Matthew W. Bates. The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament & Early Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament. Oxford University Press, 2015. 234 pgs. ₤55 (Hardback). ISBN 978-0-19-872956-3. In his recent monograph, The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament & Early Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament, Matthew W. Bates provides an alternative account of the origins of trinitarian doctrine. His thesis is that, “in...
Jens Schröter. From Jesus to the New Testament: Early Christian Theology and the Origin of the New Testament Canon. Translated by Wayne Coppins. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013. xiv + 417 pp. Hardcover. $59.95. ISBN: 9781602588226. From Jesus to the New Testament is a translation of Jens Schröter’s 2007 work Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament. The volume comprises a collection of sixteen independently-written essays united by their focus on early Christian history and the formation...
Edited by James H. Charlesworth; with Brian Rhea and Petr Pokorný. Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perception. Eerdmans, 2014. 1053 pgs. $35.00 (Paperback). ISBN 978-0-8028-6728-5. The recently released compendium, Jesus Research (2014), is a collection of papers originally presented at the Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research (2007). The volume combines the insights of at least 40 of the world’s leading scholars—a true “Who’s Who’ of specialists in Jesus Research” (Charlesworth, 1). Due to the...
Anyone who’s come over for dinner has seen my collection of Peruvian oil paintings of the Virgin Mary. Several years ago, a spending spree and newfound obsession with Catholic art (despite being a Reformed Baptist) landed me with a few too many Marys: three hanging in the hallway and one above my bed. Buyer’s remorse aside, they’re gorgeous. Several of them depict the virgin mother cradling the infant Jesus—a beautiful, visual reminder of the miracle...
Following a day of worship, Easter egg hunts and family dinners (the odd combination of which deserves a blog post all its own), you might be ready to dive back into your weekly routine. But don’t miss what happened after Easter. In the rush to return to normalcy, take time to reflect on the rest of the tale. After all, a story that stars a risen Savior is far from finished. Here’s a rundown of...
When I was kid, I learned all about Jesus’ miracles from boards covered in flannel. An old Egyptian woman named Anna would use tiny—also flannel—cutouts of biblical characters to painstakingly illustrate the story of Jesus raising Lazarus, walking on water, or feeding the five thousand. This was great because watching Anna stick the fuzzy characters to blue board taught me the basic stories of my faith. The unfortunate side effect was that after a while,...
NT Wright’s new book, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, is due out this upcoming March. I was able to send Prof. Wright a few questions about this forthcoming book for the blog and he graciously agreed to answer them for The Two Cities. My questions are highlighted in bold: 1) Where does your new book, How God Became King, fit within your previous works? In one sense it simply fills in some...
There is love, in the red letters There is truth, in the red letters There is hope for the hopeless, peace and forgiveness There is life, in the red letters These lyrics come from the song Red Letters sung by dc Talk in their album, Supernatural, released in 1998. For some, this song is undoubtedly very encouraging (that is, if you’re still listening to dc Talk). The Red Letters contain love, truth, hope, peace, forgiveness,...
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