Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
The gospel reading for Trinity 20 in Year A is Matthew 22.15–22, the short exchange between Jesus and his opponents on the question of the Roman ‘poll’ tax. This has important theological implications for our understanding of issues of politics and power, though it is often misread. Jesus doesn’t teach the ‘separate realms’ that many …
Peter’s confession of Jesus in Matthew 16.13–20 has some fascinating differences from the parallel accounts in Luke and Mark—and a unique Matthean comment addressed by Jesus to Peter. Video discussion can be found here and is also linked at the end of this article. The reading for Trinity 12 in Year A is Matt 16.13–20, …
The reading for Trinity 12 in Year A is Matthew 16.13–20. It is Peter’s confession of who Jesus is as Messiah, but it also contains Matthew’s unique material in which Jesus calls Peter ‘rock’, gives him the keys to the kingdom, and commissions him to bind and loose. But these three ideas are much misunderstood, …
The phrase ‘coming on the clouds’ is commonly misread as referring to Jesus’ return at the end of the age—when reading it in context and noticing its source in Daniel 7 paints a very different picture. I have spent the week at Lee Abbey in Devon (if you have not been, you should go!), teaching …
Andrew Bartlett, author of Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts (IVP Books, 2019) writes: New Testament scholar Preston Sprinkle has created quite a stir with his new book, From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says About Women in Leadership. Formerly ‘complementarian’, Sprinkle has changed …
Martin Davie writes: The announcement of the choice of the Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally, to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury has been accompanied by frequent references to the Archbishop of Canterbury as the ‘head of the Church of England’ or the ‘head of the Anglican Communion.’ In this post I shall explain …
At this time of year, my social media feeds are full of pictures of people in robes standing outside cathedrals, they or their friends having been ordained. So this is a good time to reflect on what is happening, and to ask: ‘Is this Anglican approach to leadership actually following a biblical pattern?’ Someone might …
The lectionary reading for Trinity 1, Year C, is Luke’s version of Jesus meeting and healing the demon-possessed man in the ‘region of the Gerasenes’ (Luke 8.26–39). See below for commentary on this passage. The epistle for this week is Galatians 3.23-29, and you can watch the video discussion of that passage here, and the …
The Sunday gospel lectionary reading for the Second Sunday before Lent in Year C is Luke 8.22–25, the concise account by Luke of Jesus stilling the storm. (It is worth noting that the ecumenical lectionary has a different set of readings; apparently for the Church of England it was thought that there was not enough …
Martin Davie writes: In a letter of 2 July this year to the signatories of a letter from the Alliance group within the Church of England to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishop of Oxford wrote as follows: The mind of the majority House of Bishops now seems to me to be settling …
The gospel lectionary reading for Epiphany 4 in Year B is Mark 1.21–28, Mark’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It is, like all the early parts of Mark, highly compressed, but it is packed full of fascinating detail which begins to set the agenda for Mark’s portrayal of Jesus. The episode is striking …
