In this column, I turn to the Fourth Gospel to complete our journey through the New Testament. Our purpose has been to see what the New Testament really says …
“Ideas Have Consequences.” That was the title of a book that I was required to read early in my theological education. It was not a profound book, but its …
Today, I want to focus on the ambiguity found in the conflicting aspects of Luke’s two resurrection stories in more detail and in more depth. It will help …
When we come to Luke, the third gospel writer and, counting Paul, the fourth biblical witness to the meaning of Easter, we discover a dramatic shift in the language …
Matthew is the first gospel writer to narrate an appearance of the risen Christ to anyone. This aspect of the developing Christian story does not begin until the middle …
What did the Christian movement know about the resurrection of Jesus before the first gospel was written in the eighth decade of the Christian era? The answer to that …
After Easter we opened a new unit of columns designed to study exactly what the Bible says about Jesus’ resurrection. We noted that while resurrection is assumed in every …
The first writer of what later came to be called the New Testament was a well-educated Jew from Tarsus in Asia Minor. His name was Paul, although there is a later tradition that suggested that his original name was Saul and that the change from Saul to Paul was symbolic of the change in his life from being a highly-disciplined member of the Jewish religious elite to being a follower of Jesus. The adjective “Jewish” in that sentence is important because at this time in history, there was no such thing as Christianity or the Christian Church. What we now call Christianity was still a minority movement within the synagogue itself called “The Followers of the Way.” These followers were also known by members of the Orthodox Party of Judaism as “revisionists.” That was a deliberately pejorative title. “Revisionists” in ecclesiastical circles means that they were “change agents” destabilizing the “True Faith.”
The first writer of what later came to be called the New Testament was a well-educated Jew from Tarsus in Asia Minor. His name was Paul, although there is …
On Easter Sunday, a couple of weeks ago now, I was in my parish church, St. Peter’s in Morristown, New Jersey. I was not alone. Into that church, at …