OnScript

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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J. Richard Middleton - Abraham’s Silence

Episode: Richard Middleton thinks that Abraham should've talked back to God when he asked him to sacrifice his son. Today we discuss lament, the example of Job, and Abraham as a counterexample to Job (and himself in Gen 18).

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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Mark Scarlata - The World of Leviticus

Episode: Leviticus might be the only book in the Bible that many Christians will openly and casually admit that they do not like (or, it’s their “least favorite). Dru Johnson and Mark Scarlata discuss his recent book, A Journey Through the World of Leviticus: Holiness, Sacrifice, and the Rock Badger, making Leviticus accessible to Christians. Scarlata also gives some insights into his forthcoming Cambridge volume The Theology of the Book of Leviticus in the OT Theology series.

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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