Biblical Studies

Evangelical and Affirming?: A Conversation with Three Davids

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A short version (including links to the more detailed discussions) of a dialogue with “affirming evangelicals” David Gillett, David Atkinson and David Runcorn arguing that they present three distinct (and at time incompatible) approaches in their support of same-sex unions or marriage. Their arguments open up a range of wider questions that, if wrestled with, might encourage us all to think in fresh ways, help to clarify the nature and significance of disagreements, and even lead to greater understanding, respect and perhaps greater consensus emerging.

Bible in the Raw

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Christians (at least in the West) expect to encounter God in Scripture in their own language and sharing the same preoccupations. It is good that we have such wonderful resources and so many translations from which to choose but there is much to be learnt from the original texts. We need a little strangeness.

Paul’s concern for the women in Timothy’s churches: Notes on 1 Tim 2.8-15

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One of the texts often quoted in defence of the concept of ‘male headship’ is 1 Tim 2. 8 – 15, although, of course, the language of ‘head’ comes from 1 Corinthians. It is presented as a definitive statement of the Apostle’s view about the impermissibility of women teaching or exercising authority over men in the Church….However, there is another way of looking at this text.

N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God: A Review by Simon Gathercole

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To summarise a book of over 1500 pages – roughly 800,000 words, or 25 times the length of the 13-letter Pauline corpus and probably longer than the Bible – in a sentence might be thought a foolhardy enterprise, but I think it can be done, because of the book’s overall coherence. Its central contention, at least as far as Paul’s theology is concerned, is as follows: Paul inherited from his pre-Christian Judaism the central foci of monotheism, election and eschatology, and he retained but fundamentally rethought all of these in the light of Christ and the Spirit.