OnScript

Benjamin Sommer - Revelation and the Authority of the Bible

Episode: Benjamin Sommer speaks with Matt Lynch about Torah, Sinai, Jewish perspectives on the authority of the Hebrew Bible, Psalms, and way more.

Guest: Benjamin D. Sommer is Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC. He's the author of Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (Yale University Press, 2015), A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford University Press, 1998) and The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009), He's also the editor of Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction and the forthcoming 5-volume JPS Psalms commentary.

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Larry Hurtado - Destroyer of the Gods

Episode:  This is a re-release. Larry Hurtado passed away recently, and in memory of his contributions to biblical studies, we're re-releasing this 2016 episode. Apologies for the episode. 

Larry Hurtado and OnScript host Matthew Bates smash gods. Well, actually Larry is the one who brings the heavy artillery, drawing from his recent Destroyer of the Gods (Baylor University Press, 2016). What does a typical day look like in the life of Larry Hurtado? How does he come up with new scholarly ideas? What made earliest Christianity distinctive?--and why does that matter today? What should we make of Richard Bauckham's "Christology of Divine Identity"? In his characteristically lucid style, Hurtado answers these questions and more. Join the conversation and find your sensibilities about religion turned upside down.

Guest: Larry Hurtado is a world-renowned expert on Christian origins, the New Testament, and early christology. Born in Kansas City (Missouri), in 1996 Larry Hurtado accepted the professorial chair in New Testament in the University of Edinburgh, where he founded the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins. Since his retirement in 2011, he remains active in research and publications dealing with various questions concerning the origins of Christianity. Arguably his most influential book is One God, One Lord (1988; 3rd ed., Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), which culminated in his magisterial, Lord Jesus Christ:  Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Eerdmans, 2003). He has also written a pioneering study of the physical features of earliest Christian manuscripts, The Earliest Christian Artifacts (Eerdmans, 2005). In addition to the book under discussion here, Destroyer of the Gods, he has also recently penned Why on Earth did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries? (Marquette University Press, 2016).

Book: Larry W. Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Baylor University Press, 2016). Christianity thrived despite its new and distinctive features and opposition to them. Unlike nearly all other religious groups, Christianity utterly rejected the traditional gods of the Roman world. Christianity also offered a new and different kind of religious identity, one not based on ethnicity. Christianity was distinctively a "bookish" religion, with the production, copying, distribution, and reading of texts as central to its faith, even preferring a distinctive book-form, the codex. Christianity insisted that its adherents behave differently: unlike the simple ritual observances characteristic of the pagan religious environment, embracing Christian faith meant a behavioral transformation, with particular and novel ethical demands for men. Unquestionably, to the Roman world, Christianity was both new and different, and, to a good many, it threatened social and religious conventions of the day. Christianity's novelty was no badge of honor. Called atheists and suspected of political subversion, Christians earned Roman disdain and suspicion in equal amounts. Yet, as Destroyer of the gods demonstrates, in an irony of history the very features of early Christianity that rendered it distinctive and objectionable in Roman eyes have now become so commonplace in Western culture as to go unnoticed. Christianity helped destroy one world and create another.

The OnScript Quip (our review): Whether one applauds or disdains the values of contemporary Western culture, what we assume to be good, true, and normal has been shaped to a surprising degree by early Christianity. Demolishing taken-for-granted assumptions about what religion was, is, and can be, Hurtado's provocative exploration deserves a broad audience. -- Matthew W. Bates, Quincy University, OnScript

John McNall - The Mosaic of Atonement

Episode: What hath penal substitution to do with recapitulation? Or Christus Victor with moral influence? Turns out, quite a lot. Of the making of many books and ideas on atonement there is no end. Could there be room for a new approach? In this episode, Josh McNall joins host Amy Hughes for a conversation on his new book The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ's Work in which he presents a way to reconsider the fracturing of perspectives on Christ's work and to reintegrate the various models of atonement. 

Guest: Joshua McNall is Ambassador of Church Relations and Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology
at Oklahoma Wesleyan University. After planting a Wesleyan church near Grand Rapids, Michigan, Josh completed his PhD at the University of Manchester (UK). Since then, he has published three 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.

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Chris Tilling - Barth on Romans (Part 2)

Episode: Chris Tilling presents his work on Karl Barth's Romans commentary. He argues that Barth's reading of Romans is worth the attention of biblical scholars, even though Barth is a systematic theologian. Go figure! This is part 2 of a 2-part episode.

Host: Chris Tilling is Graduate Tutor and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at St Mellitus College. Chris co-authored How God Became Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2014) with Michael Bird (ed.), Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, and Charles Hill. He is also the editor of Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul (Eugene, Or: Cascade, 2014). Chris’s first book, the critically acclaimedPaul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), is now republished with multiple endorsements and a new Foreword, by Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015). He is presently co-editing theT&T Clark Companion to Christology (forthcoming, 2020), and writing the NICNT commentary on theSecond Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). Chris has published numerous articles on topics relating to the Apostle Paul, Christology, justification, the historical Jesus, Paul S. Fiddes, Karl Barth, the theology of Hans Küng, and more besides. He has appeared as a media figure for Biologos, GCI, Eerdmans, Wipf & Stock, and HTB’s School of Theology. He has organised public theology lectures as well as theology conferences, and he enjoys playing golf and chess, now working as editor for a couple of chess publishing houses. He is married to Anja and has two children.

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Chris Tilling - Barth on Romans (Part 1)

Episode: Chris Tilling presents his work on Karl Barth's Romans commentary. He argues that Barth's reading of Romans is worth the attention of biblical scholars, even though Barth is a systematic theologian. Go figure! This is part 1 of a 2-part episode. 

Host: Chris Tilling is Graduate Tutor and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at St Mellitus College. Chris co-authored How God Became Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2014) with Michael Bird (ed.), Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, and Charles Hill. He is also the editor of Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul (Eugene, Or: Cascade, 2014). Chris’s first book, the critically acclaimedPaul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), is now republished with multiple endorsements and a new Foreword, by Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015). He is presently co-editing theT&T Clark Companion to Christology (forthcoming, 2020), and writing the NICNT commentary on theSecond Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). Chris has published numerous articles on topics relating to the Apostle Paul, Christology, justification, the historical Jesus, Paul S. Fiddes, Karl Barth, the theology of Hans Küng, and more besides. He has appeared as a media figure for Biologos, GCI, Eerdmans, Wipf & Stock, and HTB’s School of Theology. He has organised public theology lectures as well as theology conferences, and he enjoys playing golf and chess, now working as editor for a couple of chess publishing houses. He is married to Anja and has two children.

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

Philip Ziegler - Militant Grace

Episode: Philip Ziegler joins Erin Heim to discuss apocalyptic theology, Pauline literature, and the implications of both for Christian discipleship. They discuss Ziegler's new book, Militant Grace, which constitutes a serious theological engagement and response to the apocalyptic turn in Pauline studies. Along the way, Professor Ziegler shares with us the influence friends and mentors like J. Louis Martyn have had on him both personally and professionally.

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.

Seth Heringer - Theology and History

Episode: Seth Heringer's Uniting History and Theology argues that Christians do not need to use the historical-critical method to make historical claims but should instead write boldly Christian history. By using the historical method, grounded as it is in an incomplete understating of German historicism, they close off investigation of the past from the aesthetic and, importantly, from God. This is why 20th-century Christian scholarship has failed to unite history and theology. Instead of relying on the historical method as the primary way to think about past events, Christians need to reimage what historical work entails. Heringer thus presents a Christian approach to history that dialogues with recent developments in historical theory.

Guest: Dr Seth Heringer (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is assistant professor of theology and scripture at Toccoa Falls College. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member of both Fuller Theological Seminary and Azusa Pacific University. He has written articles that have appeared in The Scottish Journal of Theology and the Journal of Theological Interpretation in addition to chapters in Ears That Hear: Explorations in Theological Interpretation of the Bible and Teaching the Bible in the Liberal Arts Classroom, vol. 2. He is married to Laura, an internal medicine doctor, and together they have five children aged six and under. When he is not trying to corral his children, he enjoys baking sourdough bread, fishing, and reading/watching science fiction and fantasy.

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Q&A - Matt Lynch and Matt Bates

Episode: You've spoken. We've listened.  You've asked for more episodes giving a window into the secret lives of OnScript co-hosts. Or at least, you've asked us to allow more time for chat between hosts. So we'll try to do a bit more of that. In this episode, Matt Lynch and Matt Bates, the co-founders of OnScript, ask each other questions about Paul, hell, life, violence, divine-human appearances in the OT, faith as allegiance, Matt B.'s new book, books we've read, and more. Enjoy, and share the word!

Hosts: Matt Bates (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Assistant Professor of Theology at Quincy University. He writes with a posture of faith seeking understanding, with a desire to serve the church, academy, and any reader of goodwill. He's the author of Gospel Allegiance (Brazos, 2019), Salvation by Allegiance Alone (Baker Academic, 2017) is now available for order. His recent The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford University Press, 2015) focuses on how certain reading strategies helped early Christians to see that the one God can be differentiated as multiple persons. He has also written on the Apostle Paul’s method of interpreting Scripture: The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (Baylor University Press, 2012). A current book project, to be published by Eerdmans, explores the process by which Jesus came to be enthroned as king, as well as the theological implications for us today.

Matt Lynch is Academic Dean and Lecturer in Old Testament at Westminster Theological Centre in the UK. He's the author of Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), and Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible  (Cambridge, forthcoming 2020), and has written various articles on the Old Testament. He also blogs regularly at theologicalmisc.net. 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.

Sharon Ketcham - Reciprocal Church

Episode: What is the relationship between the individual Christian and the community of faith? How do we navigate the pendulum swings between an overemphasis on the individual at the expense of community and an overemphasis on community at the expense of the individual? In this episode, OnScript host Amy Brown Hughes talks with her colleague Sharon Ketcham about her new book Reciprocal Church: Becoming a Community Where Faith Flourishes Beyond High School, how often we talk about faith as a "product," what theological anthropology must undergird our ecclesiology, and where hope lies in the future of the church.

Guest: Sharon Galgay Ketcham is professor of theology and Christian ministries at Gordon College in Massachusetts. She earned her Ph.D. in theology and education from Boston College. Sharon’s two decades of experience in ministry include serving the local church, researching, writing, teaching, and mentoring. As a practical theologian, she is a scholar for the Church and invites people to reflect theologically on lived Christian faith. She is the author of Reciprocal Church: Becoming a Community Where Faith Flourishes Beyond High School in which she proposes a new vision for a person’s relationship with the church and the accompanying values and practices that allow faith to flourish for persons and communities. Sharon lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two children.

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Joseph Gordon - Divine Scripture in Human Understanding

Episode: We all know that for Christians, Scripture is crucial--it's the lifeblood of the church. But when we press deeper, what is it? What do words like authority and inspiration mean? How does the Bible best fit into a broader Christian theology? Joseph K. Gordon joins OnScript host Matthew Bates to talk about Joe's exciting new book, Divine Scripture in Human Understanding.

Guest: Joseph K. Gordon is Associate Professor of Theology at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee. His research and theological reflection have focused on questions about the history, nature, and purposes of Christian Scripture, on theological anthropology, and on theologies of history. Divine Scripture in Human Understanding is his first book. He has published articles in Theological Studies, Nova et Vetera, Method: A Journal of Lonergan Studies, The Stone-Campbell Journal, and The Lonergan Review. He is currently writing an introduction to the life and thought of Bernard Lonergan for the Cascade Companions series (Cascade/Wipf & Stock). An “outside theologian,” he is an amateur naturalist and herpetologist and enjoys playing floor hockey and soccer with his students, and, most of all, spending time with his wife and one-year-old son.

The Book: Joseph K. Gordon, Divine Scripture in H.uman Understanding: A Systematic Theology of the Christian Bible (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). Divine Scripture in Human Understanding addresses the confusing plurality of contemporary approaches to Christian Scripture―both within and outside the academy―by articulating a traditionally grounded, constructive systematic theology of Christian Scripture. Utilizing primarily the methodological resources of Bernard Lonergan and traditional Christian doctrines of Scripture recovered by Henri de Lubac, it draws upon achievements in historical critical study of Scripture, studies of the material history of Christian Scripture, reflection on philosophical hermeneutics and philosophical and theological anthropology, and other resources to articulate a unified but open horizon for understanding Christian Scripture today. Following an overview of the contemporary situation of Christian Scripture, Joseph Gordon identifies intellectual precedents for the work in the writings of Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine, who all locate Scripture in the economic work of the God to whom it bears witness by interpreting it through the Rule of Faith. (Publisher’s description, abridged).

The OnScript Quip (our review): If we are to live in light of Scripture, it is imperative to discern what it is and how it functions. In Divine Scripture in Human Understanding, Joseph Gordon answers essential meta questions about the Bible, convincingly locating Scripture in the redemptive economy of three-in-one God. This is a gift to the church.  — Matthew W. Bates, Quincy University, OnScript