How Did Early Christians Identify Inspired Books? (Lecture #2)
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Did the Church Invent the Canon? (Credo)
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Were the Church Fathers Inspired in the Same Way as Scripture? A Preview of the Sizemore Lectures at Midwestern Seminary
A number of years ago, Everett Kalin wrote a well-known doctoral dissertation arguing that the early church fathers did not see inspiration as something that was uniquely true of canonical books. Why? Because, according to Kalin, the early Church Fathers saw their own writings as inspired. Ever since, a number of scholars have repeated this claim (Sundberg, Allert, MacDonald, et al.), insisting that the early fathers saw nothing distinctive about the NT writings as compared to writings being produced in their own time period.
Well, despite the popularity of this position, I find it to be highly problematic. Indeed, my rebuttal will be the topic for the Sizemore Lectures this … Continue reading...
Off to San Diego for the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society
Next week, I head to beautiful San Diego for the 71st Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, the largest gathering of evangelical scholars in the world. The theme this year is “Christ in All Scripture.”
This year I will be delivering the presidential address at the Thursday night banquet. The title of my lecture is “2 Peter 3:2, the Apostolate and a Bi-Covenantal Canon.” Yes, I know. Not that exciting. But, that’s just what we scholars do…
For more exciting lectures, you may want to check out the three plenary speakers we have lined up: Greg Beale (Westminster Seminary), Jeannine Brown (Bethel Seminary), and Stephen Wellum (Southern Baptist … Continue reading...
Walter Wagner Reviews Christianity at the Crossroads
Over the last year or so, I’ve been encouraged by the many different reviews of (and interactions with) my book, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church. For a list of some of those reviews, see prior post here.
One of the reasons I wrote this book is because of the enormous gap in scholarship on the study of second-century Christianity. There just hasn’t been much done on this “Cinderella Century” (to use the phrase of Larry Hurtado).
But, of course, there are exceptions to that pattern of neglect. One is the fine book by Walter Wagner, After the Apostles: Christianity … Continue reading...