Have you engaged with the best version of egalitarian theology? Undertaking my theological education was an exercise in examining one’s assumptions and “returning to the sources” (to quote the Reformation Humanists). It is all too easy, I have discovered, to argue against a strawman. I recall one lecturer saying that we should be able to...Read More

Hermeneutics is the formal term for the art and science of interpretation. The hermeneutical circle refers to the process of understanding a text—the interaction between the parts and the whole, along with the complex interplay between text and reader. In fact, to interpret a text assumes a certain internal hermeneutical stability within oneself—a sense of...Read More

First, a personal reflection . . . When Timothy Keller passed away on the 19th May, 2023, tributes poured in from not only the Christian world, but from CNN, the New York Times, and former U.S. Presidents. The world lost someone special. My own church knows this well—they have heard me quote from Keller time and time...Read More

As a pastor and a student of the New Testament I believe there are few matters more important than the mission of God in the world. My forthcoming book, the working title of which is Salvific Intentionality in 1 Corinthians: How Paul Nurtures the Missional Imagination of the Corinthian Community, is being published by Wipf & Stock. This is...Read More

I live in NSW Australia, in which the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2022 will come into effect by the end of 2023. This will legalise voluntary physician-assisted suicide for those with a terminal illness (it has various conditions and safeguards embedded within it). Despite this inevitable legal change, I believe there is value in ongoing moral reasoning,...Read More

I am reading a book by Dr Graeme McLean called Ethical Basics for the Caring Professions in which he devotes a chapter to the fact that there are different moral beliefs and attitudes across different groups of people and cultures. What are we to make of this? Is morality therefore relative? This question and Graeme’s treatment of...Read More

With the latest census data indicating that the number of Australians who identity as Christian has plummeted to an all-time low (from 61% in 2011 to 44% in 2021), the church is asking questions of itself and its place in the broader, and increasingly, secular community. This conversation, however, feels somewhat anxious – emerging from a sense...Read More

Richard Dawkins, a proponent of the so-called New Atheism movement, once said of the resurrection of Jesus: It is fundamentally incompatible with the sophisticated scientist . . . it’s so petty, it’s so trivial, it’s so local, it’s so earth-bound, it’s so unworthy of our universe.[1] But is such cynicism justifiable? The Christian Gospels (Matthew,...Read More