OnScript

Andrew Byers - John and the Others

Episode: Erin speaks with Rev. Dr. Andy Byers about John's Gospel, Jewish Relations, and the "sectarian hermeneutic" that dominates Johannine studies. Andy's newest book on John's Gospel, John and the Others, published by Baylor University Press in 2021, advances the bold thesis that John's Gospel gives us a model of identity and alterity, an identity that is "other" without being "anti."

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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Patrick Schreiner - Political Gospel

Episode: How can the way of the kingdom be the way of the dove? How can the way of subversion come through submission? How can the way of the lion be the way of the slaughtered lamb? Drawing from his new book, Political Gospel, biblical scholar Patrick Schreiner helps Christians rethink their political framework and practices. Co-hosted by Matthew Bates.

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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Ian McFarland - The Word Made Flesh

Episode: (Republish) Has the Chalcedonian Definition stood the test of time and theological challenge? Ian McFarland thinks so and advocates for a "Chalcedonianism without reserve" in his newest book, The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation (WJK, 2019). McFarland joins co-host Amy Hughes to talk about what he means by this phrase and how churches who affirm the language laid out at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (Catholic, Protestant, and most Orthodox traditions) don't always follow through on the implications. What is the disconnect here and why does it matter? Spoiler alert: It has something to do with the gospel... (This is a republished Episode)

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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Amy Peeler - Women and the Gender of God

Episode: Is God more male than female? Most theologians have hastened to say 'no', but still many theologians have urged that the male analogy is more suitable in speaking about God's relationship with the world or people. But how does the conversation shift when we place the incarnation at the theological center of this conversation? That is the question that Amy Peeler asks in her Women and the Gender of God. What does the uniqueness of Jesus's birth from a virgin teach us about God and Gender? Co-hosted by Erin Heim and Matt Bates.

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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Timothy Beal - When Time is Short

Episode: This episode takes you to the wilds of Alaska and Florida's byways to talk about our denial of death as a species.

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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Katie Marcar – Divine Regeneration and Ethnic Mapping in 1 Peter

Episode: Erin speaks with Dr. Katie Marcar about metaphors of divine regeneration in 1 Peter, metaphors of generation in other Jewish texts from the Second Temple period, seed metaphors, breastmilk metaphors, and how all of these topics work together to form an audience's sense of ethnic identity. Dr. Marcar is the author of the book Divine Regeneration and Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Mapping Metaphors of Family, Race, and Nation, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

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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Angela Parker - If God Still Breathes Why Can’t I?

Episode: Erin Heim speaks with Dr. Angela Parker about White Christianity's tendency to conflate biblical authority with inerrancy and infallibility, gaslighting and women in the Gospels, the Galatians' experience, and Toby Nwigwe's "Make it Home." She also distinguishes between an authoritative and an authoritarian Bible.

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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Marty Folsom - Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone

Episode: In this episode Chris Tilling interviews Marty Folsom about his new book, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone  (Zondervan Academic).

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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Chris Seglenieks - Johannine Belief and Graeco-Roman Devotion

Episode: In this episode, Dru Johnson talks with Australian scholar Christopher Seglenieks about why Greco-Roman devotion practices must be included in discussions about "faith" and "belief" in the Johannine corpus.

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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Christian Eberhart - The Sacrifice of Jesus

Episode: What was the sacrifice of Jesus for the NT Jewish authors? A barbaric execution? A violent bloodletting of a scapegoat? Christian Eberhart claims that the NT authors did not conceive or talk about the crucifixion as a primarily violent act. Rather, they conceptualized it as a sacrifice, in the same conceptual world of oil, wheat, salt, and livestock. Dru Johnson and Christian Eberhart discuss Eberhart's work more generally on this question, specifically his book The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically. 

Guest:  (from faculty page) "Dr. Chris Eberhart is from Hanover, Germany. His research interests are ritual, concepts of reconciliation and atonement, biblical texts and manuscripts, literature and culture of Second Temple Judaism, the history of biblical interpretation, the Qumran fragments/Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical archeology and topography, early Christian literature, and interreligious dialogue. To date he has published more than 10 books as well as multiple journal essays, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles in these areas. He is currently working on a commentary volume on Paul’s Letter to the Romans for the academic series Wisdom Commentary (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press).

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)."

He is the editor of several academic volumes (see below)

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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