Emotional Family Reunions

Ultimately, Homer’s The Odyssey is about Odysseus’ long and winding journey home to Ithaca and his 20+ reunion with wife Penelope, son Telemachus, and loyal servant Eumaeus. As I re-read Homer a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t help but relate the emotional family reunions in The Odyssey to Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son’s homecoming.

By way of quick reminder, in Jesus’s parable a selfish son takes his inheritance early and wastes it all in parties and entertainment until he is penniless and miserable. Destitute and without other options, he returns home, willing to be welcomed back in shame and live out his days as nothing more than a lowly servant. But—much to his surprise—he was welcomed back with open arms from his loving father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴ For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ (Luke 15:20-32)

There are two scenes in Homer’s Odyssey that made me think of Jesus’s Parable; both of them are “family reunion” situation.

The first involves Eumaeus (elderly, faithful servant of the royal family of Ithaca) and the prince Telemachus. Telemachus went off to learn about whether or not his father Odysseus was still alive. He was gone a long time and the palace did not know when he was coming back. When Telemachus finally returned, Eumaeus welcomed him with a very emotional greeting.

“Eumaeus ran towards his master, kissed his face and shining eyes and both his hands, and wept. Just as a father, when he sees his own dear son, his only son, his dear most precious boy, returned from foreign lands after ten years of grieving for his loss, welcomes him; so the swineherd wrapped his arms around godlike Telemachus and kissed him, as if he were returning from the dead. With tears still in his eyes he said.”

Some things to note here:

• Telemachus was not gone for ten years, he was gone for only a few weeks at most

• Homer is ramping up the emotion; Eumaeus was worried and then relieved like a father seeing a missing son after ten years

• Homer is drawing a parallel between Eumaeus and Odysseus, anticipating the revelation of Odysseus to his family

Now notice the parallels between Jesus’s Parable and Telemachus’s return: deep emotion, kisses, love, celebration; a precious father-son moment. And, perhaps, the most interesting parallel of all: “as if [Telemachus] were returning from the dead,” which matches pretty closely the Parable’s father’s statement to his older son: “this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

On a bit of a less dramatic level, we see a similar emotional reunion when Odysseus finally reveals himself to Telemachus: “Then he kissed his son and cried, tears pouring down his cheeks.”

Familial love is a persistent theme in ancient stories. In The Aenied, Aeneas greets his deceased father, Anchises, in the Underworld. When Anchises first sees Aeneas “he stretched out both his hands in eagerness, and tears spilled down his cheeks, and he cried out, ‘Have you come at last?’” (Book 6). Another story: in the famous tale of Icarus (who flew too close to the sun), father Daedalus bids his son farewell after attaching the wax wings.

“While [father Daedalus] was working and giving his warnings, the old man’s cheeks were wet with tears, and his father’s hands trembled. He gave his son kisses he would never repeat…” (Book 8, Metamorphoses).

Is Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son influenced by Homer? Probably not directly. There are emotional father-son scenes in many famous stories.

And yet Homer’s Odyssey was so widely known and widely popular that perhaps Jesus draw from its familiarity. At broader Greco-Roman world cultural events—like festivals, sports, theater, parades—there would often be Homeric readings, perhaps images of Homeric scenes, people in costumes, etc. Homer was everywhere known and respected as a literary giant.

Back to family: Sometimes people today mistakenly have the view that ancient patriarchs were stern, grumpy, and cold towards family members, even their own children. But the Greeks were known for their deep emotions and passions. This is on full display in Homer’s Odyssey. Keep that in mind as you read the New Testament, a literary product of the Greco-Roman world.

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Hades in Homer and the New Testament

Most of those occurrences are in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), only about ten are in the New Testament. In the NT, Greek ᾅδης (HADES) appears in Matthew (11:23; 16:18), Luke (10:15; 16:23); Acts (2:27, 31), and Revelation (1:18; 6:8; 20:13-14).

Hades is the Greek term for the realm of the dead. The reason why Jesus and the apostles use this term is because the Septuagint defaulted to “Hades” as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol.

For example: Psalm 16:10.

This became popularized in second temple Judaism. 1 Enoch, for instance, repeatedly refers to Hades, indicating the place where souls reside after death (102.5, 11). There is a Jewish text known as Testament of Abraham where Death claims, “Listen, righteous Abraham. For seven ages I destroy the world and lead all down to Hades, kings and rulers, rich and poor, slaves and free men, I convoy to the bottom of Hades” (19.7).

It is unclear what kind of bodily state there is in Sheol. The book of Job recounts Job’s misery and regret over his whole life. He wish he died at birth. He only wants to “go to the place of no return/to the land of gloom and utter darkness, to the land of deepest night/of utter darkness and disorder/where even the light is like darkness” (Job 10:20-22).

We catch a glimpse of Sheol existence from the unusual event involving Saul and the necromancer of Endor. The necromancer agrees to “bring up” Samuel from the realm of the dead. When Saul asks her what she sees, what she says is difficult to interpret: literally, “I see gods [or, a god] coming up from the earth” (1 Sam 28:13). Some translators render this “a ghostly figure” (NIV) or “a spirit” (The Message) or “a spirit form” (CSB). Whatever the case, Samuel didn’t look like a regular human. There are so few precise descriptions of Sheol, it is genuinely difficult to get a grasp on its nature.

What is clear is that the Old Testament teaches that God’s restoration plan involves embodied resurrection: “your dead will live, LORD; their bodies will rise” (Isa 26:19).

The association between Sheol and Hades was inevitable because Hades was pervasively understood as the realm of the dead. However, the Greeks didn’t have a shared eschatology of embodied resurrection like the Jews. So: gnosticism and anti-materialism crept into early Christianity with little effort.

What Was Hades Like?

How Greeks understood Hades shifted and morphed over time between Homer and the first-century Greco-Roman world. However, we can see the core concept of ghostly existence in Homer’s Odyssey when Odysseus makes a necessary trip to Hades and encounters many familiar friends, relatives, and enemies. In an encounter with his mother (which, sadly, did not make it into the Nolan movie), Odysseus’s mother explains why they cannot embrace with a hug:

In this perception of Hades, the physicality of the body disintegrates, leaving only an ethereal existence. We are told that several times Odysseus tried to hold his dear mother, but “her ghost flew from my arms, like shadows or like dreams.” Contrast this with the risen Jesus in the New Testament who eats and can be touched. Jesus’s physical resurrection body is like regular human bodies, but even more “real” and permanent.

In Greek thought, the dead are gone forever, once they go to Hades after death, they do not return. Of course, many have visited Hades (including Odysseus), but once you “check in,” you cannot “check out.”

In Christian thought, death is not the end; just as Jesus brought the little girl back from death and said she was only “sleeping”—meaning, his power over death is like our ability to wake someone up from sleep.

Greeks believed that it is best to live an honorable life and die a noble death, but there was no hope after this life. In the Odyssey, Odysseus encounters revered (but very dead) Achilles when Odysseus visits Hades. Odysseus tries to encourage Achilles, but Achilles makes this sober admission: “I’d rather slave on earth for another man…than rule down here [in Hades] over all the breathless dead.”

What an incredible teaching, then, it would have been for Jesus and the apostles to preach the resurrection, pre-figured in Jesus himself, who is the Resurrection and the Life: “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).

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*Note #1: Spoilers ahead! I highly recommend you watch the movie first and then come back!

**Note #2: This review will not recap Homer’s Odyssey; for a brief recap read my earlier post.

So professes the bard at the beginning of Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated, high budget, star-studded-cast, 172-minute epic film, The Odyssey. Perhaps most filmgoers probably don’t know that Homer’s Odyssey is a kind of sequel to his earlier work, The Iliad. Nolan’s bard addresses events that form the background of the film and the whole reason why Matt Damon’s Odysseus, king of Ithaca, is away from home for decades: the Trojan War, and Troy the starting point of his long and winding journey to reach his family and his homeland.

Christopher Nolan is a powerhouse. Memento. Oppenheimer, the Christian Bale Batman trilogy, Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige. Nolan’s work is remarkably diverse: outer space saga, historical drama, comic superhero, ancient epic. Clearly, he’s not afraid of a challenge. We love Nolan because he is innovative. And we love him because he is “old school.” Probably the most remarkable achievement of Nolan’s latest film is the intentional avoidance of CGI (as a default) and his preference for practical effects. You can be engrossed in the movie and not really notice this at all, but once you do realize what he has done without CGI, it is beyond impressive. In an age where we fear the takeover of AI extras and the indiscriminate use of green screens, Nolan and his cast are getting absolutely waterlogged on real boats and inside a real wooden horse, and the realism is palpable, especially on IMAX.

The attempt to modernize The Odyssey is fraught with challenges. Obviously language is a barrier—Nolan made the interesting choice to have all the main characters speak in American English. Critics of Nolan’s film have balked at the diverse casting, pointing out that Nolan chose no actors with Greek heritage. I am actually not bothered by these choices. I don’t find actor accents or ethnicity essential to the retelling of this ancient legend. Nolan was aiming for a large-scale action drama that is also deeply grounded in Odysseus’s life, travails, regret, vengeance and vindication, and redemption.

Nolan obviously had to make some decisions about where to put the focus: he chose to center Odysseus’s clever plan to trick the people of Troy with the wooden horse facade. [Spoiler alert!] Nolan focuses on Odysseus’s deep regret at his carelessness for human life, the cost of war, and his failure to protect his own crew and bring them home safely. In the end, Odysseus, revered king and commander, returns to Ithaca alone. While being an imperfect man, haunted by guilt, sometimes impulsive and irreverent, he is strong-willed and honor-bound and audiences will feel relieved by a happy ending for Odysseus and Penelope reunited, and the boy-to-man arc of their son Telemachus.

Nolan’s The Odyssey is three hours of cinematic excellence. Highlight cast performances include Damon as hero Odysseus, Tom Holland as anxious Telemachus, John Leguizamo as faithful slave Eumaeus, Samantha Morton as disturbing Circe, and probably best of all, Robert Pattinson as the petulant suitor Antinous. I would say the cast and performances are the most impressive feature of Nolan’s The Odyssey. Second would be the musical score—Composer Ludwig Göransson intentionally used ancient Greek instruments, scrap metals, and gongs to set the mood and it is perfect. Finally, the on-location sets in Morocco, Iceland, and Scotland are picturesque, pairing mountains, mists, and caves with dark and churning seas.

Currently, only a few days post-release, The Odyssey ranks 94% Tomato score (amongst critics) and a whopping 97% popcornmeter (amongst regular-folk audiences). Many would say (including several cast members) that this is Nolan’s finest achievement, a masterpiece not only amongst period action-dramas, but one of the greatest films of all time.

I wouldn’t go that far. Yes: It is immersive, gripping, touching, vivid, and perhaps best of all, beautifully written with unexpected (and expected) reveals and satisfying plot resolutions. But as an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, I believe Nolan failed to capture the essence of Homer’s epic. That is to say: enjoy Nolan’s film as a gripping story of regret, responsibility, and determination, but every good adaption must stay true to the heart of the source material, and I think Nolan missed it. Here are two things he honored well, and three he missed.

Nolan’s The Odyssey highlights hospitality and generosity towards strangers.

Nolan nailed this. “Zeus’s law.” Calypso is hospitable (to a fault!) to Odysseus. Menelaus is hospitable to Telemachus. Penelope and Telemachus welcome the poor and beggar. The suitors clearly take advantage of Penelope’s hospitality. The witch Circe and the Laestrygonians are anti-hospitable. This shines through and will please hellenophiles.

Nolan’s The Odyssey honors Homer’s creative story-telling.

Homer was a master storyteller who inspired writers who followed to freely play with sequence, pacing, vantage points, and alternation of scenes. Nolan already had these skills in his toolbox which is perhaps why he was so attracted to this story in the first place.

I have three main concerns with Nolan’s adaptation.

Nolan’s The Odyssey is a story about a man (“a man!”), but Homer’s epic is about a world of gods and mortals.

To universalize the story of Odysseus, Nolan made the unfortunate choice to (mostly) secularize it. He certainly made the choice to only show one Olympian, Athena (as a high Olympian), and even then rarely and it is not clear Athena offers much help. (Those who have seen the movie will understand why.) But in Homer’s story, Athena is the central divine guardian helping Odysseus make it home. Even more than that, Nolan’s Odyssey seems to defy and reject the gods, but no one in their right mind would do that in Homer’s time. Homer’s epic involves numerous gods including Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes, Circe, Calypso, Hades, and prayers to Apollo and Artemis. Homer features appearances by and key mentions of a wide array of superhuman beings, like the sea-nymph Ino, shape-shifting Proteus, and the ever-faithful Eos (Dawn who brings each new day).

Nolan’s Odysseus reflects the familiar modern stories of a self-made man, in this case a modern Odysseus who is not superstitious or dependent on prophecy, oracles, or sacrifices (in fact he only makes one sacrifice in the whole movie). Whereas Homer’s Odysseus and company deeply believe and depend on a world out of their control with often hidden forces for good or evil all around. (For example, in the ancient epic, Telemachus sneezes and Penelope takes it as a sign from the gods.) Matt Damon’s Odysseus says, “Don’t look for gods in men, you’ll just be disappointed.” This is a key existential comment for Nolan, but in Homer’s world you respected Zeus precisely by looking for gods in men. (Nolan assumes the Divine is perfect and pure, and mortals can’t live up to that high standard; Homer and his readers knew that gods can be as petty as the worst of men, and the best of men are better than most gods.)

Take the bard—to be exact, bards (plural) in Homer. Nolan has one bard who basically bookends the story. Homer has several bards and at least nine bard scenes. The bards are poetic prophets inspired by the Muses.

Ultimately, Homer’s world took for granted a massive realm of gods and mortals, spirits and apparitions, Hades and Olympus. Nolan stripped that away to focus on the inner turmoil of Odysseus as a man at war against others and, in the end, at war within himself. It’s a good story, but a different one than Homer told.

Nolan’s The Odyssey is about a righteous man named Odysseus; Homer’s Odyssey is about a clever man named Odysseus.

Nolan loves righteous heroes (like Batman!), even if they have their imperfections. Nolan’s Odysseus is courageous, compassionate, and essentially good. Homer’s Odysseus is certainly brave, any successful warrior and commander would have to be. But the central attribute of Homer’s hero is cunning. The first line of Homer’s epic is: “Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me…” The Greek word Wilson translates as “complicated” is polytropos (“many ways”), and I would render it something more like, “clever” or “strategic.” As in, when he is in hot water, he can find “many ways” out. Athena notes that “His mind was always full of polykerdea”—”clever schemes.” Circe recognized immediately Odysseus’s unique talent: “You must be Odysseus, the man who can adapt to anything.” Homer himself refers to his hero as polymetris Odysseus, something like “ever-resourceful Odysseus.” Wilson expansively translates this: “Wily Odysseus, the lord of lies”!

What made Homer’s epic so entertaining for ancient people is the schemes. (Like a less virtuous version of MacGyver.) Homer’s Odysseus is slippery, you can’t catch him. His notable schemes include tricking the Trojans, evading the cyclops Polyphemus, devising a way to hear the Sirens, and his many disguises (which are helped out by Athena’s magical hand; quite a disappointment for Nolan to try to pull this homecoming disguise off with…a hoodie).

Nolan’s emphasis on courage over cunning, or regret over cleverness, means he stripped away lots of intentional humor in Homer. Sad, because there is loads of mistaken identity, irony, and puns in the original Greek epic. One of my favorite bits: the old slave Eumaeus is rebuking the young nobleman Antinous: “Antinous, you are a lord, but what you say is trash!” (We’ve all wanted to say something like this to our superiors.)

Nolan’s The Odyssey is about peace among men; Homer’s Odyssey, I think, is about human suffering and the key question: how much control do we have over our own lives, and how do we live without knowing?

I think Nolan missed the true brilliance of Homer’s The Odyssey. Yes, it is a grand scale sea-faring epic, but the connecting point across all humanity is the shared struggle of suffering and the burning questions we all have about free will and fate. Who has the most control over my life? Homer lived in a world where most people attributed the big things in life to the gods: Ares and Athena for war, Poseidon for sea, Asclepius for health, Zeus for prosperity. But Homer explores human destiny from numerous angles.

Nature. In Homer, Odysseus’s crew want to rest and avoid the dangerous seas, but Odysseus wants to press on. Out of desperation they exclaim “how can anyone escape disaster if sudden gusts of wind from north or west bring cruel blasts to break the ship, despite the wishes of the gods?” That is, sometimes nature just takes on a life of its own and destroys lives.

Divine wrath. The Odyssey, as Homer tells it, is not really about Odysseus vs. himself, or Telemachus vs. Antinous, or Penelope vs. time, but largely about Odysseus vs. Poseidon. The sea-nymph Ino takes pity on Odysseus’s travails at sea and wonders, “Why does enraged Poseidon create an odyssey of pain for you?” (The word “odyssey” is not there in Greek, but because the verb sounds similar, “odysato,” Wilson translated it here as a play on words; it literally means “became enraged.”) After Odysseus maimed and mocked Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, his journey was perpetually thwarted by the mighty, trident-wielding sea god.

Zeus. Most characters in Homer’s epic defer to the supremacy of Zeus. He is the mightiest of the Olympians and therefore exercises the most control. Odysseus soberly claims, “When the gods bestow on us good fortune, and our legs are spry and limber, we think that nothing can ever go wrong; but when the gods bring misery and pain, we have to bear our suffering with calm. Our mood depends on what Zeus sends each day.”

Bad choices. In Homer’s tale, Zeus is offended that mortals are so quick to blame the Olympians: “They say we cause their suffering, but they themselves increase it by folly.” Zeus turns finger-pointing from mortals back to themselves.

Fate. Finally, Homer returns again and again to the mystery of fate, that there is this absolute power, call it death, call it destiny, call it the Fates, but it seems to be even stronger than Zeus. Athena, one of the mightiest gods in the Greek divine “power rankings,” admits, “death is universal. Even gods cannot protect the people that they love, when fate and cruel death catch up with them.” Homer makes reference to the Klothes, the “Spinners,” who weave the thread of time and life. Mortals can angle and dodge, but eventually the thread is cut. Death comes for us all.

I believe this is the soul of Homer’s work and would have made for a profound modern adaptation in 2026.

Nolan is one of the best storytellers today. I wept during his Odyssey because the story of regret and reunion was deep and I was awed because the scale of the movie was wide.

~Nijay

What did you think of Nolan’s film? Leave a comment.

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*This is PART 2.

If you haven’t already, go back and watch PART 1.

Nolan Can’t Find His Way Home(r)

Dr. Joey Dodson (Denver Seminary; ) and I talk about what Nolan got WRONG. We talk casting, themes, and why Nolan in the end wasn’t faithful enough to Homer.

***Now, before you leave a rage comment, Joey and I both LOVED the movie, great entertainment. Go watch it! Worth it to get to an IMAX.

Now, click play and enjoy our “popcorn commentary.”

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I asked Joey to join me for a breakdown because he is a fellow Greco-Roman world nerd. Pre-order his January 2027 book, Jesus, Hercules, and the Gospel Truth. Can’t wait!

PART 1

Confession: before last week, I hadn’t read Homer’s Odyssey for over 30 years. But to prepare for watching Nolan’s film, I spent a few days reading the Wilson translation and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading it in high school, when I knew practically nothing about Greek life, literature, and culture, and reading it again after having spent decades studying the Greco-Roman world—I see now with new eyes. So on this reading, I tried to be keenly aware of how Homer’s world works and what might be worth pointing out to readers of the Bible who want to better understand the ancient world—pre-industrial, agrarian, oral, patriarchal, full of war, full of gods, witchcraft, poets, bards, and muses, great artists and spellbinding storytellers.

Yes, Homer wrote the Odyssey many centuries before the New Testament; but historically and culturally Homer’s world is closer to the New Testament than our modern world. Of course, civilization morphed and evolved from Homer to Virgil, but the impact Homer had on the Greco-Roman world is massive.

If you need a recap of the STORY of the Odyssey, check out the first essay in this Substack series.

Below you will find my personal reflections as I read the Odyssey anew as a biblical scholar and student of Classical Antiquity.

Religion: Appeasing the Fearsome Gods

Homer’s world was a world of gods, demigods, powerful creatures, monsters, mortals, and more. I was struck time and again by how Homer interweaves the lives of gods and mortals. The whole Iliad/Odyssey saga is kicked off by the machinations of the gods Eris, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. The Odyssey figures prominently the will and actions of Athena, Poseidon, and, of course, mighty Zeus. Mortals, like Odysseus, are wise to gain the respect and support of the gods, not to cross them. After all, “everybody needs the gods” (Homer writes). Here are some fascinating tidbits I noticed on the latest read of this now-even-more-popular epic.

Zeus: Homer’s characters explain how Zeus is ultimately holding all the cards; Zeus “gives to each as is his will.” He is the one “whose voice resounds around the world.” Zeus is portrayed as an ultimate judge of gods and mortals. “Zeus watches everyone, and punishes the sinner.” At his best, he is fair in judgment. Hermes reports, “None can sway or check the will of Zeus.” He is resolute. Elsewhere, we are told, “The minds of the immortals rarely change.”

In Homer’s world, Zeus is also viewed as benevolent. Time and again we are told, Zeus “loves the needy,” or Zeus “blesses the needy.”

Another, alternative attitude towards the Olympians also emerges in the Odyssey, that the gods don’t really care. One character confesses, O Zeus, “You are father of humanity, but you do not take pity on our pain.” The gods are distant and indifferent.

Athena: Wise Athena is also as central of a character as clever Odysseus. She is constantly moving from Odysseus to Telemachus to Olympus to orchestrate Odysseus’ safe return. She admires this mortal and has resources she puts at his disposal. She often works subtly, surreptitiously, or indirectly to aid Odysseus. She shapeshifts into the appearance of Mentor. She even shapeshifts into Telemachus briefly. She repeatedly gives Odysseus a “glow up” to support him: “she made him taller and sturdier, so these Phaeacians would welcome and respect him.” And: “Athena stood near him and increased his strength.” One thing I did not know before—gods like Athena could make themselves selectively visible, so on one occasion, Odysseus could see her, but not Telemachus who was nearby. One of my favorite tactics of Athena: she disguises Odysseus in a mist to conceal his identity when he returns home to Ithaca.

For Studying the New Testament: As the apostles are preaching to Greeks (e.g., in the Book of Acts), we modern readers must keep in mind their broader worldview: the gods are mysterious, unknown, fickle, often toying with humans. They are easily offended, they demand sacrifice, they have both virtues and vices, but in the end they act a lot like mortals. Greeks and Romans were constantly afraid of offending their gods—because they know the stories of Paris, Achilles, and Odysseus. Within this culture, the apostles preach love, forgiveness, mercy, and truly knowing God through the Holy Spirit.

Fate

Lurking in the background of the Odyssey is the reality of “fate” (or the work of the Fates). The Olympian gods are powerful, Zeus is the king of gods, but “fate” seems to operate even outside of Zeus’s control, or there are competing views and traditions in Homer’s work about who ultimately decides the outcome of human events. Athena (as Mentor) confesses to Telemachus that “death is universal. Even gods cannot protect the people that they love, when fate and cruel death catch up with them.” Alcinous, the noble ruler of the Phaeacians, reminds the lords at his banquet that no matter the wit and strength of the human or support of the gods, “he must endure whatever was spun out when he was born by Fate and by the heavy ones, the Spinners.”

For Studying the New Testament: The apostles taught that a benevolent god calls all to repent and be saved. There are no Spinners, no strings to spin, no Fate, only the one good and gracious God. There is judgment to come, but there is no mystery behind the one God’s will of making all things new.

Virtue

The Odyssey makes a telling statement: Athena, though she was committed to aiding Odysseus and his family, “she did not grant decisive victory; she kept on testing Odysseus’ courage, and his son’s.” There is the perception that the gods not only love or hate mortals, but challenge and weigh them. Two virtues are dominant in this epic.

Xenia (Hospitality): The key virtue that is highlighted in the Odyssey is zenia, hospitality towards strangers, one of the “holy laws” of the gods. Nausicaa explains that “All foreigners and beggars come from Zeus, and any act of kindness is a blessing.” And Eumaeus says, “Zeus watches over beggars and guests and strangers.”

When arrogant Antinous hurts a beggar (who is actually Odysseus in disguise), the other suitors warn Antinous: “You ought not to have hit a poor old beggar! If he turns out to be a god from heaven it will end badly! Gods disguise themselves as foreigner and strangers to a town, to see who violates their holy laws, and who is good.”

The Odyssey features both good examples of hospitality (like the Phaeacians receiving and supporting Odysseus) and bad examples (like the one mentioned above with Antinous).

Metis (cunning): This refers to the virtue of cleverness, cunning, scheming, and this is the core attribute of Odysseus. The trojan horse ruse is perhaps the most famous of Odysseus’s schemes. The escape from the cyclops Polyphemus. The use of wax in their ears for Odysseus’s crew to survive the sirens. The bow contest. This was probably the most entertaining aspect of Homer’s epic for ancient audiences.

For Studying the New Testament: I can’t say metis is a focus of the New Testament, but hospitality certainly is. In the Old Testament you have the visitors to Abraham (Gen 18), the angels at Sodom (Gen 19), with Gideon (Judg 6), Joshua 5, the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24). Hebrews talks about “entertaining angels unaware.” Overall in the NT, hospitality is affirmed as a virtue, whether God or angels are in disguise or not. The key term philozenia is found many times and refers to “love for strangers.” As in: compassion, concern, practical care (Rom 12:13; 1 Peter 4:9; 1 Tim 3:2).

Slavery

Slavery is not really a theme of the Odyssey as much as an assumption. Slaves are everywhere (related to households). They serve two purposes: #1: They do work, serving their masters: running errands, food preparation, taking care of animals, bathing guests and family, making clothes, providing entertainment. #2: They are a sign of power, status, and wealth. The King of the Phaeacians had an astounding 50 slaves. When Odysseus is in disguise as a beggar, he makes up a tale about riches to rags: “My slaves were numberless, my wealth was great.” Slaves held a tenuous and liminal status in the household. They were often close enough to the family to be humanized and appreciated, but there was also suspicion of theft or treachery. When queen Penelope finds out that some of her servants betrayed her, she refers to them as “fickle, doglike slave girls.”

But slaves could also become friends and confidants, and in turn the slave could become fond of the master. At least, that is how Homer portrays it. One of the main characters of the Odyssey is Eumaeus, Odysseus’s trusty (now blind and elderly) swineherd. He is like a brother or uncle to Odysseus. When Odysseus dreams of home, he says, “May I live out my final days in sight of my own property and slaves and home.”

For Studying the New Testament: In the Roman Empire, slaves are also everywhere; yes in households, but also in civic contexts, businesses, and often in public far more than in the Greek world. And they carry the same liminal status. They could be loved and cherished, or hated and beaten. Either way, they are considered property.

The sad reality is that it is possible that the apostles and other Christian leaders had slaves (e.g., Acts 12:13). Scripture calls for love and concern and respect for slaves. It is debated whether they sought to set slaves free as a gospel imperative. But one thing is notable and irrefutable: slaves were attracted to early Christianity, not least because Jesus Christ died a slave’s death and rose again with the nail scars.

UP NEXT: More on the Odyssey an the NT; and my review of Nolan’s Odyssey!

By the way, I flesh out some of these ancient context insights in my book STRANGE RELIGION

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Hey, welcome to Nijay’s ODY-SERIES! Yes, I got excited about Homer-fever because of Christopher Nolan’s new movie. Yes, I went to see it last night with my family. Yes, it was epic. SO: for the next week or so we will be dwelling on this legendary tale of gods and mortals, hospitality and hostility, cunning and wit, family and friendship, regret and loss, home and away, courage and cowardice, and love and hate. This first post kicks things off for the beginner. Enjoy!

Getting Lost in the Odysseus: A Beginner’s Guide to Homer’s Odyssey

Engaging Scripture Substack is usually about the Bible and its theology. But you can’t spend long in the world of the New Testament — Roman roads, Greek rhetoric, wandering heroes, hospitality expectations, statues and reliefs and frescoes of the ancient gods behaving badly — without bumping into literary hero of Greece, Homer. Paul’s audiences in Corinth and Ephesus grew up on these stories (as did diaspora Paul of Tarsus himself) the way we grew up on comics and superhero movies. So before we journey further into our Ody-Series, I want to give you a proper on-ramp: who wrote this thing, where it came from, what actually happens, and who’s who. Consider this your cheat sheet.

Who Is Homer?

Here’s the honest, unsatisfying answer: nobody really knows. Ancient Greeks themselves couldn’t agree — seven different cities claimed to be his birthplace, which tells you they were guessing too. The tradition says he was a blind bard, possibly from Ionia (the Greek-speaking coast of what is now Turkey) or the island of Chios, active sometime in the 8th century BCE.

Scholars debate many questions: Was there one Homer, or many poets over generations? Did he compose the Iliad and the Odyssey, or just one of them? The stylistic differences between the two epics have led some to argue the Odyssey is a later work — the Iliad the achievement of a poet’s prime, the Odyssey the more reflective work of his old age.

What we can say with more confidence: both poems grew out of centuries of oral performance. Groups of professional singers, memorized and improvised these stories using a huge stock of reusable phrases and stock scenes — “rosy-fingered dawn,” “wine-dark sea,” “swift-footed Achilles.” This isn’t laziness; it’s technique. Formulaic language is what lets a performer hold a 12,000-line poem in mind and still adapt it to the room. Somewhere around the late 8th or 7th century BCE these oral performances crystallized into the fixed texts we now call Homer.

The Backstory — Homer’s Iliad

The Odyssey is technically a sequel, so it’s helpful to know what it follows.

The Iliad covers a few weeks near the end of the ten-year Trojan War — it does not include the war’s beginning (Paris’s abduction of Helen, wife of the Spartan king Menelaus) or its ending (the wooden horse, the sack of Troy). Those famous bits actually come from other poems in what’s called the “Epic Cycle,” now mostly lost. The Iliad itself is narrower than people expect: it’s the story of Achilles’ rage. Insulted by his commander Agamemnon, the greatest Greek warrior sulks in his tent and refuses to fight, with catastrophic consequences for his own side — until the death of his beloved companion Patroclus drags him back into battle for one final, terrible rampage against the Trojan prince Hector. The poem ends not with victory, but with Hector’s funeral.

The Odyssey assumes you already know the war happened, that Troy fell, and that the Greek heroes are now trying to get home. Odysseus, king of the small island of Ithaca, was one of the architects of the Trojan Horse — the Odyssey is what happens to that clever man once the fighting stops and the sailing home begins. Spoiler: it takes still many more years.

The Plot of the Odyssey

The poem’s arc is more sophisticated than “guy tries to get home, monsters emerge.” It’s built in movements, and it doesn’t tell the story in typical chronological order

| Books 1–4 | The Telemachy | Odysseus hasn’t appeared yet. We meet his son Telemachus, now a young man, trying to hold his household together while over a hundred suitors court his mother Penelope and eat the family out of house and home. Noble Greeks are committed to xenia, hospitality, providing food and drink and rest to friends, guests, and strangers. In this case, the suitors have long overstayed their welcome. They are interested in Penelope, but moreso they want the king’s throne, power, and wealth. The goddess Athena nudges Telemachus to go looking for news of his father.

| Books 5–8 | Odysseus on Phaeacia | We finally meet Odysseus, weeping on the beach of the nymph Calypso’s island after seven years as her reluctant guest. The gods intervene; Odysseus sails on a makeshift raft, is shipwrecked, and washes up among the Phaeacians, a hospitable seafaring people who agree to help him home.

| Books 9–12 | The Wanderings (told in flashback) | At a royal banquet, Odysseus narrates his own adventures since leaving Troy — the Cicones, the Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops Polyphemus, Aeolus and the bag of winds, the cannibal Laestrygonians, the witch-goddess Circe, a trip to Hades, the land of the dead, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the fatal mistake of his crew eating the cattle of the sun god. As an experienced and cunning war leader, his job was to be victorious over his enemies, protect his soldiers, and bring them all home. But by the end, he alone survives. He had incurred the wrath of Poseidon more than once and was forced onto Poseidon’s seas time and time again to attempt to make his way home. Athena could aid, but Odysseus had to survive the journey of many twists and turns.

| Books 13–20 | Return and Disguise| The Phaeacians finally deliver him to Ithaca. Athena disguises him as an old beggar so he can scout the situation before revealing himself — first to his loyal swineherd servant Eumaeus, then to his son Telemachus.

| Books 21–24 | The Reckoning| Penelope, cagey and clever in her own right, sets a contest: whoever can string Odysseus’s old bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads can have her hand. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, was the only one able to do this. He reveals himself and, with Telemachus and two loyal servants, slaughters the suitors. The poem closes with a careful, moving reunion with Penelope and a final peace brokered among the feuding Ithacan families. |

A Guide to the Main Characters

| Odysseus | King of Ithaca, the poem’s hero. Defined less by strength (unlike Achilles) than by what the Greeks call metis — cunning intelligence. Homer’s stock epithet for him is “of many wiles” or “of many turns” (polytropos).

| Penelope | Odysseus’s wife, the queen, ruling Ithaca in his twenty-year absence. Famous for weaving and unweaving a burial shroud each night to stall the suitors. Every bit as clever as her husband.

| Telemachus | Their son, an infant when Odysseus left, now a young man coming into his own authority over the course of the poem.

| Athena | Goddess of wisdom and war-strategy; Odysseus’s divine patron and frequent disguise-artist throughout the poem.

| Poseidon | Greek god of the sea; Odysseus’s chief divine antagonist, furious because Odysseus blinded his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus.

| Polyphemus | A one-eyed Cyclops, son of Poseidon, who traps Odysseus and his crew in his cave and eats several of them before being blinded and outwitted.

| Circe | A goddess-witch who turns Odysseus’s crew into pigs, then becomes an ally and lover, hosting Odysseus for a year before sending him onward.

| Calypso | A nymph who keeps Odysseus on her island Ogygia for seven years, offering him immortality if he’ll stay. He chooses to return home.

| The Suitors | Roughly 100 ambitious noblemen occupying Odysseus’s palace, pressuring Penelope to remarry and squandering his household’s wealth. Their leader is the arrogant Antinous.

| Eumaeus | Odysseus’s loyal swineherd, one of the few servants who never stopped believing his master would return.

|Zeus| The greatest of them all, Zeus “the father and king of all gods,” is constantly mentioned in the Odyssey: his name is invoked, he intervenes on occasion, sacrifices are made to him. Odysseus is threatened by Poseidon, his journey is aided by Athena, but his fate is ultimately in the hands of Zeus—or is it? We will talk about this later in this Substack series. But it is important to know Zeus’s name appears around 200 times in Homer’s epic. He is a big deal.

Odysseus’s World

Below is a sketch of the Mediterranean world the poem imagines, with the major stops on Odysseus’s decade-long detour. A caution worth keeping in your back pocket: ancient audiences didn’t necessarily expect this geography to be literal or consistent — Homer is telling a folktale dressed up in some real place-names, and scholars have argued for centuries (inconclusively) over where Scylla, Circe’s island, or Calypso’s Ogygia were “really” supposed to be. Treat the map as a storyteller’s atlas, not a GPS route.

How to Read the Odyssey

As you can imagine, there are many English translations that have been written over the last couple of centuries. Here are three that I recommend. (This week I read Wilson, it was fantastic!)

Fitzgerald (1961): poetic and lyrical.

Opening line: “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story / of that man skilled in all ways of contending, / the wanderer, harried for years on end, / after he plundered the stronghold / on the proud height of Troy.

Fagles (1996): dramatic and grand.

Opening line: “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns / driven time and again off course, once he had plundered / the hallowed heights of Troy.”

Wilson (2017): lucid and modern (in Iambic Pentameter)

Opening Line: “Tell me about a complicated man. / Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost / when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy...”

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I will provide my own take on what the Odyssey is about. I will also discuss what I learned when I re-read the Odyssey as a biblical scholar, thinking about what stood out to me from the ancient world that can help Bible readers today to “get” that Greco-Roman world. This relates, for example, to what folks already had in mind about gods and mortals when the apostles preached to them in the book of Acts. And—Of course—I will talk about Nolan’s 3-hour film. Stay tuned!

A couple of generations ago, if you wanted to be a pastor, you had to go to seminary. It was assumed, it was expected, and in many cases it was required. If you want to be a doctor and save lives, you have to get expert training. If you want to be a lawyer and defend the law and human rights, you have to get expert training. If you want to be a spiritual shepherd of the people, care for souls, and rightly handle the Word of Truth—you need expert training, because there is a lot at stake. Right?

But for various reasons, the expectation that pastors need expert training has weakened. I blame some of that on the Church Growth movement that emphasized filling church seats with rock-concert level music and entertaining sermons. I blame some of that on the internet and the emergence of quick and easy and often free resources on Youtube and Vimeo.

But seminaries have to take their fair share of the blame. Traditional seminary is too expensive. Too many professors are out of touch with the real lives and experiences of busy pastors. And some seminary professors are…just not that good at teaching. They are researchers who begrudgingly grade assignments and who create ridiculously boring Powerpoint presentations.

But—I still think seminary is important for ministry leaders.

Leaders often tell me: I’m going to learn Greek on my own some day! And guess what: they don’t. I don’t blame them, Greek is hard and most people don’t have the learning skills and determination to actually do it (I would put the odds at 1 in 1,000).

Here are five reasons why you should consider Northern Seminary.

#1: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

In many ways, Seminary is the beginning of wisdom because we (professors) have a curriculum that we impress upon you, subjects and ideas and topics that you might not have known that you needed to study and learn. You may have thought that you need to study some Bible and theology, but you take a course on church history that absolutely blows you away. My friend AJ Swoboda calls this “serendipitous learning,” the “unexpected” blessings of seminary; for you (the student) this learning in unplanned, but for us (seminary professors) we have been doing this for over a hundred years!

#2: The Bible is Very Complex

Imagine you are watching the World Cup, Bellingham misses an open shot, and you shout out from the comfort of your couch, “Come on! I could’ve made that shot, it was easy!” Reality check: no you couldn’t have. Soccer looks easy from a distance, but there are a million elements of technique and years and years of experience and training that go into it.

The same goes for reading, interpreting, exegeting, and preaching the Bible. You could wing it, just like people try to teach themselves soccer. But a little training from the experts goes a long way. I learned things in seminary that I would have never learned on my own.

The Bible is very complex. I am writing up a guide right now on interpreting the book of Revelation. Revelation is incredibly difficult to understand, but centuries of academic scholarship has helped and we can pass some of that wisdom on to you.

Just like you can’t shoot like Bellingham by watching a few Youtube videos; just like you can’t learn to do brain surgery from a few videos; so you can’t really learn how to study and preach Scripture that way.

#3: Seminary, at Its Best, Is a Community of Co-Learners

Year after year after year, at commencement, I hear from graduating students: “I came to seminary to learn and study, but the unexpected and greatest benefit is lifelong friends.” It’s all about the community. These brothers and sisters cheer you on, challenge you, pray with and for you, lift you up, open your eyes to new things, inspire you. I am constantly blown away by how caring seminary students are for one another. Studies show that pastors are deeply lonely. Seminary naturally puts you together with like-minded ministry people.

#4: Mentorship is the Premium

This is what you can’t replace with one-off pastors’ conferences and a few books and videos trying to learn and grow on your own. When you look to choose a seminary, one of the most important considerations should be the availability of the faculty and support staff. There are “discount-bin” sorts of online seminaries out there that utilize pre-recorded lectures from so-called luminaries, but you (the student) are still left on your own to process and learn. A good seminary has live instruction and mentorship opportunities, inside and outside the classroom.

#5: The Best Learning Happens in a Diverse Setting

Here is where Northern Seminary shines: it is so important that you learn in a diverse setting with men and women, ethnic diversity, geographic diversity. Yes, it’s good if there is agreement on theological and doctrinal basics. But your learning experience will be enriched by rubbing shoulders with anglicans and pentecostals and missionary baptists and presbyterians and restoration movement folks. Seminary is not a time to have someone pat you on the back for falling in line with the tenets of your denomination. Yes, learn your tradition, root yourself in it, but also be challenged and influenced by others.

We live in a sharply divided world and social media is trying to push us into silos and get us to hate each other from a distance. Seminary provides an opportunity to counter-act those divisive trends. Make a friend who thinks differently, who has a different set of experiences, whose real life story you can hear and see lived out.

Check out Northern Seminary!

We have distance-learning degrees in

• Biblical Studies

• Christian Ministries/MDIV

• Theological Studies

• Theology and Mission

• Women in Ministry

• Black Church Studies

• Christian Community Development

• Worship

• Pentecostal Ministry (Certificate)

• Vineyard Church (Certificate)

• Doctoral Programs

Hey friends, Nijay here. Welcome back to the ONE TRUE GOSPEL series.

Everyone has a “gospel,” some big ideology they want to preach, some salvation they want to offer, some “truth” they want to present. This series is a clarion call for the church to return to the one true gospel, the heavenly gospel kingdom that is led and represented by our one and only Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Joel Green. Green serves as Senior Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary. As an award-winning and high respected scholar, Green has published over sixty books including the NICNT commentary on Luke, the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (2nd ed.), and a recent commentary on James for the New Testament Library series.

The One True Gospel is Political

By Dr. Joel B. Green

Say “politics” and most people picture politicians—campaigns, ballots, the machinery of parties. At its more basic level, though, politics refers to the distribution and use of authority and influence: Who holds power? Who is subject to it? Whose flourishing does it serve? On that definition, to say the one true gospel is political is not to smuggle a partisan agenda into the sanctuary. It is to notice what the New Testament announces on its own terms.

Start with the word itself: euangelion—“gospel,” “good news.” For most people in the Roman world, this was an imperial term: the herald’s cry that a new emperor had ascended, a parade announcement that a great victory had been won. Even if the earliest Christ-followers brought the word forward from Isaiah’s promise of the age of salvation, when they fastened the word “gospel” to a crucified Galilean, they were making a counter-imperial claim.

In the same way, when naming Jesus as kyrios, “Lord,” they carried forward scriptural language while at the same time using Caesar’s words. After all, to confess “Jesus is Lord” is to say, in the same breath, that someone else isn’t.

That single claim—one Lord, who relativizes every rival claimant to ultimate authority—is central to gospel politics. It’s also why this gospel refuses the very distortions we most fear.

• It refuses Christian Nationalism. A gospel that recognizes Jesus on the throne cannot be conscripted for a flag, because the nation is precisely one of the powers his lordship relativizes. To baptize any country’s dominance is to hand the throne back to Caesar under a Christian name.

• It refuses partisan capture. The confession that Jesus is Lord entails an allegiance no party can then claim. Those who serve the resurrected Lord cannot be made the chaplains of any platform.

• It refuses the privatized heart—that is, the notion that faith is an interior affair, real enough on Sunday but without purchase on how power is arranged and used Monday through Saturday. Note well: A narrow focus on interiority is a modern innovation, not the old-time religion. What is more, surprisingly (and unfortunately!), it’s a political arrangement in its own right.

Among the many witnesses we could call, consider three.

• Mary sings: The Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) announces a God who has “pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,” who “filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed” (CEB). That’s a reordering—of authority and of bread, of status and of provision. Luke sets this song at the threshold of his Gospel as its interpretive key. When God comes to set things right, God does so in down-to-earth ways that take seriously the world of power and provision.

• Jesus is crucified. Rome didn’t crucify people on account of their private religious opinions, or because they prayed too much. Crucifixion was a deeply political act, mostly reserved for enemies of the state and slaves. And the charge fixed above Jesus’s head—”King of the Jews”—names his offense as a claim to authority the empire couldn’t tolerate. Accordingly, when the mission of Jesus’s followers reaches Thessalonica, the indictment they face is well-aimed: “Every one of them does what is contrary to Caesar’s decrees by naming someone else as king: Jesus” (Acts 17:7). They were heard, rightly, as proclaiming a rival sovereignty. The one the empire condemned, God vindicated. The court of Caesar was overruled by a higher court.

• John envisions. Often mistaken for a coded timetable of the end, Revelation is better read as political theology under duress—a vision that asks, relentlessly, who gets worshiped. In the Apocalypse, worship is the decisive political act, because to worship is to declare where ultimate allegiance lies. And John won’t let this question remain in the abstract: Babylon falls, and John itemizes her fall as an economy (Revelation 18), a trafficking in luxuries down to “slaves—even human lives” (CEB). The beast’s power runs on commerce and coercion; the Lamb’s runs on courageous endurance, faithfulness unto death. Between those two the churches must choose, and choosing is a political statement.

Wesleyan that I am, I must add a clarification, lest my emphasis on “political” be heard as a retreat from the heart. It’s nothing of the kind. The renewed heart is wrapped up in a reordered common life. There is, Wesley insisted, “no holiness but social holiness”—and he took his holiness on the road, so to speak, in his writings on slavery, for example, as well as poverty and prison reform. The gospel doesn’t bypass the interior for the polis. It renovates the whole person, inside and out, with the result that the polis is remade. The privatized heart isn’t and never was our heritage as Christ-followers. It’s a truncation of it.

Take note: The confinement of faith to the inner life isn’t the absence of politics. It’s actually a kind of politics—a quiet arrangement that keeps the gospel out of the boardrooms and courtrooms and hallways where authority and influence are distributed, while blessing that exclusion as “spiritual.” It’s a remarkably convenient arrangement for the powers. A gospel that stays in the heart will never trouble a throne.

Accordingly, when I say the one true gospel is political, I’m not politicizing something that was properly spiritual. I’m declining a bad bargain. I’m refusing to accept, on the powers’ own terms, that the lordship of Christ stops at the church door or the breastbone. Mary knew better. The Roman governor knew better. John of Patmos knew better. The gospel each of them proclaimed had a public, and that public was the whole ordering of human life under a single word: kyrios. And that was, and is, a disputed word: Who is Lord?

Here’s the answer: Not Caesar. Not the nation. Not the party. Not even the sovereign, self-curating inner self. Jesus is Lord—and that confession is the most political claim we can make.

~JBG

Wow! Wasn’t that inspiring? Check out some of my favorite Green books

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Here are some of the summer/fall books that I am excited to read.

Summer/Fall 2026

I like this Baker textbook series, esp Jipp’s volume on the Gospels. Reese and Pierce will be an excellent contribution. Lately, I’ve been geeking out on Revelation, so excited to see how they tackle it.

I dig the SGBC commentary series, so thrilled to see Deuteronomy from Myrto Theocharous.

I wrote this endorsement for Glahn’s new book:

“Some have said women should be seen and not heard; others think women shouldn’t be seen or heard. But Scripture includes and affirms the presence, voices, and actions of numerous women. Sandra Glahn proves herself a master teacher by highlighting some of the many ways in which women are not just present in the Bible but, in fact, play crucial roles in the grand story of the gospel. You will not just learn about the women of the Bible; you will also learn how to read the Bible well.” ~Nijay K. Gupta, Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary

Oh miracle of miracles! This new Keener book clocks in at 165 pages! I imagine this book is an homage to F.F. Bruce’s 1963, The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable? and in the same vein as Blomberg and Peter Williams’ work on the reliability of the NT Gospels.

No surprise that this is my top pick of the fall. I am imagining this as a kind of magnum opus for Gorman. Love the cover!

I have gained much from Keener’s older book on the Spirit and spiritual gifts. This 640 page beast seems to lay out his case in full.

I’ve mentioned this one before, a great idea for a study Bible. Presumes at least basic knowledge of Greek, I had the privilege of contributing on Philippians.

What a great title and cover! Glad Jipp is leaning into the cross-over world with this Brazos book. I am intrigued!

Abernethy is an excellent scholar, this will be a go-to handbook.

F. Dale Bruner launches a new commentary series with his son (Michael) as co-writer. Looks great!

I went to seminary with Jonathan Moo (yes, son of Doug Moo). Wonderful guy, great scholar, heart of gold. I read and endorsed this commentary, it’s excellent. So much garbage sermons and Bible studies out there about Revelation, so we need trustworthy resources!

Excited to see this from Stovell. First volume in her Minor Prophets work for SGBC.

Leave a Comment:

• What did I miss?

• What new releases are you most excited about?

Dr. Dennis R. Edwards has been appointed Senior Research Professor at Northern Seminary. Edwards will teach courses, guest lecture on occasion, and participate in faculty community.

I have benefited so much from Dr. Edwards’s scholarship, his public voice, and his dear friendship. So glad he said yes to Northern.

Official Press Release

Northern Seminary is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Dennis Edwards to the faculty as Senior Research Professor. In his role, Dr. Edwards will teach students in both the Masters and Doctoral programs, while also continuing his research and writing for both the academy and the church.

Dr. Edwards brings to Northern exceptional credentials and decades of faithful leadership in churches and in theological education. In addition to being an experienced pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church, Dr. Edwards has authored numerous books, including Humility Illuminated, Might from the Margins, The Story of God Commentary: 1 Peter, What is the Bible and How Do We Understand It? and many more.

A sought-after speaker at conferences and universities, Dr. Edwards has served as a church planter in Brooklyn and Washington, DC, and has worked in urban ministry for nearly three decades. Edwards holds degrees from Cornell University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Catholic University of America, and St. Mary’s Seminary and University.

“Dr. Edwards’s reputation precedes him as a top-tier scholar, an experienced ministry leader, an accomplished administrator, and a bold public voice,” said Professor Nijay Gupta. “Personally, I have learned much from Edwards’s writings and I have benefited greatly from our friendship. I am overjoyed that he is joining our community and that our students and colleagues will have opportunities to interact with him.”

Dr. Edwards’ research interests include New Testament studies, biblical interpretation, character formation, and gospel justice.

“I am beyond pleased to welcome Dr. Edwards to Northern Seminary,” said Dean Dr. Mike Moore. “Dennis and I have served next to one another not only in the seminary context, but also at our local church in Chicago. I cannot think of anyone else who is so widely respected and beloved than Dr. Edwards. Northern is a brighter and more faithful place with his appointment. We look forward to the way he will bless our seminary body.”

The addition of Dr. Edwards to the Northern faculty continues the rich legacy of New Testament scholarship, church embedded learning and contextual education. Dr. Edwards will join Northern Seminary in the Fall of 2026.

About Northern Seminary

Northern Baptist Theological Seminary was founded in 1913 to educate Christian leaders to be personally whole, spiritually mature, biblically grounded, theologically competent, pastoral, evangelistic, and prophetic. Since that time, over 4,000 students have graduated; today, alumni serve in all 50 states and beyond that in 30 countries. Northern offers Masters and Doctoral degrees to students through live-streaming classes and on-site intensive classes.

Hey friends, Nijay here. Welcome back to the ONE TRUE GOSPEL series.

Everyone has a “gospel,” some big ideology they want to preach, some salvation they want to offer, some “truth” they want to present. This series is a clarion call for the church to return to the one true gospel, the heavenly gospel kingdom that is led and represented by our one and only Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s guest post is by Rev. Dr. Marcus Jerkins

Pastor Marcus Jerkins is native of Atlanta, Ga. Jerkins holds degrees from Emory (BA, MDIV, ThM) and Baylor (PhD). Jerkins currently serves as the third Pastor of Resurrection Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is also author of the book Black Lives Matter to Jesus: The Salvation of Black Life and All Life in Luke and Acts.

Dr. Jerkins is the blessed husband of Dr. Courtney A. Jerkins and the loving father of three children, Nathaniel, Naomi, and Joanna.

The One True Gospel is Antiracist

By Rev. Dr. Marcus Jerkins

“Our new government is … laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

These were the words of Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America. In order to fully appreciate the vapidity of the comment, one has to note the use of the language of “corner-stone” and “truth.” His racist beliefs were deeply rooted in Christian language and supposed Christian identity. He believed in his view of the gospel that God had established the white race to be above all other races and, in particular, the black race. The problem, of course, is that any real understanding of the gospel disallows such abhorrent perspectives. What the Scriptures teach us about the Bible are so far from his repugnant ideas one wonders how such views could be thought to be related to Christianity. How could this man read the New Testament, utilize the language of the New Testament, and still conclude that God had promoted any race above another? The answer to that question is extremely complicated, well-beyond the limits of this essay. But what we can establish is that there is the one true gospel and that gospel had no room for racism. That gospel is, indeed, against all forms of racism, it is antiracist.

Before I continue my argument, I want to make it clear that I am using the term “antiracist” in the broadest sense. That is, the gospel of Jesus Christ is against any form of thinking and action that deems one racial group above or beneath another because of phenotype and racial heritage. I make no attempt to get into the nuanced debates that suggest one cannot be racist unless one can systematically and structurally implement racism in law and society. In my view, the thought of racism must be vehemently rejected just as much as the societal activation of racist beliefs.

With that stated, it is absolutely important to realize that from its foundation, the gospel Jesus preached, which was passed on to the early church, was inherently antiracist. Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews, God’s chosen people, said this, “Go, make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 28:19, NRSV). Jesus understood his Jewish identity as a chosen person to be a vocation. He was called to spread God’s message of salvation to all. It was not to pedestalize his race alone, or any race trying to be like his. His task was to bring the world to obedience to the one God. When Jesus instructed his disciples to teach every nation, he meant it. Every nation under God’s heaven must hear the call of God to return to God in faith and obedience.

If Jesus saw the task of the gospel to require submission from all peoples, including Jews, then it would have never occurred to Jesus to think the task of one nation was to subjugate another. One race or group of people had no exalted position before God. All were in need of God’s love and forgiveness through Christ. The message of Jesus’s reign requires humility from all peoples around the world. Jesus’s message is completely iconoclastic. Any gods we had before Christ must be brought down and destroyed, including worship of our own sense of identity.

Paul articulates identity in Christ in this way: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28, NRSV). These few lines offer a vision of the world that defied Paul’s social reality in a broken world. Jews and Gentiles drew a line between themselves and other races. Though Jews lumped Gentiles together, Gentiles certainly did not do that. People from various races have always recognized and often exaggerated their distinctions from each other.

These distinctions were not just in terms of language and culture but often appearance. Yet, Paul says, in Christ, these distinctions are essentially erased. But does that mean that all humans are to be uniform in culture and appearance? In this very letter, Paul recognized his calling to preach to Gentiles while other apostles went to Jews (Gal 2:9-10). Paul did not envision a racially blind world but he did see a racially equal world. The vocation of going to every nation comes along with the understanding that there are different nations. People throughout the world are diverse. Paul realized this. The one true gospel which he preached suggests the Jew could still be a Jew and love the Gentile. In this world, the Gentile could still be a Gentile and love the Jew. And both, in their particular racial identities, could walk in God’s covenant without God looking at one differently than the other. Difference does not require ranking. Difference does not mean deficiency.

This is where humanity struggles. We love comparisons. Pride often persuades us to try to attempt to suggest one person might be better than the other. But brown eyes see just as well as blue eyes. Black hair is just as beautiful as blonde hair or any other color.

The cry of the gospel is that Christ came to unify the world around himself. The culture and appearance that will prevail in the end, when the Lord Jesus returns, is that of Jesus himself. We will all act like Jesus and we will all look like Jesus (1 John 3:1-2). Love will become our nature and we will all live together with the Lord, as members of his body.

What is true in the last is true through faith today. The Lord’s return will reveal he has won the fight against racism and national pride. Though we cannot see it yet, faith shows us that this victory is already won. As believers, we are called to live with the culture of Christ and wear Jesus wherever we go (Rom 13:8-14). The one true gospel is antiracist because it demands each of us as black, white, brown, or yellow, to be in unity in love towards one another, and this love allows us to wear Christ. We may look different from one another on the outside, we may have different languages, we may eat different foods, we may prefer different things at times, but we are all neighbors in love with God and one another.

That love allows us to live out the one true gospel. When lived out, this gospel breaks down the barriers erected through years of racism and national exaltation. Christ Jesus breaks down the walls which separate each race from one another. The unity that ensues enables us to reach a world in need of our Savior’s love more effectively. Others will hear this gospel better when the church has truly embraced it for what it demands of all of us.

~MJ

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With this podcast, we have hosted numerous discussions designed to listen to and elevate the voices of Christian women who lead and contribute in church and society.

CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE

Here are some of my favorite conversations so far, but please subscribe to the podcast on Apple or wherever you like to listen.

INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION WITH CO-HOSTS

Dr. Heather Matthews on CONFRONTING SEXISM

Rev. Dr. Tammy Dunahoo on Church Leadership

A Discussion about Peri Menopause

Dr. Mimi Haddad on Christians for Biblical Equality in the Academy

AND THERE ARE MORE GREAT EPISODES TO LEARN FROM!

We have many more episodes that will be posted in the future, one of them in particular was very special for me, more to say about that later!

Hey, if you want to read something on women in ministry in the Bible, check out my book with IVP.

One of my favorite commentary series (NTL) is on Kindle sale right now for $6.

LINK TO SALE

Below are some of my top recommendations from the series.

Also, check out the WJK “Interpretation” Series ($6 Kindle)

Hey friends, Nijay here. Welcome back to the ONE TRUE GOSPEL series.

Everyone has a “gospel,” some big ideology they want to preach, some salvation they want to offer, some “truth” they want to present. This series is a clarion call for the church to return to the one true gospel, the heavenly gospel kingdom that is led and represented by our one and only Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s guest post is by Joyce Koo Dalrymple.

Joyce is an author, speaker, and spiritual director. She is the Director of the Center for Women in Ministry at Northern Seminary and the Chief of Content and Engagement at Khora Collective. She also founded Refuge for Strength, a ministry focused on spiritual formation and holy listening practices. She is also co-author of the award-winning book, Redeeming Eden.

The One True Gospel Brings Joy

By Joyce Koo Dalrymple

When was the last time you did something for no other reason than it brought you joy?

Not because it was productive. Not because it was right. Not because it was expected. Just because it delighted you.

For many of us—that question feels surprisingly difficult to answer. And honestly, that makes sense.

We are living in a time of deep cultural polarization, eroding trust in institutions, and growing loneliness and isolation, all the while navigating the relentless pace and constant noise of our digital age. Taking time to experience joy can feel almost indulgent. Perhaps even irresponsible in a world filled with suffering.

So joy gets pushed to the margins.

Recently, I was part of a spiritual direction cohort where we discussed playing as a spiritual practice. (That’s not a typo: I did write “playing” not praying).

The response of the cohort members was almost unanimous: “We don’t know how to do that.”

We laughed about it, but beneath the laughter was something deeper. We have to work harder. We can’t rest. We’re not enough yet. We have to prove our worth.

These are not merely habits. They are stories that shape us. Stories embedded in our families, churches, cultures, and bodies.

Many of us have been formed by assumptions that sound something like this: Productivity is essential. Rest is a waste of time. Delight is indulgent.

Yet the gospel tells a different story. What if joy is not optional? What if joy is actually essential to living out the one true gospel?

Created for Joy

The biblical story begins not with duty but with delight. In Genesis 1:26, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”

Even in that small phrase—”Let us”—we glimpse something profound. We are created in the image of a Triune God! The God revealed in Scripture is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: a communion of self-giving love, mutual delight, and shared presence. God is not solitary. God is relational. And God is joyful.

Luke gives us a remarkable window into this trinitarian relationship: “At that same time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth’” (Luke 10:21). Jesus is full of joy in the Spirit as he delights in the Father.

The gospel is not merely the announcement that our sins are forgiven. It is the invitation to participate in the life of the Triune God. Jesus says in John 15:9, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

Notice the movement of the text. The love that exists between Father and Son is extended to us. We are invited not merely to observe divine love but to dwell within it.

Joy, then, is not an accessory to the Christian life. It is part of our design.

Why Joy Feels So Difficult

If we were created for joy, why is it often so elusive? Part of the answer lies in attachment.

Every newborn enters the world looking for someone looking back at them. They can only see clearly about 8-12 inches away—the exact distance between a baby and the face of the parent holding them. This is no accident. From the beginning, we are wired for connection. As children experience attunement—being seen, known, comforted, and responded to—they develop what psychologists call “secure attachment.”

Christian psychiatrist Curt Thompson notes that secure attachment contributes to emotional regulation, resilience, empathy, and relational health.

The problem is that many of us did not consistently experience that kind of attunement.

My own story reflects this reality. I grew up with loving immigrant parents who sacrificed tremendously for our family. Yet like many children of immigrants, emotional attunement was not something my parents had received themselves. Additionally, there were language barriers, cultural barriers, and survival pressures. We didn’t even have shared vocabulary for naming emotions.

What I learned was how to achieve. I learned how to work hard. I learned how to meet expectations. What I didn’t learn was how to pay attention to my inner life. So I stuffed down my negative emotions and did what was expected of me.

Years later, while preparing to adopt our youngest daughter, I read adoption books about the long-term impacts of insecure attachment—fear of rejection, anxiety, feeling unworthy. And I had this surprising realization: I saw myself in those pages.

Many of us carry similar stories. Perhaps you felt the weight of expectations more than the experience of delight. Perhaps you knew you were loved but rarely felt deeply known.

And those early experiences often shape our relationship with God. Theologically, we may believe that God loves us. But do we experience his delight? Do we know, deep in our bones, that God enjoys us?

The Gospel as Secure Attachment

One of the most beautiful images in Scripture appears in Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you ... [He] will rejoice over you with singing.”

Pause and consider that image. The Creator of the universe rejoices over you with singing. God does not merely tolerate you. He delights in you.

Before Jesus preached a sermon, healed a disease, or entered into public ministry, the Father declared at his baptism, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The one true gospel does not simply rescue us from sin. It restores us to relationship. It brings us into the loving fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The gospel gives us a secure attachment to God.

In Christ, we are fully known and fully loved. Nothing needs to be hidden. Nothing needs to be earned. Nothing needs to be proven.

Learning to Receive Joy

This is why spiritual formation must involve more than correct beliefs about God’s love. We need repeated experiences of God’s presence.

Our old narratives of shame or unworthiness don’t just disappear when we come to faith. We carry them right into our relationship with God. My adoptive daughter didn’t just immediately bond with us when we brought her home from China. It’s in the day after day caring for her that she learns that we won’t abandon her.

We need to keep encountering Jesus’ living presence — his empathy, his attentiveness, his love — in our current reality. Over and over again.

If we deny our pain and failures, if we try to hide our anxiety or pride, if we won’t face our addictions to work, pornography, substances or power, if we’re simply out of touch with our emotional life…. We avoid the full truth about ourselves, and deny God the chance to meet us in our present reality.

But when we consistently bring our real selves to Jesus—our anxious, wounded, grieving, longing parts—and we encounter his steady empathy, his attentive presence, his deep attunement, something begins to shift.

Over time, our nervous system learns: I am safe. I am seen. I am loved. I do not have to prove my worth.

This is the slow work of transformation. And it is also the pathway to joy.

The one true gospel announces that through Christ we have been welcomed into the joyful communion of the Trinity. We no longer need to earn belonging, manufacture worth, or secure our own identity. We are beloved sons and daughters.

And from that place of secure attachment, joy becomes possible. Joy is not a personality trait, emotional state, or a superficial happiness that ignores suffering. But it is the fruit of secure attachment to the Triune God through the gospel. Joy emerges when we rest in the reality that we are already held in the love of God. We experience a deep, resilient joy regardless of our circumstances, because it is anchored in our relationship to the God who knows us completely and loves us fully.

Perhaps that is why joy matters so much. Because joy is not a distraction from the gospel. Joy is one of the clearest signs that we are living out the truth of who we are in Christ—beloved children of God.

If you want to read more from Joyce, check out Redeeming Eden and her other books.

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I used to be naive. I thought—that heavy handed patriarchy stuff is a thing of the past. The civil rights movements laid it to rest in the grave.

I was wrong.

The temptations of power are almost impossible to overcome. The same month that I published Tell Her Story (2023), the Southern Baptists ousted Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church from the SBC because he dared to allow a female pastor to teach the church. On top of that, Saddleback had three ordained female pastors. Warren’s June plea for appeal was rejected. Fast forward to 2026 and the SBC is working harder to ban women from using the label “pastor” in any capacity.

People have often asked me, Why did I write yet another book on women in ministry, when so much has been written? I asked myself the same question again and again when I was writing Tell Her Story, but now I am sure we need even more sound biblical scholarship to combat the blinders that too many people have to see what women say and do in God’s Word, how they are called and empowered, and how they are key leaders amongst God’s people back then, have been throughout history, and are doing important ministry work today in preaching, teaching, and leadership.

The Stories We Failed to Tell

I remember a distinct moment when I first taught the Northern Seminary course, Women and the New Testament. We had about 40-50 students, most of them were women. I had a TA named Susy. It was the first or second class and I was ploughing through the lecture, point by point, barely looking at the students. My TA Susy texted me: “You need to stop and talk to the students.” So I stopped and looked at the students. Tears. So many tears. I thought I had said something hurtful or offensive, so I asked, why are you upset? One student chimed in: “We have never heard of these women before. No one ever told us their stories.” Susanna. Joanna. Tryphaena. Tryphosa. Persis. Damaris. Euodia. Syntyche. Nympha. Mary of Rome. Their tears were both joy and grief. Joy—women were there, even when we thought or assumed they weren’t. Grief—our teachers, preachers, and leaders never told their stories. They remained in the shadow when only men were put in the spotlight.

I blamed my pastors, my teachers, my leaders. Was this ignorance? Discrimination? Hubris? I blamed myself. Why didn’t I study Scripture more carefully and closely earlier in my life?

Teach the Young

At the book launch event in Portland for my book Tell Her Story, I greeted many of the attendees afterward. I distinctly recall a mother and teenage daughter excitedly shaking my hand. The mother said, “My daughter and I are reading your book and we love it! I wish there was something like this for my younger kids!”

That stuck with me. Notoriously, kids and tweener books handle this subject poorly or not at all.

I contacted my editor at IVP and then I reached out to my good friend Dr. Carmen Imes. And a new book was planned: Fierce and Faithful: 25 Women of the Bible Who Dared to Trust God. (Release Date: Oct 27, 2026)

Carmen and I will share more about this book in the coming months, but we are very excited because we are not adding to Scripture, we are not bending Scripture, we are simply telling the amazing stories about women of faith, courage, wisdom, and leadership that are in Scripture. To teach our children well, we need to teach all of the Bible. Women were there—let’s keep telling their stories, and let’s commit ourselves to teaching the young.

The Spirit is at work today, just as the Spirit worked thousands of years ago. You can’t stop women whom God calls and empowers. Let’s tell their stories and support God’s work in them.

Special Barnes & Noble Discount: Preorder June 24-26, 2026: use code PREORDER25 for 25% off

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Museum of the Bible

This summer we planned a trip to see relatives in Maryland, which offered an opportunity for a quick visit to DC and to spend a few hours in the Museum of the Bible for the first time. Below you will find some of my “impressions” of the MB, not a full-blown review because we only spent a quick three hours there.

Overall: My family was impressed with the size and scope of the museum, the beauty and quality of the displays and exhibits, lots of interactive features, and something for all age groups. I am happy we went with our whole family (including three teens), because the MB is not designed to impress or please scholars, but to inform and inspire everyday Christians. One thing that struck me: the MB was a unique blend of academic/historical information and faith-inspiring elements, which you don’t find in many other museums. Of course, the MB is going to skew traditional/conservative (given the broader clientele of American and international visitors), so I don’t begrudge any of that. And I was pleased to see that it didn’t come across as narrowly apologetic/evangelistic in tone or “us vs. them” in terms of culture wars. There was no “turn or burn” dynamic that I could detect. I found the displays informative and tasteful. (NB: I didn’t read every display!)

If you are a hardcore historian or archaeologist and you are skeptical or faith-neutral, you probably won’t feel like the MB was worthwhile. Go to the British Museum or Jerusalem or Rome. But if you live in the US (or are visiting DC) and if you are a person of Christian faith and want to be informed and inspired, the MB is well worth a visit.

Note on scholarly consultants: I was pleased to see a number of respected consulting scholars including Craig Keener and N.T. Wright involved with the MB. And I felt MB made a good faith effort to seek input from international scholars like Joshua Berman (Bar-Ilan University), Marvin Sweeney (Claremont), and Emauel Tov (Hebrew University), among others.

Pic with St. Paul

4Q271 (Fragment from the Damascus Document of Dead Sea Scrolls)

Great temporary exhibit featuring some fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls.

Here is one of the reconstructed clay jars that supposedly held the scrolls.

Nazareth

I enjoyed the imaginative recreation of a small section of Nazareth.

Washington Revelations

There’s a sort of enhanced visual tour of DC which has thrill-ride kind of features. The “experience” was cool, but very little about Christianity or the Bible in the video tour. I could see younger kids dig it. It’s less than ten minutes long.

Spotted some NLTs in the Gift Shop (!)

In the End…

Glad we visited!

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Hey friends, Nijay here. Welcome to the ONE TRUE GOSPEL series.

Everyone has a “gospel,” some big ideology they want to preach, some salvation they want to offer, some “truth” they want to present. This series is a clarion call for the church to return to the one true gospel, the heavenly gospel kingdom that is led and represented by our one and only Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s guest post is by Rev. Dr. Caleb Campbell. Campbell has degrees from Phoenix Seminary and Fuller Seminary. He is Lead Pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church, in Phoenix, AZ.​ He also serves on the board of United Pastors of Arizona and is one of the founders of the J29 Coalition.

Campbell written the best-selling book, Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbors.

The One True Gospel Shapes Our Response to False Gospels

By Rev. Dr. Caleb Campbell

2020 was the worst year of my life, so far.

By the end of the year, nearly 80% of the congregation I pastored had left. Some accused me of being liberal, Marxist, atheist, even demon-possessed, while others simply disappeared without a word. People I had known for years stopped returning calls. Many of the folks I had baptized, prayed with, and ministered alongside no longer wanted me as their pastor and instead gave themselves over to the American Christian Nationalist movement.

This was a devastating loss of relationships I held dear. These were my people.

And that pain slowly hardened something in me.

I came to see American Christian Nationalism as an enemy to fight. A dangerous distortion of the gospel to expose and confront. Over time, I increasingly viewed those who had given themselves over to it as enemies to defeat rather than neighbors to love.

Then one day, I met with a young woman who worked for one of the largest purveyors of Christian Nationalism in America.

I walked into the meeting carrying all sorts of assumptions. I imagined someone combative, bigoted, and obsessed with being a soldier in the culture war. In my imagination, I had flattened her into a stereotype.

But sitting across from me was a young woman who was earnest, sincere, and clearly passionate about her faith.

At one point in our conversation, she paused and said something that caught me completely off guard.

“Pastor Caleb, politics is really important to me. But at the end of the day, I just want to follow Jesus.”

So I asked her how she came to faith.

She told me she had met Jesus the year before at a large event hosted by the organization she now worked for. Her entire discipleship journey had taken place within the ecosystem of American Christian Nationalism. The podcasts. The rallies. The media personalities. The purveyors of tribalistic outrage. All of it had shaped her understanding of who Jesus is and the gospel he proclaimed.

And suddenly, something shifted within me.

I realized I had cultivated an imagination in which everyone connected to American Christian Nationalism was malicious and beyond reach. But sitting across from me was someone who was earnestly trying to follow Jesus with the tools she had been given.

That realization did not make her beliefs any less harmful.

But it changed how I understood the people who had given themselves over to this movement.

It was in that moment that I sensed the Spirit say something like:

“These people do not need enemies to fight them. They need missionaries to reach them.”

Over the years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that there is an important distinction to make. There are grifters, and there are the grifted.

In the Gospels, we find Jesus flipping over the tables of the money changers. Some tables need flipping.

But Jesus only flipped tables once.

Most of his ministry was marked by setting tables.

Again and again, we find him eating with tax collectors, zealots, sinners, Pharisees, and people caught up in the corrupt religious ecosystem of his day.

In our day, there are some who profit from fomenting fear and outrage in Jesus’ name. These grifters accumulate influence by convincing faithful Christians that discipleship requires fighting a culture war and pursuing political power.

But many others are not grifters. They are the grifted. They are ordinary Christians who are simply trying to follow Jesus with the tools they have been given.

The one true gospel compels us to engage those groups differently.

To be clear, I believe American Christian Nationalism presents a distorted gospel. It wraps anxiety, power, and partisan identity in the language of faith, often treating political victory and cultural domination as the mission of the church.

But what I came to realize is that my posture had been distorted too.

Not in the same ways, certainly. But I had slowly given myself over to outrage, suspicion, and contempt. I had failed to love as Jesus calls me to love.

And so I began asking a different question.

Instead of asking, “How do we defeat those who promote this movement?” I started asking:

“How do we faithfully love our Christian Nationalist neighbors while bearing witness to the gospel in our words and actions?”

One passage that has profoundly shaped my thinking is Galatians 6:1-2:

Notice Paul’s language.

“If someone is caught...”

Paul describes someone ensnared. Trapped. Captured by something that has wrapped itself around them.

And what is the response of spiritually mature believers?

Restore them gently.

Not humiliate them.

Not mock them.

Not publicly shame them for applause from our own tribe.

Restore them gently.

Restoration is patient, delicate work. The goal is not merely to win an argument, but to cultivate space for repentance and healing.

That has practical implications for how we engage people shaped by false gospels.

It means we strive to stay present in relationships even when conversations become difficult. It means asking questions before rushing into correction. It means listening carefully enough to understand the fears and longings underneath the rhetoric. It means refusing the broken but easy path of ridicule and contempt and remembering that the renewing of our minds often happens slowly, through trust, patience, hospitality, and the quiet work of the Spirit.

It is good and right for us to call out the grifters.

But when it comes to engaging the grifted, table-flipping should give way to table-setting.

The one true gospel announces that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. And our behavior toward those still under Caesar’s grasp should be shaped by King Jesus.

We do not merely proclaim the message of the gospel. We are called to embody its means as well.

Instead of making our goal changing minds, perhaps the one true gospel compels us to ask a different question of ourselves:

“Have I been like Jesus to them?”

Because followers of Jesus do not merely proclaim the message of the one true gospel.

We are called to embody its means as well.

Those given over to American Christian Nationalism are not enemies to defeat.

They are neighbors to love with both the message and the means of the one true gospel.

Check out Campbell’s book

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Did you know you can get my new book Paul for the World in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook?

What is the Relationship Between Church and World

Four Models, Only One is Healthy

My job as a seminary professor is to teach, train, and equip pastors for leading and serving the people of God through the church. Often students mistakenly think pastoring is primarily about preaching. Would-be pastors (and sometimes even current pastors) often arrive at an understanding of their job by just observing other pastors. Unfortunately, many churches operate on a model that is geared towards entertainment—church is the place you go to to be happy! Certainly church should be a place where people experience the freedom of the gospel and the joy of the Lord, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

My new book Paul for the World is all about how Paul thought about the church and the world. Clearly, the church has a relationship with the wider world, but what kind of relationship? Every pastor, every leader, and every believer needs to put deeper thought into that question, because I think we often get it wrong. I want to propose four models for church and world, three of them are wrong—not completely wrong, but wrong enough to do serious harm to ourselves and to others and to God’s ministry in God’s world. As you might expect from reading my Substack, I will focus on the apostle Paul as our advisor and teacher.

Church as Fortress

Motto: The world is wicked and dangerous, you can hide and rest safely in here!

The Church I attended as a teenager was a wonderful community, but the mentality of the church was very much us vs. them. There was a strong fear of pollution from the world. Now, to be fair, Paul talked about clear boundaries, not trying to yoke together light and darkness, righteousness and wickedness (2 Cor 6:14-7:1). But Paul was not contemplating a complete rejection of the world. He wanted the church to shine as lights in the darkness (Phil 2:14-16).

The fortress mentality is a form of escapism, Christians biding their time in isolation until the end of the world. The doors are (metaphorically) locked, people are safe inside. But where is the power and hope of the gospel for transforming the world? Have we given up without a fight? Is the Lord our God the God of the earth, or just of churches?

Church as Country Club

Motto: Come on in, we’ll take good care of you! You deserve some fun!

Imagine you are walking out of church, and the exit greeter fists bumps you and says, Did you have a good time this morning? From that perspective, church might as well be a country club, a place to get away, get a spiritual massage, and recover a bit from the hard life in the real world. To be honest, you can’t really get country club vibes out of Paul’s letters. This one is really the impact the entertainment and business industries have had on pastors and churches. If we want more butts in seats, more clicks on our Youtube channels, if we calculate “growth” primarily numerically and financially, then we have to make people happy, and if it is fleeting, all the better because they will come back for more!

From this perspective, the church is a great getaway. And who doesn’t want to get away? But this entirely avoids the hard stuff of life.

Church as Portal to Heaven

Motto: We have unique resources that no one else has access to!

I once visited a chapel that had this inscription: “Haec est Domus Dei et Porta Coeli”: This the house of God and portal to Heaven. I get the attitude: church is a place of inspired and deep communion with God. And Paul shares about his own transcendent experiences of heavenly journeys in visions (2 Cor 12). All believers are incredibly gifted with the Spirit and we do have access to unique heavenly resources. In Ephesians, Paul refers to being blessed “in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph 1:3). But if these blessings are misunderstood or misused they can become forms of escapism or they can be weaponized if we try to utilize heavenly resources to make ourselves great in this world, specifically in our flesh.

I think Paul in fact did believe that Christians enjoy a piece of heaven in the community of the church. But to what end?

Church as Training Ground

Motto: We are training to become fully human through Christ, to lead, serve, and bless the earth. (This is the right answer)

Paul reminded Timothy that all Scripture is beneficial for training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16). The term “training” here is paideia, which refers to the rigorous process of becoming mature, skilled, and excellent. This fits with the function of the church as well. Ephesians in particular paints a picture of the church as an organism, needing to grow up, or like a building that needs to be assembled brick by brick (2:21-22; 3:14-19). But healthy growth requires training. To be clear: Worship is essential and good for the church. We gather to worship our triune God. And fellowship is essential and good. We gather for fellowship. But I have come to see that training, paideia, is fundamental to why we come together as the church. Like all organisms, we don’t start out mature and complete. We must grow.

In Ephesians, Paul refers to the church as a place of equipping (4:12), for the building up of the body, requiring unity, and pursuing full maturity until we conform to the image of Christ (4:13). Christ is the true human, more than human of course, but Christ is the Son of God who teaches us how to be like the Son of Man. Our experience in the church is aimed at growing to become like Christ, as individuals but also as a whole body of Christ. And all of that too has an aim, which is functioning as humans were meant to function—leading, serving, and blessing God’s creation on earth.

Paul wrote to the Romans:

^8:19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

Why is creation waiting? What for? For the children of God, the image-bearers of God, to bless the earth the way they were always meant to. N.T. Wright calls churches “small working models of new creation.” We are practicing being truly human and learning how to use our gifts to love, serve, strengthen, and heal. And then we go and do in the world, to free the world from decay and release it for glory.

The church is not designed to be a place of escape. A reprieve from life’s problems. A slice of heaven pie before we have to go back to the “cafeteria food” of the world. It’s training in the light for carrying that light into a dark world. It is exercising our spiritual muscles to learn how to do the heavy work in a world that needs to be lifted up. The church’s “go in peace to love and serve” at the end of the service is as equally important as the Church’s “come let us worship at the beginning.

Dallas Willard used to say in this life we are “training for reigning.” Paul would have liked that idea. That’s paideia. All that we do in church should form and shape us into the humans we were meant to be, as we aim to conform to the image of Christ, and as we become more fully human we can love, lead, and bless the world as we were always meant to.

The fortress mentality is “us vs. them,” the paideia idea is “us for them.”

Paul was for the world, because the gospel is for the world, because Christ is for the world. Come to church for training and healing, go to love and serve. All is grace.

**If you resonated with this essay, consider reading my new book—PAUL FOR THE WORLD.