Cambridge University, and is now Assistant Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Lincoln Christian University, as well as a Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and a Co-Host of the Spiritually Incorrect Podcast. He's the author of MonoThreeism: An Absurdly Arrogant Attempt to Answer All the Problems of the Last 2000 Years in One Night at a Pub.

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Guest: Brent Strawn is D. Moody Smith Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Law at Duke Divinity and Duke University. He's the author of numerous books, including The Old Testament is Dying (Baker) Honest to God Preaching (Fortress), The Old Testament: A Concise Introduction (Routledge), Lies My Preacher Told Me (WJK Press), The Incomparable God: Readings in Biblical Theology (Eerdmans). He's also hosted In Parallel, an offshoot of OnScript that looks at the resonances between biblical and modern poetry.

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Guest: Gary Schnittjer is Distinguished University Professor of Old Testament at Cairn University's School of Divinity. He's the author of Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-By-Book Guide (Zondervan Academic), which also has a Workbook; Old Testament Narrative: The Israel Story (to be released in Sept of this year), and Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Zondervan Academic) now in its thoroughly revised Second Edition. Schnittjer also offers daily videos at HebrewDaybyDay.com for students learning biblical Hebrew.

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If you enjoyed this episode ... check out our interview on Schnittjer's Old Testament use of Old Testament.  

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Hosts: Chris and Kyle

Summary: Chris and Kyle discuss the following topics: - Archaeology and the Gospel of John—the pools of Siloam and Bethesda - The Garden of Gethsemane - The room of the last supper - Jesus’ Jewish and Roman trials - Herod’s palace - The Praetorium and Gabatha - The Via Dolorosa.

Resources: Archaeology of the Passion Week Bibliography; Archaeology of Passion Week Visuals (pt 2).

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Image by Heather Truett from Pixabay

Hosts: Chris McKinny and Kyle Keimer

Summary: Chris and Kyle discuss the following topics: – Traditions about the Passion Week – How we connect the archaeology to the texts – Dating and timing the events of the Passion Week – Views of Jerusalem – Jesus in the Temple – Pontius Pilate and Archaeology

Resources: Archaeology of the Passion Week Bibliography; Archaeology of Passion Week Visuals (pt 1).

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Image by Anna Sulencka from Pixabay

Guest: Father Isaac Morales was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. He received a Master of Theological Studies degree with a concentration in biblical studies from the University of Notre Dame in 2002 and a doctorate in New Testament from Duke University in 2007. After serving as an assistant professor of theology at Marquette University for around five years, he felt a call to join the Order of Preachers (aka the Dominicans). He's the author of The Bible and Baptism: The Fountain of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2022). He was ordained to the priesthood in 2018 and since then has taught in the department of theology at Providence College. Before this call he was called Rodrigo Morales and published his PhD, The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians with Mohr Siebeck (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck , 2010).

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Guest: Amy L. Balogh, Ph.D., is Lead Lecturer of the Humanities for the Department of Liberal Arts at Regis University’s School for Professional Advancement. She is also founder and co-chair of the new Society of Biblical Literature program unit Comparative Method in Biblical Studies, and Assistant Editor of the forthcoming Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Historical Books (2 vols., Lexham Press). In December 2022, Balogh also became the founding president of the newly formed Religion & Bible Society of the Rocky Mountain Great Plains Region, a 501(c)3 professional organization dedicated to the academic study of the Bible and religion. She's the author of Moses among the Idols: Mediators of the Divine in the Ancient Near East (Lexington Books, 2018). Her forthcoming book uses comparison and myth theory to examine the tension between humankind and nature as expressed in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literatures. She now joins as a new co-host on the Biblical World podcast!

Hosts: Matt Lynch and Chris McKinny

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The Book: Michael F. Bird, Jesus Among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2022). After several centuries of controversy, the early church came to an uneasy consensus that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. In his divinity, orthodox Christianity claimed, he shared fully in the nature of the uncreated creator God. But was this doctrinal position crafted from whole cloth in the era of the great ecumenical councils? How did earlier Christ-followers understand Jesus in light of their convictions about the one supreme deity and in the context of a cultural milieu saturated with gods? In Jesus among the gods, Michael Bird gives renewed attention to divine ontology―what a god is―in relation to literary representations of Jesus. Through comparison with representative authors such as Philo and Plutarch, and a comprehensive analysis of Jesus and various intermediary figures from Greco-Roman religion and ancient Judaism, Bird demonstrates how early accounts of Jesus both overlapped with and diverged from existing forms of religious expression. Among the gods, Jesus stood in clear relief, a conviction that may have been refined over time but that belongs to the emerging heart of Christian confession. (Publisher's description, abridged).

Guest: Michael Bird is Academic Dean and lecturer in theology at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. Mike has published in both New Testament Studies and in Systematic Theology, and his many publications include Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology, Evangelical Theology, and The Saving Righteousness of God. Mike runs a popular theological studies blog called “Euangelion” and can be followed on twitter @mbird12. Mike and his wife Naomi have have four children.

OnScript's Review: When we say "Jesus is God," who and what we mean by "God" matters. Contrary to merely functional accounts of Jesus's divinity, Bird shows that the first-century world had a robust ontology of the divine. Jesus is indeed a very specific God: the one God who revealed himself to be the eternal creator, the life-giver, and the promise-keeper within ancient Israel. A masterwork of historically informed theology, Bird's Jesus Among the Gods will compel scholars to revise the standard narrative of how Christology developed. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity; Professor of Theology, Quincy University

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Guest: Collin Cornell is Office of the Provost-Candler School of Theology Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Candler School of Theology (at Emory University). Before returning to Emory, he taught for three years as a visiting assistant professor of biblical studies in the School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee). For one year he managed Sewanee’s Center for Religion and Environment, coordinated Sewanee’s Indigenous Engagement initiative, taught Old Testament for Duke Divinity School’s hybrid MDiv program, and served as academic dean of the Stevenson School for Ministry, a local formation project of the Episcopal Church. Collin is author of one book, Divine Aggression in Psalms and Inscriptions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), editor of two, Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH's Ancient Look-Alikes (Penn State University Press, 2020) and The Incomparable God: Readings in Biblical Theology (Eerdmans, 2023), and co-translator of a third, Biblical ABCs: The Basics of Christian Resistance (Lexington Books, 2021). He is currently working on a book entitled, Monotheism and Divine Aggression, for Cambridge University Press. He is also working on The Lords that Never Were: Early Judaism and the Gods of the Hellenistic Levant. He has also written several articles on Elephantine. (adapted from the Candler School of Theology Website)

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Guest: Steven Nemes has a PhD in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he studied under Profs. Oliver Crisp and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. He is the author of Orthodoxy and Heresy, a volume in the Cambridge Elements in the Problems of God series, as well as of two forthcoming books, Theology of the Manifest: Christianity without Metaphysics, forthcoming with Lexington Press/Fortress Academic, and Theological Authority in the Church: Reconsidering Traditionalism and Hierarchy, forthcoming with Cascade Books. He currently works as an instructor of Latin and Greek at North Phoenix Preparatory Academy. He is happily married to Rachel, and they have a 6-month-old son named Cristian.

Steven appeared in a previous episode, debating divine simplicity here.

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Guest (adapted from Westmont's website): Dr. Reeder earned a B.A. from Augustana College, an M.A. in biblical studies from Wheaton College, and an M.Phil. in Old Testament and Ph.D. in New Testament from the University of Cambridge. She came to Westmont in 2007. Her research interests include the household, gender, and violence in the Bible and biblical worlds. Her recent research addresses women, children, and warfare in the Gospel of Luke, and the interpretation of the story of the Samaritan woman in the context of women's lives in the church. She also teaches in the Gender Studies program. She's the author of The Enemy in the Household: Family Violence in Deuteronomy and Beyond (IVP Academic) and The Samaritan Woman's Story: Reconsidering John 4 after #ChurchToo (IVP Academic), discussed in this episode. 

Book (from the publisher's website): Most Christians have heard a familiar description of the Samaritan woman in John 4: she was a sinner, an adulteress, even a prostitute. Throughout church history, the woman at the well has been seen narrowly in terms of her gender and marital history. What are we missing in the story? And what difference does our interpretation of this passage make for women and men in the church?

Caryn A. Reeder calls us to see the Samaritan woman in a different light. Beginning with the reception history of John 4, she pulls back layers of interpretation entangled with readers' assumptions on women and sexuality. She then explores the story's original context, describing life for women and expectations regarding marriage and divorce in the first century. With this clarified lens, Reeder's exegesis of the passage yields refreshing insights on what the Gospel says—and does not say—about the woman at the well.

Throughout the book, Reeder draws connections between interpretations of this text and the life of the church. The sexual objectification of the Samaritan woman and minimization of her positive contribution has ongoing consequences for how women are seen and treated—including in the failure of many Christian communities to respond well to accusations of abuse. In the age of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, The Samaritan Woman's Story offers a bold challenge to teach the Bible in a way that truly honors the value and voices of women. 

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If you enjoyed this episode ... Check out our interview with Dr. Reeder about family violence in the Bible. 

Guest: Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich is the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies at Catholic Theological Union. She’s also the director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at CTU. She is the author of The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria (2016) and Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (JPS 2018). 

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Guest: Han-luen Kantzer Komline is Associate Professor of Church History and Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, USA and the author of Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account (Oxford University Press, 2020), which received the Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise in 2020.  Her research focuses on early Christian theology.  Many of her publications concern topics in Augustine or his relationship to other thinkers, ranging from Ambrose and Cyprian to Karl Barth and Marilynne Robinson.  She has also published on more recent figures such as John Calvin, Jürgen Moltmann, and Erich Przywara, and serves as co-editor of the International Journal of Systematic Theology.  Kantzer Komline’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the Louisville Institute, the Augustinian Institute at Villanova, and the Humboldt Foundation. Her current book project, The Idea of the New in Early Christian Thought, analyzes how Christians of late antiquity conceptualized and defended the innovative character of the Christian faith.

Kantzer Komline serves as co-editor of the International Journal of Systematic Theology, on the steering committee of the Development of Early Christian Theology section for the Society of Biblical Literature, and as an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America.  She enjoys writing for both scholarly and popular venues, from Studia Patristica to Christianity Today, and is the co-author, with Mark Noll and David Komline, of Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity (4th edition, Baker Academic, 2022). (adapted from the Western website)

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Guest: Rev. Dr. Andrew Byers is Tutor in New Testament at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge in 2021, he served as Director of the Free Church Track and Lecturer in New Testament at Cranmer Hall, St John's College, Durham University. Originally from the States, Andy has 13 years of pastoral ministry experience and he writes not only for the academy but also for wider audiences and the church. He studied Forestry at the University of Georgia, earned an MDiv at Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, and received a ThM at Duke Divinity School. He completed his PhD at Durham University; his thesis was on ecclesiology in John's Gospel.

Book (from the publisher's website): In John and the Others, Andrew Byers challenges the "sectarian hermeneutic" that has shaped much of the interpretation of the Gospel and Letters of John. Rather than "anti-Jewish," we should understand John as opposed to the exclusionary positioning of ethnicity as a soteriological category. Neither is this stream of early Christianity antagonistic towards the wider Christian movement. The Fourth Evangelist openly situates his work in a crowded field of alternative narratives about Jesus without seeking to supplant prior works. Though John is often regarded as a "low-church" theologian, Byers shows that the episcopal ecclesiology of Ignatius of Antioch is compatible with Johannine theology. John does not locate revelation solely within the personal authority of each believer under the power of the Spirit, and so does not undercut hierarchical leadership.

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The Book: Patrick Schreiner, Political Gospel: Public Witness in a Politically Crazy World (B&H: Nashville, 2022). Christians are constantly being accused of being too political or not political enough. Often, the accusations are fair. Christians tend to get stuck in one of two political ditches: we either privatize our faith or make it partisan. We think religion and politics should be separate and never intermingle, or we align so tightly with a political party that we conflate the gospel with a human agenda. In Political Gospel, Patrick Schreiner argues Christianity not only has political implications but is itself a politic. The gospel at its very core is political––Jesus declared Himself to be King. But He does not allow you to put Him in your political box. In a supercharged political climate, Political Gospel explores what it means for Christians to have a biblical public witness by looking to Scripture, the early church, and today. Should we submit to governing authorities or subvert them? Are we to view them as agents of the dark forces or entities that promote order? In these pages, we’ll see that Christians live in a paradox, and we’ll see how to follow Christ our King right into the political craziness of our day. (Publisher's description).

Guest: Patrick Schreiner is the Director of the Residency PhD program and Associate Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He previously taught at Western Seminary in Portland Oregon (2014–20) and received his Ph.D. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (2014). In addition to the book we are presently discussing,  Political Gospel: Public Witness in a Politically Crazy World (B&H), Patrick is the author of a number of books, including a commentary on Acts (B&H), The Visual Word (Moody), The Mission of the Triune God: A Theology of Acts (Crossway), Matthew, Disciple and Scribe (Baker Academic), and The Ascension of Christ (Lexham), Patrick has quite a few others too. Patrick serves as an elder at Emmaus Church in North Kansas City. He is married to Hannah and they have four children.

OnScript's Review: Can we get beyond partisan politics and endless newsfeeds to a healthier place? Patrick Schreiner's Political Gospel calls Christians to live in a subversively wise way. We do this by submitting to the government and working for a better future in a Jesus-shaped way. We must bear witness to Jesus the king, showing what allegiance means in every sphere of life. This book is urgent and wise. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone; Professor of Theology, Quincy University

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Guest:  Dr. Ian A. McFarland currently serves as Robert W. Woodruff Chair of Theology at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, where he returned after four years as Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He had previously been on the Candler faculty from 2005–2015 and before that taught at the University of Aberdeen. Professor McFarland's research has focused on Christology, theological anthropology, and the doctrine of creation. His interests also include the use of the Bible in theology, the relationship between theology and science, and the thought of Maximus the Confessor. He is the sole author of six books, including The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation (2019) and From Nothing: A Theology of Creation (2014); he also served as lead editor for the Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology (2010).

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The Book: Amy Peeler, Women and the Gender of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022). A robust theological argument against the assumption that God is male. God values women. While many Christians would readily affirm this truth, the widely held assumption that the Bible depicts a male God persists—as it has for centuries. This misperception of Christianity not only perniciously implies that men deserve an elevated place over women but also compromises the glory of God by making God appear to be part of creation, subject to it and its categories, rather than in transcendence of it. Through a deep reading of the incarnation narratives of the New Testament and other relevant scriptural texts, Amy Peeler shows how the Bible depicts a God beyond gender and a savior who, while embodied as a man, is the unification in one person of the image of God that resides in both male and female. Peeler leads the way in reasserting the value of women in the church and prophetically speaking out against the destructive idolatry of masculinity. (Publisher's description, abridged).

Guest: Rev. Dr. Amy Peeler is Associate Professor of Theology at Wheaton, where she serves in the Graduate School. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary. In addition to Women and the Gender of God, she is author of numerous articles and book chapters as well as a monograph on Hebrews titled You Are My Son . She also penned Hebrews: An Introduction and Study Guide, with co-author Patrick Gray.

OnScript's Review: It is a truism to say that the eternal God is beyond gender. But Peeler shows that a masculine God nevertheless lurks near the surface in many Christian theologies. Rather than rejecting Scripture or the Christian tradition, she presses into them deeply. In so doing she discovers that the incarnation holds untapped resources that encourage us to speak more truly about God and gender. A stimulating read. -- Matthew W. Bates, Professor of Theology, Quincy University

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Guest: Dr. Timothy Beal is Distinguished University Professor and Florence Harkness Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. He’s the author of 16 books, including The Book of Revelation: A Biography, Biblical Literacy: The Essential Bible Stories Everyone Needs to Know, Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, The Strange, and the Substance of Faith, and The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected Story of an Accidental Book. He’s also written When Time is Short: Finding Our Way in the Anthropocene (Beacon Press, 2022), discussed in this episode.

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Guest: Dr. Katie Marcar is a Teaching Fellow in Biblical Languages at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She completed a Masters in Biblical Studies at Edinburgh University before completing a PhD in New Testament Studies at Durham University. In her doctoral thesis, she studied the theme of divine regeneration in 1 Peter. Dr. Marcar's research interests include textual criticism, the use of the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament, and the influence of Jewish apocalyptic thinking on New Testament texts. Katie is a Lay Minister in the Anglican Church in New Zealand. She is actively engaged in church ministry, preaching, and youth work.

Book (from the publisher's website): In this book, Katie Marcar examines how 1 Peter draws together metaphors of family, ethnicity, temple, and priesthood to describe Christian identity. She examines the precedents for these metaphors in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity in order to highlight the originality, creativity and theological depth of the text. She then explores how these metaphors are combined and developed in 1 Peter to create complex, narratival metaphors which reframe believers' understanding of themselves, their community, and their world. Integrating insights on ethnicity and race in the ancient and modern world, as well as insights from metaphor studies, Marcar examines why it is important for Christians to think of themselves as one family and ethnic group. Marcar concludes by distilling the metaphors of divine regeneration down to their underlying systematic metaphors.

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Guest: Rev. Dr. Angela N. Parker is assistant professor of New Testament and Greek at McAfee School of Theology. She's the author of If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority (Eerdmans, 2021). Her forthcoming book is entitled Bodies, Violence, & Emotions: A Womanist Study of the Gospel of Mark.  She is co-chair for the Paul and Politics Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature and is a committee member of American Academy of Religion’s Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities Committee (see her Mercer University page for more detail).

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What is it about Barth’s Church Dogmatics that is considered so important? What’s the “big deal”? And how to approach such a massive set of volumes? How to navigate around the highways and byways of this text that sprawls almost 8,500 pages and 6,000,000 words? How to avoid misunderstanding? Marty Folsom has begun penning a “Church Dogmatics for Everyone”, which sets out, first in broad brush strokes and then in more detail, the first volume of Barth’s important project. Chris Tilling talks with the author about the background of this project, what Marty Folsom hopes to achieve and why the Church Dogmatics.

Guest: Marty Folsom has been Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies for 30 years in New Zealand and Seattle. He is most famous for his “Face to Face” trilogy on relational theology, which emphasises “personal relationship”. Apart from authoring numerous articles, he has also been a therapist for 24 years. Today we discuss his new book, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone (Zondervan Academic) with contributions from Myk Habets, Julie Canlis, Douglas Campbell and others. This is the first volume of five to follow (volume two follows in 2023).

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Guest: Chris is the author of Johannine Belief and Graeco-Roman Devotion (Mohr Siebeck, 2020). He studies and teaches biblical studies (NT and Greek), and has interests in the Gospel of John, faith, the Synoptic Gospels, and the Graeco-Roman religious world.

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Dr. Chris Eberhart is the founder of the Annual Congress Section “Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement” for the Society of Biblical Literature and the co-founder and co-convener of the “Hebrews” Seminar for the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (Society of New Testament Studies; SNTS)."

Dr. Chris Eberhart is the founder of the Annual Congress Section “Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement” for the Society of Biblical Literature and the co-founder and co-convener of the “Hebrews” Seminar for the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (Society of New Testament Studies; SNTS).

His recent books include:

• Christian A. Eber­hart e.a. (eds.), Tempel, Lehrhaus, Synagoge: Orte jüdischen Lernens und Lebens (Festschrift für Wolfgang Kraus), Paderborn: Brill/Ferdinand Schö­ningh, 2020.
• Christian Eberhart/Thomas Hieke (eds.), Writing a Commentary on Leviticus (FRLANT 276), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019.
• Christian A. Eberhart, The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, second edition 2018.
• Christian A. Eberhart/Henrietta L. Wiley (eds.), Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique, (Resources for Biblical Study 85), Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2017.
• Christian A. Eberhart, What a Difference a Meal Makes: The Last Supper in the Bible and in the Christian Church, Houston: Lucid Books, 2016.

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Guest: J. Richard Middleton is Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Roberts Wesleyan College. He's the author of:

• Abraham's Silence: The Binding of Isaac, The Suffering of God, and How to Talk Back to God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021).
• A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).
• The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005).
• With Brian Walsh, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1995).
• Ed. with Garnett Roper, A Kairos Moment for Caribbean Theology: Ecumenical Voices in Dialogue (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013).
• The Advent of Justice: A Book of Meditations, ed. Sylvia Keesmaat (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014).

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Guest: Revd Dr Mark Scarlata is Tutor and Lecturer in Old Testament Studies at St Mellitus College. Mark is also the Vicar-Chaplain at St. Edward, King and Martyr, Cambridge where he serves as priest in one of the oldest churches in Cambridge that was also integral in the English Reformation. Mark is married to Bettina and they have three children. He is the author of the following books:

• Outside of Eden: Cain in the Ancient Versions of Gen. 4.1-16 (T & T Clark, 2012).
• Am I my Brother’s Keeper?: Christian Citizenship in a Globalized Society (Cascade)
• Sabbath Rest: The Beauty of God's Rhythm for a Digital Age (SCM Press, 2019)
• The Abiding Presence: A Theological Commentary on Exodus (SCM Press, 2018).
• A Journey Through the World of Leviticus: Holiness, Sacrifice, and the Rock Badger (Cascade)
• The Theology of the Book of Leviticus (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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Guest: Dr. Paul Spilsbury (PhD, Cambridge) is Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at Regent College. Paul’s teaching covers the full range of the New Testament, with a particular focus on Paul and the Book of Revelation. His research has been supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Leverhulme Trust (UK) and has resulted in four authored or co-authored books: The Image of the Jew in Flavius Josephus’ Paraphrase of the Bible (Mohr Siebeck, 1998), The Throne, the Lamb and the Dragon: A Reader’s Guide to the Book of Revelation (IVP, 2002), Flavius Josephus, Judean Antiquities 8–10: Translation and Commentary (Brill, 2005—with C. Begg), and Flavius Josephus, Judean Antiquities 11: Translation and Commentary (Brill, 2017—with C. Seeman). He has also published numerous book chapters, articles, and reviews, and has traveled extensively throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries associated with the ancient church. Paul is a frequent speaker at churches, retreats, and conferences. He is also a juried member of the Federation of Canadian Artists, working primarily in watercolours. (adapted from the Regent College website)

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The Book: Enoch O. Okode, Christ the Gift and the Giver: Paul’s Portrait of Jesus as the Supreme Royal Benefactor in Romans 5:1-11 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2022). Foreword by Joshua W. Jipp. This book provides a close look at how Paul uses the Greco-Roman royal benefaction system in Romans 5:1–11 as well as 5:12—8:39 to accomplish his theological purpose of portraying Jesus Christ as the supreme royal benefactor so that the Roman believers might faithfully respond to his reign now even as they anticipate glorification. This study makes at least three significant contributions. First, at the lexical level, it provides a reading that accounts for the benefaction motifs that permeate Romans 5:1–11 and Romans 5:12—8:39. Second, it looks at the relationship between χάρις as used in Romans 5:2 and the Messiah’s sacrifice as described in Romans 5:6–10 even as it asserts that Paul portrays Christ as a royal benefactor in ways that surprise the Greco-Roman notion of brokerage and the expectation that a beneficiary would be willing to die for the sake of his benefactor. Third, the study demonstrates that the Messiah’s supreme benefaction demands appropriate reciprocity or fitting response. (Publisher's description).

Guest: Enoch Okode (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is Lecturer and dean of the School of Theology at Scott Christian University in Kenya.

OnScript's Review (backcover endorsement): "Timely, important, and rewarding. Enoch Okode brings a new coherence to Paul's logic in Romans by situating the gospel, grace, and loyalty in the context of ideal kingship and benefaction. Our understanding of Paul's theology of salvation has been greatly enriched." --Matthew W. Bates, Professor of Theology at Quincy University and author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone

Guest: Aaron Sherwood (Ph.D. Durham University) served as a biblical studies professor in Virginia, The Bahamas, and New York, between 2011-2016. Since then, he has been an independent researcher, an at-home father, and a part time administrative assistant at a legal firm. In addition to Romans: A Structural, Thematic, and Exegetical Commentary (Lexham: 2020), he’s the author of The Word of God has not Failed: Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9:6–29 (Lexham, 2015), and Paul and the Restoration of Humanity in Light of Ancient Jewish Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

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Guest:  William P. Brown is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Bill has published numerous books, including

• Deep Calls to Deep: The Psalms in Dialogue and Disruption (Abingdon, 2021).
• A Handbook to Old Testament Exegesis (WJK 2017)
• Sacred Sense: Discovering the Wonder of God’s Word and World (Eerdmans 2015)
• The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford 2010)
• Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor (WJK 2002)
• The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Eerdmans, 1999)
• The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms (Oxford 2014)

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Guest: Dr. Amy C. Cottrill is Denson N. Franklin Professor of Religion at Birmingham-Southern College. Her research focuses on Psalms, biblical representations of pain, suffering, and violence, and the ethics of biblical interpretation. She's the author of Language, Power, and Identity in the Lament Psalms of the Individual (T&T Clark) and Uncovering Violence: Reading Biblical Narratives as an Ethical Project (WJK).

Mentioned in this episode: Carol Newsom's article, "Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth", Jacqueline Lapsley's book, Whispering the Word: Hearing Women's Stories in the Old Testament (WJK), Rob Nixon's book, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard).

If you enjoyed this episode ... Listen to our interview with Caryn Reeder about her book on family violence and the Bible. 

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Guest: Lisa Bowens is Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her first book, An Apostle in Battle: Paul and Spiritual Warfare in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, published by Mohr Siebeck, is an apocalyptic reading of Paul's heavenly ascent. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters, including “God and Time: Exploring Black Notions of Prophetic and Apocalyptic Eschatology” in T&T Clark Handbook of African American Theology," “Painting Hope: Formational Hues of Paul’s Spiritual Warfare Language in 2 Corinthians 10-13,” in Practicing with Paul: Reflections on Paul and the Practices of Ministry in Honor of Susan G. Eastman," and “Spirit-Shift: Paul, the Poor, and The Holy Spirit’s Ethic of Love and Impartiality in the Eucharist Celebration,” in The Holy Spirit and Social Justice Interdisciplinary Global Perspectives: Scripture and Theology."

Book (from the publisher's website): The letters of Paul—especially the verse in Ephesians directing slaves to obey their masters—played an enormous role in promoting slavery and justifying it as a Christian practice. Yet despite this reality African Americans throughout history still utilized Paul extensively in their own work to protest and resist oppression, responding to his theology and teachings in numerous—often starkly divergent and liberative—ways.

In the first book of its kind, Lisa Bowens' book African American Readings of Paul takes a historical, theological, and biblical approach to explore interpretations of Paul within African American communities over the past few centuries. She surveys a wealth of primary sources from the early 1700s to the mid-twentieth century, including sermons, conversion stories, slave petitions, and autobiographies of ex-slaves, many of which introduce readers to previously unknown names in the history of New Testament interpretation. Along with their hermeneutical value, these texts also provide fresh documentation of Black religious life through wide swaths of American history. African American Readings of Paul promises to change the landscape of Pauline studies and fill an important gap in the rising field of reception history.

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Guest: Professor Michael J. Gorman (Mike) has held the Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary's Seminary and University since 2012. He has taught at St. Mary’s since 1991, first in St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute and then, beginning in 1993, in both the Ecumenical Institute and the Seminary (School of Theology). From 1994 to 2012 he served as Dean of St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute. He is a New Testament scholar who specializes in the theology and spirituality of the apostle Paul, the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, and the theological and missional interpretation of Scripture. He is the author of nearly twenty books and numerous articles, including several volumes on Paul as well as works on Revelation, John, the atonement, Christian ethics, and biblical interpretation more generally. He's the author of numerous books, including the following:

• Romans: A Theological and Pastoral Commentary (Eerdmans, 2022)
• Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers, 3rd ed. (Baker Academic, 2020 [orig. 2001])
• Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality (Baker Academic, 2019)
• Abide and Go: Missional Theosis in the Gospel of John (Cascade, 2018)
• Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2017 [orig. 2001])
• Scripture and its Interpretation: A Global, Ecumenical Introduction to the Bible (editor; Baker Academic, 2017)
• Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Eerdmans, 2015)
• The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement (Cascade, 2014)
• Reading Revelation Responsibly; Uncivil Worship and Witness; Following the Lamb into the New Creation (Cascade, 2011)
• Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Eerdmans, 2009)
• Reading Paul (Cascade/Paternoster, 2008)
• Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Eerdmans, 2001; 20th anniversary ed., 2021)
• Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco Roman World (repr. Wipf and Stock, 1998; orig. InterVarsity and Paulist, 1982)

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If you enjoyed this episode ... Have a listen to an earlier episode with Dr. Gorman.

Guest: Rev. Dr. Reed Carlson is Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at United Lutheran Seminary. He’s active in the church, is ordained in the Episcopal Church, and is married to an ELCA minister. He’s the author of Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and other Spirit Phenomena (De Gruyter, 2022).

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Guest: Karen O’Donnell leads the research and teaching in Christian Spirituality at Sarum College, Salisbury, UK. She is a feminist, practical theologian with particular interest in the intersections of body and theology, especially around the issue of trauma. Her first monograph was Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary and the Body in Trauma Theology (SCM Press, 2018) which explored the relationship between the body and trauma in theology. Her second monograph is The Dark Womb: Re-Conceiving Theology Through Reproductive Loss (SCM Press, 2022) which seeks to construct a fresh approach to theology using the experience of miscarriage as a starting point. Karen has published widely on trauma theology, Mariology, feminist theology, and digital theology.

Guest: Rev. Dr. Justus Geilhufe, special student between 2012 and 2013, serves as an associate pastor at the Freiberg Cathedral in the Lutheran Church of Saxony. He was born in 1990 in Dresden. After graduating the Lutheran Kreuzschule he worked for one year at L’Arche in France. To pursue his call to being a pastor, he studied theology at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Princeton Theological Seminary, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Universität Leipzig. Next to his diploma in theology, he also holds a BA in philosophy and a certificate in leadership from the Jesuit Munich School of Philosophy. While serving as an ordinand of the Lutheran Church of Saxony, he earned a doctorate in systematic theology from the Georg-August-University Göttingen with a dissertation on the theology of Princeton’s Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology, Bruce McCormack. Justus is married and has two sons.

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Guests: Dr. Brittany Kim is an Old Testament scholar, adjunct professor of Old Testament at North Park Theological Seminary and Northeastern Seminary, and she’s a spiritual director. She’s a co-director of Every Voice, an initiative for diversity in theological education. In addition to co-authoring the book Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches (Zondervan, 2020) with Charlie Trimm, she’s the author of Lengthen Your Tent-Cords: The Metaphorical World of Israel’s Household in the Book of Isaiah (Eisenbrauns/PSU Press, 2018).  

Dr. Charlie Trimm  is Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Biola University. In addition to co-authoring the book Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches (Zondervan, 2020) with Brittany Kim, he's the author of The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation (Eerdmans, 2022), Fighting for the King and the Gods: A Survey of Warfare in the Ancient Near East (SBL, 2017), and “YHWH Fights for Them!” The Divine Warrior in the Exodus Narrative (Gorgias: Piscataway, 2014). He’s also a co-director of Every Voice.

Every Voice - To access the bibliographies compiled by Every Voice, please click HERE.

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If you enjoyed this episode …  listen in an earlier episode with Christian Hofreiter about his book Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide.

Guest: Prof. Ervine Sheblazm feels like Einstein, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas trapped in the same body.

Book: The endorsements say it all!

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If you enjoyed this episode ... why not check out the good Dr.'s other episodes, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE?

Guest: Iain Provan is Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College (no, not Regent University) in Vancouver, BC. Provan has written numerous essays and articles, and several books including commentaries on Lamentations, 1 and 2 Kings, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, and co-authored with Phil Long and Tremper Longman A Biblical History of Israel (John Knox Press, 2nd edition, 2015). He has also published Against the Grain: Selected Essays (Regent College Publishing, 2015), Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was (Baylor University Press, 2013), and The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor, 2017). His most recent book is Seeking What is Right: The Old Testament and the Good Life (Baylor, 2021).

Book: (from the publisher's website) The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor, 2017). In 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church. Luther’s seemingly inconsequential act ultimately launched the Reformation, a movement that forever transformed both the Church and Western culture. The repositioning of the Bible as beginning, middle, and end of Christian faith was crucial to the Reformation. Two words alone captured this emphasis on the Bible’s divine inspiration, its abiding authority, and its clarity, efficacy, and sufficiency: sola scriptura.

In the five centuries since the Reformation, the confidence Luther and the Reformers placed in the Bible has slowly eroded. Enlightened modernity came to treat the Bible like any other text, subjecting it to a near endless array of historical-critical methods derived from the sciences and philosophy. The result is that in many quarters of Protestantism today the Bible as word has ceased to be the Word.

In The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, Iain Provan aims to restore a Reformation-like confidence in the Bible by recovering a Reformation-like reading strategy. To accomplish these aims Provan first acknowledges the value in the Church’s precritical appropriation of the Bible and, then, in a chastened use of modern and postmodern critical methods. But Provan resolutely returns to the Reformers’ affirmation of the centrality of the literal sense of the text, in the Bible’s original languages, for a right-minded biblical interpretation. In the end the volume shows that it is possible to arrive at an approach to biblical interpretation for the twenty-first century that does not simply replicate the Protestant hermeneutics of the sixteenth, but stands in fundamental continuity with them. Such lavish attention to, and importance placed upon, a seriously literal interpretation of Scripture is appropriate to the Christian confession of the word as Word—the one God’s Word for the one world.

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If you enjoyed this episode ...  listen in to our earlier interview with Iain about his book Discovering Genesis.

Guest: David Artman is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He holds master of divinity and Doctor of ministry degrees from Brite Divinity School. He is an only child, a husband, a 5-string banjo player, a minister, and a Christian universalist. Putting all of this together he says this means he is, “kind of spoiled, doted upon, pretty eclectic, and can’t shake the idea that God is in the business of finally saving all of God’s lost and wayward children by grace”. After being in pastoral ministry for over 30 years, he has now shifted gears towards writing and podcasting. His first book, Grace Saves All: The Necessity of Christian Universalism was published by Wipf & Stock in April of 2020. His podcast Is called Grace Saves All. It’s Available on iTunes, Google, and other podcast platforms, as well as at the podcast page of his website davidartman.net. In the podcast he has put forward his own views, and interviewed such notables as David Bentley Hart, John Milbank, John Behr, Brad Jersak, William Paul Young, Brian Zahnd, Brian McLaren, Robin Parry and Douglas Campbell.

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If you enjoyed this episode, listen back to our old episode where Brad Jersak interviewed Meghan Henning about her book Educating Early Christians Through the Rhetoric of Hell.

"So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the sojourner resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares the Lord GOD.'

Emphasizing this text illustrates just one way that Palestinians have re-examined the Old Testament to bring to life those passages that have often been overlooked by those eager to legitimate a certain perspective on the land. But Isaac's reading of land in the Bible is far more comprehensive and holistic than pinpointing such key texts, and it is well worth the read. This interview discusses his book and its relevance to the current socio-political situation in Palestine. Enjoy and pick up a copy of his book!

Guest: Dr. Munther Banayout Isaac is Academic Dean and Professor of Biblical Studies at Bethlehem Bible College in Bethlehem, Palestine. In addition to From Land to Lands he's also the author of The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian-Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope (IVP 2020). He's also an Evangelical Lutheran Pastor. He completed his Ph.D. at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, and has an MA from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and Bachelor of Science from Birzeit University in Civil Engineering. He is also actively involved in Musalaha, a reconciliation ministry and he organizes the Christ at the Checkpoint conference which typically happens every other year.

Book Details: The land is an important theme in the Bible through which the whole biblical history in the Old and New Testaments can be studied and analyzed. Looking at the land in the Bible right from its beginnings in the garden of Eden this book approaches the theme from three distinct perspectives - holiness, the covenant, and the kingdom. Through careful analysis the author recognizes that the land has been universalized in Christ, as anticipated in the Old Testament, and as a result promotes a missional theology of the land that underlines the social and territorial dimensions of redemption. Get your copy of his book today!

*Special thanks to Langham Monographs for giving us an interview copy of the book

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Guest: (From his website) Andrew Lawler is author of three books, Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City (Doubleday, 2021), The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, a national bestseller, and Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization.  As a journalist, he has written more than a thousand newspaper and magazine articles from more than two dozen countries. His byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and many others. He is contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology. Andrew’s work has appeared several times in The Best of Science and Nature Writing.

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Photo: From Dan to Beersheba, p. 257

Guest: Dr. Andy Abernethy is Associate professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. He’s the author of Eating in Isaiah (Brill, 2014); The Book of Isaiah and God’s Kingdom (IVP, 2016); God’s Messiah in the Old Testament (Baker, 2020) Discovering Isaiah (Eerdmans/SPCK, 2021), and has a forthcoming book called Savoring Scripture: A Six-Step Guide to Studying the Bible with IVP. He also edited Isaiah and Imperial context: The Book of Isaiah in Times of Empire (Wipf & Stock, 2013) and Interpreting the Old Testament Theologically: Essays in Honor of Willem A. VanGemeren (Zondervan, 2018).

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New Podcast! Have you seen our new podcast, In Parallel? Check it out HERE.

Guest: Prof. Emeritus Douglas Harink has been a faculty member at The King’s University for nearly three decades. In the past he served as charter member and president of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association and president of the Canadian Theological Society. Currently, Douglas is active internationally in the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), regularly presenting papers and planning panels and sessions. With Philip Ziegler (Aberdeen University) he co-founded and co-chairs the group, Explorations in Theology and Apocalyptic, which meets annually at AAR. He also currently co-chairs the Pauline Theology Section of SBL. He is regularly invited to speak in churches, academic conferences and other public settings, recently as key-note speaker for the 100th birthday celebration of Hungarian NT scholar, Prof. Sarkadi Nagy Pal, at the Karoli Gaspar Reformatus Egyetem (Reformed theological college), Budapest, Hungary (October 2017). In his scholarly work, Douglas has worked extensively at the intersection of Pauline studies and contemporary theology and philosophy. He continues to work in this area and others. In addition to Resurrecting Justice: Reading Romans for the Life of the World (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020), Harink is the author of numerous important essays and 1 & 2 Peter. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009); Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology beyond Christendom and Modernity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003); and a co-editor (with Joshua B. Davis) and contributor in Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012); and Paul, Philosophy, and the Theopolitical Vision: Critical Engagements with Agamben, Badiou, Žižek and Others (Theopolitical Visions 7; Eugene: Cascade Books, 2010).

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New Podcast! Have you seen our new podcast, In Parallel? Check it out HERE.

For more information about the podcast, see HERE and to learn more about Brent, see HERE.

Poetry: This episode makes reference to Sharon Olds' poem "The Signs," from The Golden Cell, p. 78.

Help Support In Parallel: Visit our Donate Page if you want to support this new show.

For more information about the podcast, see HERE and to learn more about Brent, see HERE.

Help Support In Parallel: Visit our Donate Page if you want to support this new show.

Guest: Chris EW Green is Professor of Public Theology at Southeastern University and a pastor at Sanctuary Church in Tulsa, OK, where he lives with his wife, Julie, and their three kids: Zoë, Clive, and Emery. He’s the author of several books, including Surprised by God, The End is Music: A Companion to Robert W. Jenson’s Theology (Cascade), Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper(CPT Press) and Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture (CPT Press). Chris is the author most recently of All Things Beautiful (Baylor Univ Press, 2021), and his current work focuses on the place of Mary and other saints in Christian theology and spirituality.

Help Support OnScript: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.

If you liked this episode ... Listen to our earlier episode with Chris about his book Sanctifying Vision. 

Guest: Charles is an Episcopal priest currently serving as Associate Rector of Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky. He taught Old Testament and Semitic languages for almost ten years at the seminary and college levels and earned a PhD in Bible and ancient Near East with an emphasis in cuneiform languages from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is External Affiliate at the Centre of the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary's University, Twickenham. He's also a founder, managing editor, and director of media for The Marginalia Review of Books, which is part of the LA Review of Books. He edited Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither? (Zondervan, 2015) and is coauthor, editor, and translator (with Saana Svärd) of Women's Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Anthology of the Earliest Female Authors (Cambridge, 2017). Finally, he's the author of the book discussed in this episode, A Human-Shaped God: Theology of an Embodied God (WJK 2021). He translated the cuneiform collection of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

Help Support OnScript: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.

Hosts: Chris McKinny and Kyle Keimer.

Give: Help support OnScript’s Biblical World HERE. Thanks to all of you who have supported us!

Image by by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Guest: Rev. Dr. Vince Bantu is Assistant Professor of Church History and Black Church Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He’s the author of Gospel Haymanot: A Constructive Theology and Critical Reflection on African and Diasporic Christianity (2020), and the book discussed in this episode, A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity (IVP 2020). Vince is also the founder and director of the Meachum School of Haymanot (Haymanot is Ge’ez, or Ethiopic for faith), which exists to bring biblical, grad-level theological education to African-American, ethnic minority and low-income communities in a contextualized and affordable manner.

Help Support OnScript: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.

Mentioned in this Episode: J. Edward Walters, Eastern Christianity: A Reader (Eerdmans).

Thanks again to our sponsor for this event, IVP Academic! Check out their catalogue HERE.

Guest:  Dr. Carol Newsom is Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at Candler School of Theology. She’s written quite a few books, including Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, the OTL commentary on Daniel, and the book we’re discussing today called The Spirit Within Me: Self and Agency in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism (Yale UP). She edited several books, including the acclaimed Women’s Bible Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 3rd ed., 2012), now in its third edition. She has translated and published some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including The Hodayot and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. She was president of the Society of Biblical Literature, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Help Support OnScript: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.

If you enjoyed this episode ... listen to our earlier episode with Carol Newsom, and our episode with Brent Strawn where he called her "the smartest person in the room."

The Book: Thomas H. McCall, Analytic Christology and the Theological Interpretation of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). This study draws upon the resources of both contemporary analytic theology and the theological interpretation of the New Testament in order to investigate a set of important issues in Christology. It is the first work in analytic Christology to draw upon both recent scholarship in biblical studies and recent contributions to analytic philosophy and theology. Thomas H. McCall explores the themes of union with Christ and the faith of Christ as these are developed by the "apocalyptic" and "New Perspective" interpreters of Pauline theology. The volume offers a careful analysis of recent dogmatic proposals about the identity of Christ and the doctrine of election, and provides an examination of debates over the subordination of the Son in Hebrews. It also probes the relationship of the incarnate Son to his Father in Johannine theology. McCall presents an exegetically-grounded theological engagement with recent work on the place of logic in the doctrine of the incarnation. (publisher's description).

Guest: Tom McCall is the Timothy C. and Julie M. Tennent Chair of Theology at Asbury Theological Seminary. Ph.D., Systematic Theology, Calvin Theological Seminary (2004). Prior to his appointment at Asbury, Tom served for sixteen years as Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at TEDS, where he was also the Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding. During this same time, he held an appointment as Professorial Fellow in Exegetical and Analytic Theology at the University of St. Andrews. He is author of numerous books, including with Keith D. Stanglin, After Arminius: A Historical Introduction to Arminian Theology (Oxford University Press, 2020); Against God and Nature: The Doctrine of Sin (Crossway, 2019); An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (IVP Academic, 2015); Forsaken: The Trinity and the Cross, and Why It Matters (IVP Academic, 2012); Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (OUP, 2012).

OnScript's Review: "With razor sharp precision, Thomas McCall carves out a productive new space for theological conversation. He brings clarity to fraught topics such as apocalyptic discourse in Paul's letters, the pistis Christou debate, social trinitarianism, and Karl Barth's proposals about the incarnation. Highly recommended." -- Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity and associate professor of theology at Quincy University

When? Nov 22nd (2021), 8pm. Where? Little Rhein Prost Haus –https://www.littlerheinprosthaus.com/ What? Live recording with Vince about his book, A Multitude of All Peoples (IVP), free food, a chance to connect. Registration: Sign up for the free event HERE.

OnScript's new podcast In Parallel, launches in January. You can subscribe now wherever you listen.

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Guest: Gary is Professor of Old Testament at Cairn University in Philadelphia, and is the author of two major works on the Old Testament, The Torah Story (Zondervan) and Old Testament Use of the Old Testament: A Book-By-Book Guide (Zondervan). Gary also hosts Hebrewdaybyday, which offers a short explanation of a Hebrew text each day. Subscribe to on Twitter or Youtube.  

Help Support OnScript: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.

Events: Join us for a live OnScript event with Vince Bantu on Nov 22nd in San Antonio. Free food! https://onscript.study/events/

Guest: Matthew Suriano: https://jewishstudies.umd.edu/directory/matthew-suriano

Hosts: Chris and Kyle  Topics Covered: Matt, Chris, and Kyle discuss the following topics: monumental burials in Jerusalem; ancestor traditions in the Bible; elite and royal burial customs in ancient Israel. Resources: Suriano, Matthew 2018 A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press). -- The Politics of Dead Kings: Dynastic Ancestors in the Book of Kings and Ancient Israel (Mohr Siebeck, 2010).

Give: Help support OnScript’s Biblical World HERE. Thanks to all of you who have supported us! H/T to David Schroder for the OnCrypt idea!

The Book: Joshua M. McNall, Perhaps: Reclaiming the Space between Doubt and Dogmatism (IVP Academic, 2021). The Christian life requires faith. That means that believers are sometimes faced with uncertainty. But is all uncertainty bad? Theologian Joshua McNall encourages readers to reclaim the little word "perhaps" as a sacred space between the warring extremes of unchecked doubt and zealous dogmatism. To say "perhaps" on certain contested topics means exercising a hopeful imagination, asking hard questions, returning once again to Scripture, and reclaiming the place of holy speculation as we cling to a faith that stands distinct from both pervasive skepticism and abrasive certainty. In this day especially, it's time Christians learned to say "perhaps." (publisher's description).

Guest: Joshua McNall is Ambassador of Church Relations and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, where he directs the honors program. After planting a Wesleyan church near Grand Rapids, Michigan, Josh completed his PhD at the University of Manchester (UK). Since then, he has published several books, including A Free Corrector: Colin Gunton and the Legacy of Augustine (Fortress, 2015), the popular-level, Long Story Short: The Bible in Six Simple Movements (Seedbed, 2018), and The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ's Work (Zondervan Academic, 2019). He and his wife Brianna have four small children and he blogs regularly on issues of theology and culture at www.joshuamcnall.com.

OnScript's Review: "Perhaps a meadow exists between dogmatism and skepticism, a fruitful space for cultivating beautiful truth. Perhaps Origen, Augustine, and Edwards can converse there with Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy. Perhaps instead of rehearsing or debunking information, we can foster theological imagination. Perhaps Joshua McNall's wit and wisdom has pointed the church toward a better future. Perhaps we should listen." -- Matthew W. Bates, author of Gospel Allegiance and associate professor of theology at Quincy University

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Guest: Caryn Reeder is Associate Professor of New Testament at Westmont College in California. She grew up on a farm in central Illinois, and then did her B.A. at Augustana College, M.A. and M.Phil at Wheaton College, and her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. She is the author of The Enemy in the Household: Family Violence in Deuteronomy and Beyond (Baker Academic, 2012), and several other articles and essays on war and violence in the Old and New Testaments. Her current research focuses on the experience of women and children in war in the New Testament and its cultural environment.

Book: The Enemy in the Household: Family Violence in Deuteronomy and Beyond (Baker Academic, 2012) (From the Baker Academic Website) 'Three laws in Deuteronomy command violence against a family member--the enemy in the household - who leads others away from covenantal obligations to God. Several biblical and post-biblical narratives make use of such violence. In this fresh approach to troubling biblical texts, Caryn Reeder explores the "family violence" passages in Deuteronomy, tracing their ancient interpretation and assessing their contemporary significance. The Enemy in the Household examines such "constructive" violence carried out to protect the covenant community by investigating the reading practices of ancient Jewish and Christian interpreters of Scripture and their applications of these passages. It also provides modern readers with a model for the ethical interpretation of these difficult texts.'

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Guest: Kevin Grasso is about to obtain his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Hebrew as well as an MA in Comparative Religion. He was previously awarded an MA in Linguistics at Dallas International University. His work focuses on applying theoretical linguistics, particularly syntax and semantics, to the biblical languages for the purpose of exegesis. Within biblical studies, he is interested in faith, law, and messiahship and how Second Temple Judaism conceived of each of these categories. He lives just outside of Atlanta with his wife Rachel and son Emmett and will soon be joined by Rhoda and Olivia, two daughters he is adopting from Liberia in a few weeks.

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Guest: Matt is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Regent College, Vancouver. He's also a co-founder and host of this podcast (though this interview was Dru's idea). He is the author of First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods (Eisenbrauns), Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible: A Literary and Cultural Study (Cambridge, 2020), and Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles: Temple, Priesthood, and Kingship in Post-Exilic Perspective (Mohr Siebeck, 2014). He also has a forthcoming volume entitled Flood and Fury: Engaging Old Testament Violence (IVP).

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Check our other podcasts: OnScript and Biblical World Check out the podcasts mentioned in the Trailer: Inverse podcast and Poetry Unbound Logo design by Mim Ward

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Guests: Scot McKnight is Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He has written more than fifty books and also blogs regularly on his highly influential blog Jesus Creed. Scot is a much sought-after conference speaker and a renowned expert on early Christianity. He has written both academic and popular titles, including The Jesus Creed (Christianity Today’s book of the year in 2004); The Blue Parakeet, Open to the Spirit, and The King Jesus Gospel. McKnight has also written many books for a scholarly audience, including several excellent commentaries in the NICNT series (Eerdmans).

Hans Boersma is Order of St. Benedict Servants of Christ Endowed Professorship in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous books, including Seeing God (Eerdmans); Scripture as Real Presence (Baker Academic); and Heavenly Participation (Eerdmans).

Hans Boersma, Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew (IVP Academic, 2021).

Guest: Robert Chao Romero is an Associate Professor in the UCLA departments of Chicana/o Studies and Central America Studies, and Asian American Studies.  He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in Latin American History and his Juris Doctor from U.C. Berkeley, and is also an attorney. Romero is the author of several books, including, The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940 (Univ of Arizona Press, 2012) and Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity (IVP Academic, 2020). “The Chinese in Mexico” received the Latina/o Studies book award from the Latin American Studies Association and “The Brown Church” received the InterVarsity Press Readers’ Choice Award for best academic title. Romero is also an ordained minister and faith rooted community organizer.

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Guest (from the publisher's website): Willie James Jennings is associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University Divinity School. His book The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race won both the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Willie is also an OnScript veteran, and you can listen to his interview on The Christian Imagination here.

Book (from the publisher's website): After Whiteness - Theological education has always been about formation: first of people, then of communities, then of the world. If we continue to promote whiteness and its related ideas of masculinity and individualism in our educational work, it will remain diseased and thwart our efforts to heal the church and the world. But if theological education aims to form people who can gather others together through border-crossing pluralism and God-drenched communion, we can begin to cultivate the radical belonging that is at the heart of God’s transformative work.

In this inaugural volume of the Theological Education between the Times series, Willie James Jennings shares the insights gained from his extensive experience in theological education, most notably as the dean of a major university’s divinity school—where he remains one of the only African Americans to have ever served in that role. He reflects on the distortions hidden in plain sight within the world of education but holds onto abundant hope for what theological education can be and how it can position itself at the front of a massive cultural shift away from white, Western cultural hegemony. This must happen through the formation of what Jennings calls erotic souls within ourselves—erotic in the sense that denotes the power and energy of authentic connection with God and our fellow human beings.

After Whiteness is for anyone who has ever questioned why theological education still matters. It is a call for Christian intellectuals to exchange isolation for intimacy and embrace their place in the crowd—just like the crowd that followed Jesus and experienced his miracles. It is part memoir, part decolonial analysis, and part poetry—a multimodal discourse that deliberately transgresses boundaries, as Jennings hopes theological education will do, too.

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Episode: In this episode, Erin interviews Beverly Roberts Gaventa on Pauline theology, her thoughts on pedagogy, and on why Matt Bates is wrong about Karl Barth. This is a republished episode, but well worth a listen!

Guest:  Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Baylor University. She previously taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, Columbia Seminary, and Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Her specializations include theological and historical interpretation of the letters of Paul, and the letter of Romans in particular. She was the president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2016, and she has received numerous awards and honorary degrees for her exceptional teaching and research. She is the author of numerous books, including When in Romans, Our Mother Saint Paul, and Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5-8.

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Guest/Host: Dr. Dru Johnson is associate professor of biblical and theological studies at The King’s College in New York City, director of theCenter for Hebraic Thought, and host of The Biblical Mind podcast. He’s written 8 books including Knowledge by Ritual (Eisenbrauns/Penn State University), Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments (Eerdmans, 2019), and Biblical Philosophy: A Hebraic Approach to the Old and New Testaments (Cambridge, 2021). Before that, he was a high-school dropout, skinhead, punk rock drummer, combat veteran, IT supervisor, and pastor.

Give: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.

For more from American Waste Control, go HERE.

Special thanks to Nashotah House Theological Seminary for hosting this event, and to Rebecca Terhune for organizing it.

Did you know, OnScript has another podcast - Biblical World? Check it out!

Episode: In this wide-ranging episode Amy Brown Hughes talks with Sameer Yadav about the 'promiscuous' nature of theology, his book The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God: Toward a Theological Empiricism, his recent work on apophaticism in the Christian mystical tradition, and race in the philosophy of religion. Enjoy this re-released episode!

Guest: Sameer Yadav is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont. He graduated from Boise State University with a bachelor degree in philosophy, earned a Master of Divinity at Master’s Seminary, a Master of Sacred Theology at Yale Divinity School, and a doctorate in theology and ethics at Duke Divinity School, with a primary concentration in systematic and philosophical theology and minor concentrations in moral theology and Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. He is the author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God (Fortress Press, 2015), and has published in various journals including The Journal of Analytic Theology, Journal of Religion, Faith and Philosophy and Pro Ecclesia. He's a member in American Academy of Religion, Society of Christian Philosophers, Society of Christian Ethics, and Society of Scriptural Reasoning. (drawn from the Westmont website)

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Guest: Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh is the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology and Professor of the History of Christianity at Regent College, Vancouver. He completed his D. Phil from Oxford in 1993. He's the author of major books: John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1996), The Evangelical Conversion Narrative (Oxford University Press, 2005), and The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2018). Bruce has been the recipient of numerous teaching awards, research grants and fellowships.  He has also been a Mayers Research Fellow at the Huntington Library and a holder of the Henry Luce III Theological Fellowship. Bruce is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a past-president of the American Society of Church History.

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Guest (from the University of Aberdeen): Philip Ziegler holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto / Victoria University, where he studied systematic and historical theology, ecumenics and the philosophy of religion at several member colleges of the Toronto School of Theology. He was ordained to the Order of Ministry of the United Church of Canada in 1996. During 2000/1 he was a Junior Fellow of Massey College in the University of Toronto. After holding a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Religion, he taught at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada as Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology. Philip joined the faculty of the University of Aberdeen as Lecturer in Systematic Theology in January 2006. In 2016 he was appointed to a personal Chair in Christian Dogmatics. He is a Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.

Book: Militant Grace (Baker, 2018) (from the publisher's website):This clear and comprehensive introduction to apocalyptic theology demonstrates the significance of apocalyptic readings of the New Testament for systematic theology and highlights the ethical implications of the apocalyptic turn in biblical and theological studies. Written by a leading theologian and proponent of apocalyptic theology, this primer explores the impact of important recent Pauline scholarship on contemporary theology and argues for a renewed understanding of key Christian doctrines, including sin, grace, revelation, redemption, and the Christian life.

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If you like this: Check  out our interview with Fred Sanders on his book The Triune God.

Give: Help support OnScript as we grow and develop. Click HERE.

OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Did you know? OnScript has another podcast called Biblical World, which focuses on the history, cultures, archaeology, and geography of the Bible. Check it out HERE.

Guest: Dr. Brent Strawn is professor of Old Testament and Law at Duke Divinity School. He taught for 18 years at Candler School of Theology at Emory University before joining the Duke faculty in 2019. He’s the author of several books, including The Old Testament Is Dying (Baker Academic, 2017), The Old Testament: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2019), and But today we’re talking about Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament (WJK Press 2021). His forthcoming book is called Honest to God Preaching: Talking Sin, Suffering, and Violence (Fortress, 2021).

If you enjoyed this episode ... check out our previous episodes with Brent HERE (on how the Bible isn't a story) and HERE (on how the OT is dying).

Give: Help support OnScript as we grow and develop. Click HERE.

OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Did you know? OnScript has another podcast called Biblical World, which focuses on the history, cultures, archaeology, and geography of the Bible. Check it out HERE.

Guest: Dr. Brittany Wilson is Associate Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. She’s the author of Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts (OUP) which won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2015, and she’s written The Embodied God: Seeing the Divine in Luke-Acts and the Early Church (OUP 2021), discussed in this episode. She’s also working on a larger project that explores divine embodiment across the NT. Wilson serves on editorial boards for the Library of New Testament Studies and the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, and she is the co-chair for the Society of Biblical Literature Gospel of Luke section. She also serves on steering committees for the Society of Biblical Literature Book of Acts section and the Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds section. Wilson has been a Regional Scholar for the Society of Biblical Literature and received a sabbatical grant for researchers from the Louisville Institute in 2016-2017. She is a United Methodist and a John Wesley Fellow.

Give: Help support OnScript as we grow and develop. Click HERE.

OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

The Book: Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (4th ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). The Christian doctrine of justification is of immense interest to historians and theologians ,and continues to be of major importance in modern ecumenical discussions. The present work appeared in its first edition in 1986, and rapidly became the leading reference work on the subject. Its many acclaimed features include a detailed assessment of the semantic background of the concept in the Ancient Near East, a thorough examination of the doctrine of the medieval period, and an especially careful analysis of its development during the critical years of the sixteenth century. The substantially rewritten fourth edition thoroughly updates the work, responding to the latest developments in scholarly literature and user feedback. It will remain an essential resource for all concerned with the development of Christian doctrine, the history of the Reformation debates on the identity of Christianity, and modern discussions between Protestants and Roman Catholics over the nature of salvation. (Publisher’s description).

Guest: Alister McGrath is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford; Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion; Fellow of Harris Manchester College. He is the author of many books, including Narrative Apologetics (2019); Inventing the Universe (2015); Deep Magic, Dragons and Talking Mice (2015); C. S. Lewis: A Life (2013); Luther's Theology of the Cross (1985); and The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (1987).

OnScript's Review: Alister McGrath's field-defining treatment of the history of the doctrine of justification, Iustitia Dei, has been extensively rewritten, enriched, and brought up to date in this 4th edition. It remains the single best resource for accurately understanding how Christian salvation has been conceptualized down through the ages. It is difficult to imagine it ever being surpassed. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone; associate professor of theology, Quincy University

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Guest: Leopoldo A. Sánchez M. (PhD, Concordia Seminary) is the Werner R. H. and Elizabeth R. Krause Professor of Hispanic Ministries at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Sánchez's published work includes Receiver, Bearer, and Giver of God’s Spirit; Immigrant Neighbors Among Us: Immigration Across Theological Traditions, which he co-edited with M. Daniel Carroll R.; Teología de la santificación; and Pneumatología, Sculptor Spirit: Models of Sanctification from Spirit Christology(IVP 2019), and T&T Clark Introduction to Spirit Christology (T&T Clark, 2021). (adapted from the IVP site)

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Jules will start this fall as Milton B. Engebretson Chair in Evangelism and Justice at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. Most recently he has served as Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Masters in Theological Studies at Trinity International University in Florida. Dr. Martinez’s research interests range from Christology, trinitarian theology, political theologies, and missional theology. His first book, A Visible Witness: Christology, Liberation and Participation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), is available in English and Spanish (Publicaciones Kerygma). As a professor, Dr. Martínez has a rich and diverse teaching background, having taught at seminaries in Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Perú, and the United States. As an ordained minister, his broad pastoral experience includes serving as a pastor in Latino/a churches in Illinois and church planter in Puerto Rico. It was these very commitments which, in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, led him to co-found The Christ Collaborative, an interdenominational initiative focused on disaster relief and community development. He lives in Miami with his family.

Guest: Dr. Dominick Hernandez was the Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Since recording the podcast, Dominick has accepted a job as associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He completed his MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and PhD in Hebrew Bible at Bar-Illan University in Israel. He’s the author of Illustrated Job in Hebrew (Glossa House) and a book that we’ll discuss today called Proverbs: Pathways to Wisdom (published by Abingdon Press).

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Guest: Beth Allison Barr, Professor of Church History and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at Baylor University. Her research focuses on women in medieval and early modern sermons. She is also interested in the way that the Reformation affected women, as well as in how attitudes toward women changed and stayed the same from the medieval to the Reformation era.

(From Baylor's Website): Beth Allison Barr received her B.A. from Baylor University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on women and religion in medieval and early modern England, especially in how they are viewed and portrayed in sermon literature. How the advent of Protestantism affected women’s roles in the church has carried her research beyond medieval Catholicism into the world of early modern Baptists. Beth is the author of The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England, co-editor of The Acts of the Apostles: Four Centuries of Baptist Interpretation, The Making of Biblical Womanhood (Brazos, 2021), and author of more than a dozen articles (published and forthcoming). She is currently working on her next book, Women in English Sermons, 1350-1700. She is also a regular contributor to The Anxious Bench, a religious history blog on Patheos which has paved the way for her contributions in Christianity Today and The Washington Post.

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Episode: Walter Brueggemann is on the show to talk about his life as a biblical scholar, as well as his recent book Delivered Out of Empire - Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus (WJK Press, 2021). 

Guest: Walter Brueggemann is surely one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He has been a highly sought-after speaker.

Brueggemann was born in Tilden, Nebraska in 1933. He often speaks of the influence of his father, a German Evangelical pastor. Brueggemann attended Elmhurst College, graduating in 1955 with an A.B. He went on to Eden Theological Seminary, earning a B.D. (equivalent to today’s M.Div.) in 1958. He completed his formal theological education at Union Theological Seminary in 1961, earning the Th.D. under the primary guidance of James Muilenburg. While teaching at Eden, he earned a Ph.D. in education at St. Louis University.

Brueggemann has served as faculty at two institutions in his career: Eden Theological Seminary (1961-1986) and Columbia Theological Seminary (1986-2003). He is currently William Marcellus McPheeters professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia.

Brueggemann’s primary method with the text is rhetorical criticism. Words matter to Brueggemann, and one can tell that by listening to him speak as he hangs on to particularly theologically significant words. His magnum opus, Theology of the Old Testament (1997), is a rhetorical-critical look at the Old Testament through the lenses of “testimony, dispute, and advocacy.”

Many have come to know Brueggemann through his book entitled The Prophetic Imagination, originally published in 1978. His best-known work, however, may be with the Psalms. Numerous church leaders have used his Message of the Psalms as a new way of organizing and processing the Psalms. He has been writing about the Psalms since 1982, and he continues to this day with a commentary published in 2014.

Hosts: Mary Buck (Shepherds Theological Seminary) and Chris McKinny (Gesher Media) 

Summary: In this episode, Chris and Mary discuss the following: - The accidental discovery of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and the expedition - An overview of the city of Ugarit, the finds, and its significance in the 2nd millennium BC - Potential connections between Ugarit and the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.

Additional Resources: 2019 - Buck, Mary - Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit; 2019 - Buck, Mary - The Canaanites; Their History and Culture from Texts and Artifacts.

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Hosts: Chris McKinny (Gesher Media) and Mark Janzen (Louisiana College) 

Summary: In this episode, Chris and Mark discuss the following: becoming an Egyptologist and the role of Egyptology in biblical studies; Karnak Temple - the most impressive surviving building of the ancient world; the Karnak Great Hypostyle Hall Project; imaging and epigraphy on the exterior of the west wall of the Cour de la Cachette (Merneptah's battle scenes); the relationship between the wall reliefs of Cour de la Cachette and the Israel/Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BC)

Additional Resources: Great Hypostyle Hall Project; Discussion of Cour de la Cachette (Merneptah); Digital Karnak UCLA; BiblePlaces Karnak Temple; Israelite Origins article 2020 by Rendsburg; Battle of Kadesh and World’s First Peace Treaty

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Hosts: Chris McKinny (Gesher Media) and Oliver Hersey (Jerusalem University College) 

Episode Summary: 

In this episode, Chris and Oliver discuss the following: 

The historical background of Assyrian interactions with Israel and Judah in the late 8th century BC; The destruction of Israel by the Assyrians; The campaign of Sennacherib to Judah in 701 BC; The archaeological evidence at Tel Sheba (decommissioned altar); The archaeological evidence at Arad (decommissioned shrine). The archaeological evidence at Tel Moza (reformed “temple”) The archaeological evidence at the Lachish gate shrine (decommissioned and defiled)

Additional Resources: 

Jerusalem University College (JUC); JUC Summer Institute; JUC Online; Context of Scripture in Accordance Bible Software; BAS Article on Lachish and BASOR article on same subject; Moulis 2019 “Hezekiah’s Cultic Reforms according to the Archaeological Evidence”

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Guest: Dr. Gene L. Green is Dean of Trinity International University in Florida. He is also Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School. He previously served as Professor of New Testament, Dean, and Rector of the Seminario ESEPA in San José, Costa Rica. In addition to Spanish commentaries on the Petrine epistles and Thessalonian letters, his publications include The Letters to the Thessalonians and Jude and 2 Peter and Vox Petri: A Theology of Peter. (Adapted from publisher's website).

The Book (from the publisher): "Peter stands at the beginning of Christian theology. Christianity's central confessions regarding the person of Jesus, the cross, salvation, the inclusive nature of the people of God, and the end of all things come to us through the apostle who was not only the church's leader but also its first theologian. Peter is the apostle for the whole church and the whole church resonates with his theology. We sing his song, though we may not have glanced at the bottom of the page in the hymnbook to see who wrote the words and composed the tune. Peter is the "lost boy" of Christian theology, a person overlooked as a theological innovator and pillar, but his rightful place is at the head of the table. If we look closely, however, we may recognize that he has been seated there all along."

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Episode:  I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown... I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom. (Richard Wright, Black Boy)

The sentiment of Wright's words is one that resonates deeply with immigrants everywhere. Immigration brings an acute awareness of our connections to land, to food, to culture––things we all take for granted until we uproot and transplant ourselves, and then attempt to bloom in foreign soil. In this episode, M. Daniel Carroll R. guides us through what the Bible has to say about immigration as he and Erin discuss his new book, The Bible and Borders. Carroll Rodas has been speaking and writing about immigration for the better part of the past twenty years, and brings a wealth of personal experience and scholarly wisdom to the conversation.

Guest: M. Daniel Carroll Rodas is the Scripture Press Ministries Chair of Biblical Studies and Pedagogy at Wheaton College, where he was previously Blanchard Professor of Old Testament. Prior to his time at Wheaton he was a Professor of Old Testament for many years at Denver Seminary, and he also taught at El Seminario Teológico Centroamericano (SETECA). Carroll is half-Guatemalan and was raised in a bilingual and bicultural household, and spent many summers in Guatemala in his youth. The realities and challenges of politics, poverty, and war in Central America fostered his passion for the Old Testament texts and Old Testament social ethics. Carroll is also the author of the NICOT commentary on Amos (Eerdmans, 2020), and an earlier book on immigration, Christians at the Border (Baker, 2008).

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Guest: J. Todd Billings is the Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. He’s an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, and received his M.Div. from Fuller Seminary and his Th.D. from Harvard. He’s the author of 7 books, including The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture, Calvin’s Theology and Its Reception, Rejoicing in Lament, and The End of the Christian Life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live (Brazos, 2020).

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Guest: Dr. Mari Joerstad is a research associate at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, where she’s working on a project called “Facing the Anthropocene.” She graduated with a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Duke Divinity School, and is the author of The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Non-Humans, and the Living Landscape (Cambridge, 2020). She has recently been appointed as Dean of the Vancouver School of Theology, a post that will commence in the summer of 2021.

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Episode: Generativity over usefulness and efficiency. Making versus fixing. The "new newness" of Redemption and New Creation. In this episode artist, writer, and speaker Makoto Fujimura joins co-host Amy Hughes to discuss his new book Art + Faith: A Theology of Making. Depending on one's church tradition, the role of art in the theological endeavor can span the range from fundamental to antagonistic. Fujimura builds upon his earlier work on culture care to offer a theological vision that offers coherence and beauty to truncated versions of the gospel.

Guest: Makoto Fujimura is an artist, writer, and speaker who is recognized worldwide as a cultural shaper. A Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003-2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. In 2014, the American Academy of Religion named Makoto Fujimura as its "2014 Religion and the Arts" award recipient. He has had numerous museum exhibits including Tikotin Museum in Israel and Gonzaga Jundt Museum. New York's Waterfall Mansion & Gallery, Asia's Artrue Gallery represents his works. New York Times colonist David Brooks has featured Fujimura's work and Culture Care as "a small rebellion against the quickening of time." His new book Art + Faith: A Theology of Making (Yale Press) has been called by poet Christian Wiman as “a tonic for our atomized time.”

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Credit to Windrider Production for Makoto Fujimura's photo.

Guest:  Prof. Ervine Sheblazm is the author of numerous books, including Paul, Multiverse Theory and the Journey of the Inner Soul; Faultlines in the Horizon: Paul’s Dawning Age Marches On; Feathers on the Nose: Paul’s Radical Pastoral Theology for the Non-Anthropic World; and he’s here today to talk about his latest, Paul's Theology of Universalism: The Final Words: Paul's Voyage Must Go On. Prof. Sheblatzm has Ph.D.’s in theology and physics, and holds a distinguished chair in theology and physics at the Center For Excellence that he runs in the Lake District, in the UK. The CFE is a theological lab and farmstead whose mission is to “propagate philosophical consideration of the known world, and the unknown world, and observe experimentally the aforesaid.”

What readers are saying: Read what Sheblatzm's readers think (from the back cover)!

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

The Book: Julien C. H. Smith, Paul and the Good Life: Transformation and Citizenship in the Commonwealth of God (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020). Salvation and human flourishing—a life marked by fulfillment and well-being—have often been divorced in the thinking and practice of the church. For the apostle Paul, however, the two were inseparable in the vision for the good life. Drawing on the revolutionary teachings and kingdom proclamation of Jesus, Paul and the early church issued a challenge to the ancient world’s dominant narratives of flourishing. Paul’s conviction of Jesus’ universal Lordship emboldened him to imagine not just another world, but this world as it might be when transformed. Ultimately, Paul and the Good Life invites us to imagine how citizens of this heavenly commonwealth might live in the in-between time, in which Jesus’s reign has been inaugurated but not consummated. (Publisher’s description, abridged).

US Orders (valid for as long as the deal happens to last): use code 17PGL at baylorpress.com receive 20% off + free shipping.

Guest: Julien C. H. Smith’s scholarly interests center on Biblical texts and traditions. He received his BA from the University of California at Berkeley in French and Slavic Languages and Literature, an MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a PhD in Religion from Baylor University. He has written on a variety of New Testament and apocryphal subjects, including Ephesians, Acts, and the Epistle of Barnabas. His first book, Christ the Ideal King: Cultural Context, Rhetorical Strategy, and the Power of Divine Monarchy in Ephesians, was published in 2011. Recent publications include “You are my witnesses: Walker Percy, Jacques Maritain, and the Jews,” in Religion and Literature, and “The Epistle of Barnabas and the Two Ways of Teaching Authority,” in Vigiliae Christianae. Smith teaches “Christian Tradition, ”seminars on Jesus, Paul, Theology & Ecology, and in the First-Year Program.

OnScript's Review (back cover endorsement): Headwaters are elusive. So, essential streams are navigated separately: the gospel, spiritual practices, politics, church life, philosophy. But in this exciting and important study, Julien Smith goes farther back and deeper in. He shows that the gospel invites us not merely to trust a savior, but to give allegiance to the ideal king for the sake of human flourishing. The separate streams are joined to the headwaters and mapped afresh. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone; associate professor of theology, Quincy University

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Guest: Dr. Clinton Bailey is a leading authority on Bedouin culture, and has done fieldwork in Sinai and the Negev for the past 50 years. His B.A. is from the Hebrew University; his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He was born and raised in Buffalo, NY, and made Aliya to Israel in 1958. In 1994, he was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award for his efforts to obtain civil rights for Bedouin in Israel. His books include such titles as:

• Bedouin Poetry(Oxford University Press, 1991)
• A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs (Yale University Press, 2004)
• Bedouin Law (Yale University Press, 2010)
• Bedouin Culture in the Bible (Yale University Press, 2018)

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OnScript was voted one of the top 20 theology podcasts! https://blog.feedspot.com/theology_podcasts/

Guest: Bethany Sollereder is a Research Fellow at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute at Campion Hall. She specializes in theology concerning evolution and the problem of suffering and is currently working on the theological aspects of our changing climate. Bethany received her PhD in Theology from the University of Exeter and an MCS in interdisciplinary studies from Regent College, Vancouver. She is the author of God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy Without a Fall (Routledge, 2018). She also works with BioLogos, God and the Big Bang, Learning About Science And Religion (LASAR), and has written for popular publications such as The Christian Century.

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Guest: Andrew Rillera is currently a PhD candidate in New Testament at Duke University and serves as an adjunct professor at Eternity Bible College for their Distance Ed program. He is also a consultant and Research Editor for PAX Collective (madeforpax.org/about-us): A non-profit, which seeks to promote the peace of Jesus in the 21st century through accessible Christian content specifically targeting Generation Z and Millennials. He is currently finishing up his dissertation on Romans and working on a book forthcoming with Cascade Books, Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus’s Death. He wrote Fight: A Christian Case for Nonviolence (Cook, 2013) with Preston Sprinkle (now re-titled as Nonviolence: The Revolutionary Way of Jesus). His academic interests include the apostle Paul’s relation to Early Judaism, race and ethnicity in the Bible, theological ethics (war, violence, restorative justice, environment, economy), theological hermeneutics, sacrifice and sacrificial imagery, and Philo. Previously, he served as a Children's Ministry and College Director while completing his MA in Theology and Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. When Andrew isn’t hanging out with his family, reading, or grading, he is probably watching or playing hockey.

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Guest: Lucy Peppiatt is Principal of Westminster Theological Centre, where she also lectures in Systematic Theology. She’s the author of Rediscovering Scripture's Vision for Women (IVP, 2019), Unveiling Paul’s Women: Making Sense of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 (Wipf and Stock, 2018), Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians (Wipf and Stock, 2015), and The Disciple: On Becoming Truly Human (Wipf and Stock, 2012).

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Guest: Matthew Thiessen (PhD, Duke University) is associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He is the author of Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (awarded the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise), Paul and the Gentile Problem, and Jesus and the Forces of Death. He is also the coeditor of several volumes.

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Guests: Dr. Ben Witherington III is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over fifty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today, as well as Voices and Views on Paul (IVP 2020), co-authored with Jason Myers. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Patheos website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.

Dr. Jason A. Myers (Ph.D., Asbury Theological Seminary, 2015) is the Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Greensboro College. In addition to this full time role, he is also lecturer in New Testament at Westminster Theological Centre in the U.K. Jason is active in both the academy and the church and serves as the director of preaching in his church context.  He is the co-author of Voices and Views on Paul (IVP 2020) and Paul of Arabia (Cascade 2020). He is married to Lisa (13 years) and they have a son, Augustine and live in Greesnboro, NC.

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Guest: Jules A. Martinez-Olivieri, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Masters in Theological Studies at Trinity International University in Florida. Dr. Martinez's research interests range from Christology, trinitarian theology, political theologies, and missional theology. His first book, A Visible Witness: Christology, Liberation and Participation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), is available in English and Spanish (Publicaciones Kerygma). As a professor, Dr. Martínez has a rich and diverse teaching background, having taught at seminaries in Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Perú, and the United States. As an ordained minister, his broad pastoral experience includes serving as a pastor in Latino/a churches in Illinois and church planter in Puerto Rico. It was these very commitments which, in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, led him to co-found The Christ Collaborative, an interdenominational initiative focused on disaster relief and community development. He lives in Miami with his family.

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Guests: Mark R. Glanville (PhD, Bristol University) is associate professor of pastoral theology at Regent College, Vancouver, and an Old Testament scholar. He is the author of Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy and Exodus: Society Reshaped as Family (Lexham, forthcoming) and Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics (IVP, 2021) with his brother Luke; and has written articles for a variety of publications including the Journal of Biblical Literature, Refuge Journal, Journal of Missional Practice, Christian Educators Journal, Evangelicals for Social Action, Faith Today, The Light Magazine, and The Presbyterian Pulse. Mark previously ministered in a missional urban community, Grandview Calvary Baptist Church, Vancouver, and was a professor of congregational theology at the Missional Training Center in Phoenix. He is a trained jazz pianist and lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife, Erin, and their two children.

Luke Glanville (PhD, University of Queensland) is associate professor in the department of international relations at Australian National University. He is the author of Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: A New History, which won the Australian Political Science Association Crisp Prize in 2016 and the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award in 2014, and and Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics (IVP, 2021), co-authored with his brother Mark.

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Guests:  Mike Bird is Academic Dean and Lecturer in Theology at Ridley College. Mike describes himself as a “biblical theologian” who endeavours to bring together biblical studies and systematic theology. He believes that the purpose of the church is to “gospelize,” that is to preach, promote, and practise the Gospel-story of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remembered by students for his mix of outlandish humour and intellectual rigor, he makes theology both entertaining and challenging. Mike has written and edited over thirty books in the fields of Septuagint, Historical Jesus, the Gospels, St Paul, Biblical Theology, and Systematic Theology. His book Evangelical Theology is an attempt to develop a truly gospel-based theology that promotes the advance of the gospel in Christian life and thought. He is the co-editor of the New Covenant Commentary Series, an associate editor for Zondervan’s The Story of God Bible Commentary, and an elected member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (the international society of New Testament scholars).  He often speaks at conferences in Australia, the UK, and USA and has written a New Testament Introduction co-authored with N.T. Wright. He also runs a popular blog called Euangelion. Michael is married to Naomi and they have four children.

Guest: Dr. Wil Gafney is professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Ft. Worth, Texas. She is the author of Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel (Fortress Press), Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne (WJK Press), a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah (Liturgical Press), and she has co-edited several books. She is an Episcopal priest, former Army chaplain, and congregational pastor in the AME Zion Church, and was also a member of a worshipping Reconstructionist Jewish congregation in Philadelphia.

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Guest:  The Very Reverend Dr John Behr is a British Eastern Orthodox priest and theologian.  He is the former Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, where he is currently the Director of the Master of Theology Program and the Father Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics. He was ordained to the diaconate on September 8, 2001 and the priesthood on September 14, 2001. He is the editor of the Patristic Series released by St. Vladimir's Press. He was elected dean of the seminary on November 18, 2006, and served as dean from 2007 until 2017, when he was named Father Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics. He's the author of numerous books, including translation works, e.g., Origen: On First Principles (Oxford), Irenaeus: On the Apostolic Teaching (St Vladimir's Press), The Way to Nicaea, Vol. 1 (St. Vladimir's Press), and Formation of Christian Theology, Vol. 2: The Nicene Faith (St. Vladimir's Press). (adapted from Wikipedia, no less)

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If you like this: Check out our episode with Amy Brown Hughes and Lynn Cohick on their book Christian Women in the Patristic World, as well as our episode with Meghan Henning on her book Educating Early Christians Through the Rhetoric of Hell, and our episode with Matthew Thomas on his book Paul’s ‘Works of the Law’ in the Perspective of Second Century Reception.

Guest:  The Very Reverend Dr John Behr is a British Eastern Orthodox priest and theologian.  He is the former Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, where he is currently the Director of the Master of Theology Program and the Father Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics. He was ordained to the diaconate on September 8, 2001 and the priesthood on September 14, 2001. He is the editor of the Patristic Series released by St. Vladimir's Press. He was elected dean of the seminary on November 18, 2006, and served as dean from 2007 until 2017, when he was named Father Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics. He's the author of numerous books, including translation works, e.g., Origen: On First Principles (Oxford), Irenaeus: On the Apostolic Teaching (St Vladimir's Press), The Way to Nicaea, Vol. 1 (St. Vladimir's Press), and Formation of Christian Theology, Vol. 2: The Nicene Faith (St. Vladimir's Press). (adapted from Wikipedia, no less)

Give: Help support OnScript as we grow and develop. Click HERE.

If you like this: Check out our episode with Amy Brown Hughes and Lynn Cohick on their book Christian Women in the Patristic World, as well as our episode with Meghan Henning on her book Educating Early Christians Through the Rhetoric of Hell, and our episode with Matthew Thomas on his book Paul’s ‘Works of the Law’ in the Perspective of Second Century Reception.

Episode: Dru Johnson talks with Garrick Allen about his ongoing research project to investigate the paratexts of biblical manuscripts, how these help us to understand reception and biblical theologies, and his book Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation: New Philology, Paratexts, Reception (OUP, 2019).

Guest: Garrick V. Allen (PhD 2015, St Andrews) is Associate Professor in the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow. His book The Book of Revelation and Early Jewish Textual Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2017) was awarded the 2019 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise and he has written many articles on the book of Revelation and manuscripts of the New Testament. He is also the recipient of the 2019 Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship awarded by the Society of Biblical Literature.

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The Book: (from Zondervan) The Color of Compromise is both enlightening and compelling, telling a history we either ignore or just don't know. Equal parts painful and inspirational, it details how the American church has helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices. You will be guided in thinking through concrete solutions for improved race relations and a racially inclusive church.

Guest: (from Zondervan) Jemar Tisby (BA, University of Notre Dame; MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is CEO of The Witness, Inc., an organization dedicated to Black uplift. He is also cohost of the Pass the Mic podcast and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Color of Compromise. He has spoken nationwide at conferences, and his writing has been featured by the Washington Post, CNN, and The Atlantic. Jemar is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Mississippi studying race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century. You can also now pre-order Jemar’s second book, How to Fight Racism (Zondervan, 2021), which will be released on January 5th.

Guest: Dr. Jeremy Schipper is Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. In addition to Black Samson, he’s published the Ruth Anchor Bible commentary, Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (OUP, 2011), Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, 2009), Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible (T&T Clark, 2006), and has co-authored Black Samson (OUP 2020) with Nyasha Junior. He’s also co-edited several volumes.

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The Book: Richard Rice, The Future of Open Theism: From Antecedents to Opportunities (IVP Academic, 2020). Open theism has reached its adolescence. How did it get here? And where does it go from here? Since IVP's publication of The Openness of God in 1994, evangelical theology has grappled with the alternative vision of the doctrine of God that open theism offers. Responding to critics who claim that it proposes a truncated version of God that fails to account for Scripture and denies many of the traditional attributes of God, open theism's proponents contend that its view of God is not only biblically warranted but also more accurate―with a portrayal of God that emphasizes divine love for humanity and responsiveness to human free will. No matter what one's assessment, open theism inarguably has made a significant impact on recent theological discourse. Now, twenty-five years later, Richard Rice recounts in this volume the history of open theism from its antecedents and early developments to its more recent and varied expressions. He then considers different directions that open theism might continue to develop in relation to several primary doctrines of the Christian faith. (Publisher’s description).

Guest: Richard Rice received an MDiv degree from Andrews University in 1969, and an MA and PhD in Christian theology from the University of Chicago in 1972 and 1974, respectively. Rice is a Professor of Religion at Loma Linda University in the areas of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Rice is the sole author numerous books, including God's Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will; The Reign of God: An Introduction to Christian Theology from a Seventh-day Adventist Perspective; and Search for Meaning: Contemporary Responses to the Problem of Pain. He also co-authored, along with Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, the book that for practical purposes launched open theism into the mainstream of theological conversation, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God.

OnScript's Review: All Christians have implicit or explicit models regarding how God engages the world. As classical theologians consider the widest categories—God's relationship to time, providence, and human free will—open theism has proven to be a disruptive but necessary conversation partner. Richard Rice masterfully maps the past and present landscape of open theism while adding his own powerful and creative voice. --Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity, for OnScript

The Article: Kevin Grasso, “A Linguistic Analysis of πίστiς Χριστοῦ: The Case for the Third View,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43 (2020), 108-44. Published Abstract: "This study seeks to demonstrate that the Pauline phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ is best understood grammatically as the ‘Christ-faith’ in accordance with the so-called ‘third view’, where ‘faith’ is taken to mean a system or set of beliefs, and ‘Christ’ qualifies what the system is about. I argue that the grammar disallows the meaning ‘faith in Christ’ where Christ is the object of one’s ‘trust’, since objective genitives can only mean ‘belief of something (to be true)’, as is shown by an analysis of the data in the NT and in Harrisville 1994; 2006. Additionally, the subjective genitive rendering often fails to make sense within the literary context and faces its own grammatical difficulties. Drawing on work from theoretical linguistics in lexical semantics and syntax, I show that the third view meaning, translated as the ‘Christ-faith’, is the most likely rendering given the context of each of the passages, the Greek case system and the meaning of the noun πίστις as used in the NT and other Koine Greek writings."

Guest: Kevin Grasso is the founder of Biblingo, a software program to teach the biblical languages, and a PhD student at Hebrew University in the Hebrew language department as well as an MA student in the comparative religion department. He did his MA in linguistics with a focus in Bible translation from Dallas International University. He studies theoretical linguistics, particularly syntax and semantics, as well as contemporaneous literature with the Scriptures. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Rachel and his son Emmett, and in his spare time, he enjoys playing basketball, hiking, hanging out with friends, Bible study, and occasionally attempting to play the violin.

OnScript's Review: Grasso's article makes a bold and potentially momentous claim: the traditional translation, "faith in Christ" as an objective genitive for pistis Christou, is grammatically disallowed. That is, the verb-noun-argument patterning evidenced for the pist* root shows that there is considerable evidence against and no grammatical evidence in favor of this translation, making it all but impossible. Although he may have offered a knock-out blow to the objective genitive, I don't find Grasso's evidence against the subjective decisive, for it does not take seriously enough how Paul establishes a pistis-lexicon and syntax earlier in his letters that places guiderails around how to take subsequent pistis Christou phrases. For example, the entire holistic ek pisteōs eis pistin structure ("by fidelity for fidelity") in Rom 1:17 needs to be taken more fully into account by Grasso given its relationship to dia pisteōs Iēsou Christou (through the fidelity of Jesus the Christ) and eis pantas tous pisteuontas (for all performing the fidelity action) in Rom 3:22. That is, Paul appears to separate the king's initial agency (by or through the Christ's fidelity) and its subsequent "for us" purpose (in order to cultivate human fidelity). [For further discussion, see Bates, "The External-Relational Shift in Faith (Pistis) in New Testament Research" CBR 18 (2020): 176-202, or, in a less technical fashion, Gospel Allegiance, p. 73-82]. Meanwhile Grasso musters evidence from reception history in favor of the third view that those favoring the subjective genitive will need to weigh. Regardless of questions about the subjective genitive versus the third way, Grasso's innovative demonstration that the objective genitive (as traditionally understood) is grammatically disallowed has seismic potential. --Matthew W. Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone, for OnScript

Guest: Dr. Don J. Payne is currently the Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Formation at Denver Seminary, where he has served in various faculty roles since 1998. Prior to earning his PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Manchester, Don served a number of years in pastoral ministry in various churches in Tennessee and Colorado. In addition to Already Sanctified, he has published Surviving the Unthinkable (Resource Publications, 2015), and The Theology of the Christian Life in J. I. Packer's Thought (Paternoster, 2015). A proud West Texan from the Permian Basin region, Don has a penchant for hunting, fixing his truck, and Wolf Brand Chili.

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Guest: The Rev. Canon Esau McCaulley, PhD is a New Testament scholar, an Anglican Priest, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. He has also appeared in outlets such as Christianity Today and the Washington Post. He is also the host of the Disrupters Podcast and functions as a Canon Theologian for his diocese. Dr. McCaulley, currently, serves as assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. In addition to Reading While Black (IVP, 2020), he is the author of Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance: Davidic Messianism and Paul’s Worldwide Interpretation of the Abrahamic Land Promise in Galatians (T & T Clark, 2019).  He is married to Mandy, a pediatrician and a Navy reservist. Together, they have four wonderful children.

NB: Dru mistakenly cited the "Congressional Black Caucus" when saying that black leaders once claimed that President Obama was not black. He was misremembering what he had read in Debra J. Dickerson's Salon.com article "Colorblind: Barack Obama would be the great black hope in the next presidential race—if he were actually black." See the following for the discussion of Obama's "blackness" in the 2008 presidential election:

• "Is Obama Black Enough?"
• "Is he African American if his roots don't include slavery?" 
• "Morgan Freeman raises eyebrows for saying Obama wasn’t the first black U.S. president" 

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