Dr Paul Allen

Rev. Roland Mathew The Apostle Paul faced a crucial moment in his missionary endeavours when a number of men came to the church in Antioch from the church in Jerusalem. Their arrival in Antioch triggered a stunning reaction from the Jews who had been amiably fellowshiping and feasting with their gentile brothers and sisters. Immediately upon the arrival of these men from the church in Jerusalem, the Jews who had previously enjoyed table fellowship with their peers in Antioch began to separate themselves.  Alarmingly, among their number were the Apostle Peter and Barnabas, who had been Paul’s co-labourer on his gentile mission. Paul was scandalized by their behaviour, and he recounts this event and his response to the Jews who had separated from their gentile brothers and sisters in Galatians 2:11–21. This was a watershed moment in the life of the early church. What is the basis for table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles? What were the conditions that would enable people who wer...

I have been writing about the alarming Bible passages in which God commands the destruction of the older peoples of the land of Canaan, ordering what by any common sense understanding we would call genocide. Early Christians were not too troubled by such texts, because they mainly saw them as allegorical, and they saw no need to confront the moral dilemmas in their own writings, particularly in the New Testament. But here is one exception, and a significant one. It appears in a devious and quite sneaky way in the Gospel of Matthew. Am I allowed to call gospels sneaky? The genocide commands are explicit. In Deuteronomy 7, God orders that When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations ….  and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. The word for “destroy totally” is herem, Greek anathema, and...

Gentiles are to be distinguished from Jews in that they “do not have the law” (Rom. 2:14). Therefore, Gentiles are said to be “without the law” (Rom. 2:12). When Paul thinks of those who have the law (Jews) and those who do not have the law (Gentiles), he distinguishes between sin and transgression. Gentiles, even though they do not possess the law, still sin. “All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law” (Rom. 2:12). Transgression can be distinguished from sin, for “where there is no law there is no transgression” (Rom. 4:15). If we adopt this distinction, Gentiles did not transgress the law, for they did not have the written law. But even though they did not transgress a written law, they still sinned, in that they violated the will of God. Similarly, Paul argues that those who lived between the time of Adam and the time of Moses sinned, even if they did not transgress a specifically revealed commandment as Adam did or as the Israelites did under the Mos...

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law”  Romans  3:31 The role of the  Mosaic law  in the life of the Christian is one of the most complex issues of biblical interpretation. At one end there are groups who believe that none of the commandments given to Israel is binding in any sense upon the  new covenant  believer. People on the other end of the spectrum teach that even things like the dietary regulations are part and parcel of the  Christian life . Along the continuum between these two poles there are all sorts of mediating positions.  Paul is one of our most important sources for the Christian understanding of the Mosaic law. But getting a handle on his teaching is no easy matter. Statements such as “you are not under law but under grace” ( Rom. 6:14 ), when not read carefully, can imply that the apostle had a wholly negative view of the Law and does not give it a place in the new covenant....

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Matthew 27:35–44 “When they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there” ( vv. 35–36 ). Like the other three evangelists, Matthew does not describe the process of crucifixion in detail, probably because the practice is well-known to his first-century audience.  No Roman punishment is more painful or degrading than to be crucified; therefore, Rome normally reserves the cross for non-citizens, crucifying those with full citizenship only when the Caesar himself prescribes it. The Jews under Rome’s rule regard the cross as particularly abhorrent, and the rabbis later forbid its use in self-governing Jewish communities . In Jesus ’ case, however, the religious leaders are elated to see Him disgraced on the cross. He is crucified outside Jerusalem in deference to Jewish sensibilities ( Heb. 13:12 ), on a major thoroughfare so as to warn othe...