Unable to Think Outside the Neo-Darwinian Box

Ann Arbor

In an essay that has kinship relations with Thomas Nagel's recent Mind and Cosmos, Christopher Booker argues against Edwin O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth. Wilson wants to explain all animal behavior (including human animal behavior) in terms of sociality and instinct. Booker argues that "Wilson completely misses out is any recognition of what is by far the most glaring difference between humans and ants. What marks out humankind as unique is the degree to which we have broken free from the dictates of instinct. We may in terms of our individual ‘ego-instincts’, such as our urges to eat, sleep, live in social groups and reproduce our species, be just as much governed by instinct as other creatures. But in all the ways in which we give expression to those urges, how we build our shelters, obtain our food, organise our societies. we are no longer guided entirely by instinct. Unlike any other species, we have become free to imagine how all these things can be done differently."

Booker continues:

"It is our ability to escape from the rigid frame of instinct which explains almost everything that distinguishes human beings from any other form of life. But one looks in vain to Wilson to recognise this, let alone to explain how it could have come about in terms of Darwinian evolutionary theory. No attribute of Darwinians is more marked than their inability to grasp just how much their theory cannot account for..."

Such as, e.g., altruism, art, and the deeper aspects of religion.

"Nothing is more comical about Darwinians than the contortions they get into in trying to explain those ‘altruistic’ aspects of human nature which might seem to contradict their belief that the evolutionary drive is always essentially self-centred (seen at its most extreme in Dawkins’s ‘selfish gene’ theory). Wilson’s thesis finally crumbles when he comes up with absurdly reductionist explanations for the emergence of the creative arts and religion. Forget Bach’s B Minor Mass or the deeper insights of the Hindu scriptures — as a lapsed Southern Baptist, he caricatures the religious instinct of mankind as little more than the stunted form of faith he escaped from."

Both Booker and Nagel affirm neo-Darwinism, but argue that it is a box within which everything cannot fit. Religious Darwinists like Wilson are, for both, unable to think outside of this box.

Prayer: A Note to To My Dying Friends (PrayerLife)

Detroit

All my friends are dying. This is for you.

I won't be here in a hundred years. You won't be, either. I'm certain I won't be here in 50 years (I'd be 114!). How about 25 years from now? I'll be 89. The end, for me on this earth, in this present darkness, will be very near. Life will be, for me at that point, moment by moment, breath by breath

The question, therefore, is not will I die, but when I die will I be ready? Here are some thoughts I have about this.

• Let's be basic. One day, you will die. Maybe you'll have a funeral, maybe not. Some of this depends on how you die. (Some years ago I read physician Sheldon Nuland's How We Die. It's sobering.) Maybe there will be some friends and loved ones at your funeral, if one is given for you. Remember that you could outlive them all, in which case no one will mourn your passing. Or it could be that, in your life, you made things so miserable for others that you die without friends. I have seen this happen. I got a call once asking if I would do a funeral for a total stranger because there was no one interested in doing it, and no family would be there. I declined, due to other circumstances. Perhaps you will be martyred for following Jesus. It is happening as I am writing these words. The point is: you and I are in inexorably finite. We've come into being, and we will pass away. Yes, I know and believe there's life after life after death ( this is N.T. Wright's scholarly and, I think, accurate way of expressing it in his Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church). Still, one day you and I will exit this present darkness. It is a good thing to acknowledge this. It is a bad thing to live in denial of this (or shall I say "die-nial?")
• Life is best lived when death is acknowledged. So, no immortality complexes are allowed (on this see especially Elizabeth Kubler Ross, whose research showed, among other things, the "immortality complex" in adolescents). Live life in the awareness of death. This will focus and prioritize things.
• Readiness for death begins now. Not in some morbid, gothic sense. We don't have to wear black, get skull tattoos, or wear dark makeup. That's not readiness for death. True readiness for death is: living day by day in spiritual renewal. I love and am thankful for how Paul puts this: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:6) Avoid trying the opposite of this, which is: "Though my spirit is wasting away, I am spending thousands of dollars on my extreme makeover day by day." Have you seen pictures of 64-year-old men with the body of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and the face of Willie Nelson? In moving towards death, outwardly waste away, gracefully. You will not successfully wage war against this. Focus on inward renewal. Exercise spiritually unto godliness.
• Live life for something greater than your own self. Imagine your obituary. You want it to read differently than this: "He loved gardening, enjoyed vacationing in Florida, ate everything in sight, was an avid Tigers fan, and tried to do everything on his 'bucket list'." How about this instead: "He burned the bucket list and lived for a purpose greater than himself. In him Christ was glorified."
• Remember that, for Jesus-followers, death has lost its sting. I believe in the historical resurrection of Jesus. This is huge for me. While not having yet experienced my own death (if that's even possible), I've had many loved ones die, including a son and my parents and Linda's parents and her two sisters. In all of these events I have had great hope. I am so grateful that, when I became a Jesus-follower, I was introduced to resurrection studies through William Lane Craig. Bill was one of my campus pastors and apologetic-philosophical mentor. And then there was John Peterson, who was my other campus pastor. John married Linda and I. He introduced me to C.S. Lewis and other apologetic material. From that beginning my Jesus-resurrection-studies have not ceased. My doctoral dissertation was on Wolfhart Pannenberg's use of metaphorical language in describing the historical resurrection, found in his brilliant Jesus: God and Man. Fast-forward to the present and I see 40 years of detailed resurrection studies to include, more recently, N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. (Just yesterday I received my copy of Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's Was Jesus God?)
  Everyone can't study like this. I don't think everyone is supposed to. But for me these studies (to include reading all the relevant skeptical material) have only served to bring me to a place where I know my Redeemer lives, and one day I shall enter fully into his presence. To prep for death, focus on Easter.
• Some have the opportunity to think long and hard about death. They are those who know, for medical reasons, that unless God miraculously intervenes they won't be here much longer. Others have no opportunity to do this. They appear well. Then they drop dead. I'm not sure which is better. Irregrdless, I do feel certain death-prep begins today. What we do today prepares us for the inevitable.
• How we are in death is important. How a book begins and ends is important. The same can be said for a piece of music. Or a sermon. Or a life. Paul, in Philippians 1:21, wrote: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Therefore, finish strongly.

If you've read this then, probably, you have not yet expired. You read; therefore you are. I suggest you slow down in your heart. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Pray, thinking about the following:

• You are alive! Thank God for it. Do not take your life for granted. 
• Are you facing problems today? You are alive to face them. 
• Do you have friends? You are alive to "friend" them today. 
• If you are a parent, behold your children. 
• Are you a spouse? There is your wife; and there, your husband. 
• Enemies? They are your great love-opportunity. Instead of wishing they were dead, thank God they are yet alive. If you grow in love towards your enemies God's Kingdom will be more greatly populated, and many will thank God for you and a life that was spent on Christ. 
• Celebrate life, whether abased or abounding, now.

 Are you dying? We all are, literally. And we now live to consider such things.

To Pray Is to Let Go of Control (PrayerLife)

I paid $2 in Jerusalem for this cup of fresh-made Arabian espresso.

I’ve taught spiritual formation classes at a number of theological seminaries as well as weekend retreats for pastors and Christian leaders. I begin my classes by sending the students out to pray for one hour using Psalm 23 as their focus. When they return from praying I ask them the question “What did God say to you?” My experience is that one-third of them don’t get past verse 1, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” God asks them the question, “Am I really your shepherd?” Arguably, this is the basic question of one’s spiritual life. Henri Nouwen has said that the basic question is “Who do you belong to?”

Find out who or what you belong to, and place your trust there. To trust is, ipso facto, to let go of control. If you’re driving and I’m riding and you see my foot move towards the gas pedal while my hand appears on the steering wheel you’re going to ask the obvious – “Don’t you trust my driving?” In that case my answer would have to be “No.” To trust in God means he is the driver and I’m along for the ride.

One biblical example of this is John 21:13-18. Jesus asks Peter the question “Do you love me?” As Peter confesses his love for Jesus, Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." Verse 19 tells us that “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.” Then he said to him, "Follow me!"

Henri Nouwen uses this passage to illustrate the control vs. trust situation. He writes that "maturation in a spiritual sense is a growing willingness to stretch out my arms, to have a belt put around me and to be led where I would rather not go (John 21:18)."[1] It’s either “dress yourself and go where you want to go” (control) or “be dressed by someone else and go where they want you to go” (trust). To follow Jesus is to go where he wants you to go. When someone becomes a real follower of Jesus they won’t be dressing themselves anymore.

Thomas Merton says that "maturity," for the Christian, is learning how to be a "sheep." "As long as we remain sheep we overcome and are victorious. But as soon as we are wolves we are beaten: for then we lose the support from the Shepherd who feeds not wolves, but only sheep." If the Lord is my shepherd and his sheep hear his voice and follow, that’s the sign of a trusting heart. An essential part of praying is being-shepherded. Therefore, to pray is to trust, which means to pray is to let go of control.

A lot of the “control” thing is part of the kingdom of darkness. How so? For one thing, it’s mostly illusory. We may think we’re in control of a lot of things, and marketers may tell us if we buy their product it will give us greater control over something, but the truth is that we mostly control nothing. Things we have no control over include the weather, what other people think, time, the future, our past, and death. Things we have very little control over include sickness, the economy, our physical appearance, addiction, and our feelings. What, really, do we have control over? The TV controller? Maybe, but I doubt it.

I think the “I’m in control of things” attitude is an illusion. A feeling that “I’m in control” may make you feel that it is so, but the feeling is non-indicative of any reality that corresponds to it. The only option, then, is that we must trust. But in what or in whom? In money? Governments? The self? Gerald May writes: “In our culture, the three gods we do trust for security are possessions, power, and human relationships. To a greater or lesser extent, all of us worship this false trinity.” (May, Addiction and Grace, 32)

Some people are control addicts. This is why it is hard for some people to pray. My own belief is that the more controlling a person is the more fearful they are. The problem comes when we become addicted to control. Since, as we have already seen, most of life is out of our control, the control addict is fearful most of the time and tries to gain control over situations that are, fundamentally, out of their control. Like trying to control the hearts and minds of other people, which cannot be done. Yet the control addict tries, because they fear people who don’t act or think or feel or choose as they do. Such people are “out of their control,” and they don’t like it.

God is not in our control. Sure, some Christians seem to think they can control God, but the great truth is that God is “sovereign.” See, e.g., the parable of the workers in the vineyard where those who get hired last get paid the same as those who worked all day. The all-day workers cry out “Hey, that’s not fair?” To which the owner responds “It’s my money, right? And I can do what I want with it.” God’s in control, we’re not. And in some cases we’re out of control. So to have a heart that tries to gain control is counter to what’s really going on in this world. What can we do?

The answer is: God wants to and is able to transform (meta-morph) your controlling heart into a heart that trusts in him. Place yourself prayerfully in God’s presence and God will, usually over time, do this. As God does this your praying will be different. Prayer becomes more conversational as the praying person lets go of control.

Prayer, Not for the Self to Come, but for the Kingdom to Come (PrayerLife)

Swallowtail, in Yellow Springs, Ohio

One of the daily reading books I use is A Year With C.S. Lewis. Back in the 1970s I spent every week with C.S. Lewis, reading through nearly everything he had written. To revisit Lewis now brings back very good feelings of my early Jesus-walk. A recent reading from Lewis's Mere Christianity is worth quoting in full. I'll make a few parenthetical comments.

Lewis writes...

"There must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. [The idea is this: seek Christ for the sake of Christ, and not essentially for the sake of self. To do the latter is to try to use Jesus {as if that could be done}.]

As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. [In other words seek, in the first place, Christ and his Kingdom, and the result will be that a whole lot of other things will be added to you, to include discovery of one's true self. The Lord's Prayer does not read: "Let my self-kingdom come, let my self-will be done..."]

Lewis continues:

"Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. [Focus on stating true things clearly. People will accuse you of originality.]

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorites wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. [Self-obsession is always, in the end, unfulfilling and disappointing. Give your self away, to God first, then to others. This is a theme that runs through the New Testament and is lifted up, especially, by Thomas Merton in his distinction between the true and the false self. In prayer give yourself away and you will be yourself found by God.]

Where Is This In Monroe?

The photo is of the old Edison building downtown, across from the courthouse. (Congratulations R.H.!)

(Probably) We Are Alone In the Universe

Tomorrow night (9/5/13), in my MCCC Logic class, I'll present the Rare Earth Argument Against ET Existence.

When University of Washington scientists Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee published Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe they de-Saganized our universe. I read it (1999), was convinced Carl Sagan was wrong, and saw that, most probably, there was no life elsewhere in the universe beyond a flatworm (beyond mono-cellular life). I haven't changed my mind on this.

Dennis Overbye has written a nice summary of where this discussion is at today: Hot on Trail of ‘Just Right’ Far-Off Planet. Here's what's up.

• The search is for an Earthlike planet, a planet in a "sweet spot known as the habitable zone — not too hot, not too cold — where water and thus perhaps life are possible. In short, a so-called Goldilocks planet fit to be inhabited by the biochemical likes of us."
• A Goldilocks planet will be wet and warm, a place where microbes can emerge. But far more than that is needed for the emergence of multicellular life, especially large creatures and creatures like us. "If you reran Earth’s history, how many times would you get animals?” asks astronomer Brownlee. 
• Single-cell life might be common, says Marcy. "But," he adds, "the steady, long-term evolution toward critters that play improv saxophone, write alliteration poems, and build heavy-lifting rocket boosters may depend on a prohibitive list of planetary prerequisites.” Because even "wet and warm" is a rare condition.
• Note: we have two conditions mitigating against intelligent life in the universe outside of earth: 1) "Wet and warm" is a rare condition (based on the nature of the physical universe); and 2) given "wet and warm," how many times would intelligent animals evolve (based on the inherent difficulty of biological evolution)? (For the unlikelihood of that happening see, e.g., botanist William Burger's Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We?)
• What's the one ironclad requirement for habitability, for life? According to the National Academy of Sciences it's "a place warm enough for chemical reactions to go on. So, determining how warm a planet’s atmosphere keeps it — through assumptions, calculations or just plain guesses — has been crucial in reaching a verdict about its potential habitability."
• Do we have any potential Earthlike planets? Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg "so far we only have two great targets to search for atmospheric signatures of life.” And the propects of those are bleak.
• Our abilities form a barrier to discovery. "The brute reality, astronomers admit, is that even if there are thousands or millions of habitable planets in the galaxy, only a few hundred of them are within range of any telescope that will be built in the conceivable future." (Note the underlying spirit of Carl Sagan.)

Ward and Brownlee's Rare Earth argument does not depend on an argument from ignorance. Just because we haven't found any Earthlike planet does not mean there isn't one, or many more. Instead, Ward and Brownlee's argument goes like this.

1) Complex life is very fragile, and can only exist in a habitable zone.

2) A habitable zone suitable for complex life has many rare earth factors that have come together and appear fine-tuned for complex life.

3) The odds of such factors coming together randomly is astronomical.

4) Therefore, intelligent life probably exists only on Earth and nowhere else in the universe

"“The question of whether the Earth is unique because of its water abundance is perhaps the most interesting one in the arsenal of Rare Earth arguments,” said Dr. [James] Kasting [of Penn State University], who explained that calculations showed that the planet could have easily had too much or too little water.           

• "In other words, alien planets that have been lucky enough to be habitable in the first place might have to be lucky again. “The big hurdle” for other planets, said Dr. Brownlee, is to have some event or series of events to trigger their own “Cambrian-like” explosions."

Are we alone in the universe? Probably.

Factor out God, and what does science give us? Overbye writes:

"Earth’s luck will run out. As the Sun ages it will get brighter, astronomers say, increasing the weathering and washing away of carbon dioxide. At the same time, as the interior of the Earth cools, volcanic activity will gradually subside, cutting off the replenishing of the greenhouse gas.
A billion years from now, Dr. Brownlee said, there will not be enough carbon dioxide left to support photosynthesis, that is to say, the oxygen we breathe.
And so much for us.
“Even Earth, wonderful and special as it is, will only have animal life for one billion years,” Dr. Brownlee said."

***
See also Overbye, "Gazing Afar for Other Earths, and Other Beings."

I've written on this here.     

***
Ward and Brownlee give a short list of rare earth conditions needed for a planet to be habitable:

• Right distance from a star
• habitat for complex life
• liquid water near surface
• far enough to avoid tidal lock
• right mass of star with long enough lifetime and not too much ultraviolet
• stable planetary orbits
• right planet mass to maintain atmosphere
• ocean with a solid molten core and enough heat for plate tectonics
• a Jupiter-like neighbor to clear out comets and asteroids
• plate tectonics to build up land mass, enhance bio-diversity, and enable a magnetic field
• not too much, nor too little ocean
• a large moon at the right distance to stabilize tilt
• a small Mars-like neighbor as possible source to seed Earth-like planet
• maintenance of adequate temperature, composition and pressure for plants and animals
• a galaxy with enough heavy elements, not too small, ellipitcal or irregular
• right position in the galaxy
• few giant impacts like earth had 65 million years ago
• enough carbon for life, but not enough for runaway greenhouse effect
• evolution of oxygen and photosynthesis
• and, of course, biological evolution

***

For a scholarly evaluation of Ward and Brown see James Kastings' review. 

For our Biblical Greek Students at Redeemer - 2 Timothy 3:1-9

Here’s the Greek text of 2 Timothy 3:1-9. I'm preaching on it this coming Sunday at Redeemer. (9/8/13)

I’ve highlighted some cognates. Try to pronounce them, and recognize the English cognate.

Go here (The Online Greek Bible) and move your cursor over these individual words to see the lexical definitions.

I've highlighted one verse I will be especially emphasizing - 2 Tim. 3:5.

¹Τοῦτο δὲ γίνωσκε, ὅτι ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις ἐνστήσονται 

καιροὶ χαλεποί: ²ἔσονταιγὰρ οἱ ἄνθρωποι φίλαυτοι, 

φιλάργυροι, ἀλαζόνες, ὑπερήφανοι, βλάσφημοι,γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς, ἀχάριστοι, ἀνόσιοι, ³ἄστοργοι, ἄσπονδοι, 

διάβολοι, ἀκρατεῖς,ἀνήμεροι, ἀφιλάγαθοι, ⁴προδόται, 

προπετεῖς, τετυφωμένοι, φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἢφιλόθεοι, 

⁵ἔχοντες μόρφωσιν εὐσεβείας τὴν δὲ δύναμιν αὐτῆς 

ἠρνημένοι: καὶτούτους ἀποτρέπου. ⁶ἐκ τούτων γάρ εἰσιν οἱ ἐνδύνοντες εἰς τὰς οἰκίας καὶαἰχμαλωτίζοντες γυναικάρια σεσωρευμένα ἁμαρτίαις, ἀγόμενα ἐπιθυμίαιςποικίλαις, 

⁷πάντοτε μανθάνοντα καὶ μηδέποτε εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν 

ἀληθείας ἐλθεῖνδυνάμενα. ⁸ὃν τρόπον δὲ Ἰάννης καὶ 

Ἰαμβρῆς ἀντέστησαν Μωϋσεῖ, οὕτως καὶ οὗτοιἀνθίστανται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, ἄνθρωποι κατεφθαρμένοι τὸν νοῦν, ἀδόκιμοι περὶ τὴνπίστιν: ⁹ἀλλ' οὐ προκόψουσιν ἐπὶ πλεῖον, ἡ γὰρ 

ἄνοια αὐτῶν ἔκδηλος ἔσται πᾶσιν,ὡς καὶ ἡ ἐκείνων 

ἐγένετο. 

Where Is This in Monroe? Clue #3

OK. One person got the correct answer.

If you think you known where this is email me - johnpiippo@msn.com.

Here's clue #3.

Faith Doesn't Need to be Hyped

Astoria Pastry Shop, in Greektown, Detroit

The great Christian thinkers of the past believed that ideas about human flourishing had to jive and sync with ideas about God as the source and goal of all reality. Call this a theocentric approach. This is diametrically opposed to the sadly common strategy of beginning with what you or I want in life, and then creating God in the image of our preferences. Call this an anthropocentric approach.

Yale University's Miroslav Volf shows how the anthropocentric approach is faith-destroying. He writes:

"We cannot start with a preferred account of human flourishing and then construct a picture of God to go with it, designing the fit between God and human flourishing the way we might look for a jacket to match our slacks. We would then be consciously enacting Nietzsche’s devastating critique of the emergence of Christian morality and Christian faith as a whole. According to Nietzsche, Christians designed false beliefs about God in order to legitimize their preferred values. If we were to start with an idea of human flourishing and then “build” God to match our values, then the only difference between Nietzsche’s version and ours would be Nietzsche’s dismissal of those values as being perverse, as opposed to our upholding of them as healthy. More important, by constructing a picture of God so as to fit already given notions of human flourishing, we would be enacting one of the most troubling malfunctions of faith—divesting faith of its own integrity and making it simply an instrument of our own interests and purposes." (Volf, A Public Faith, p. 70).

I'm betting my life on the idea that faith has its own integrity and therefore does not need to by hyped; that the "gospel" is intrinsically good news and does not need a coffee bar or a light show to give it a boost or deflect attention  from its radical claims and responsibilities. (I do like coffee!)

All interested in the Apostle Paul will cheer when they're holding N. T. Wright's forthcoming - 

Paul and the Faithfulness of God 

"N. T. Wright's long-awaited full-length study of St. Paul will not in any way disappoint. From the very first sentence, it holds the attention, arguing a strong, persuasive, coherent, and fresh case supported by immense scholarship and comprehensive theological intelligence. It is a worthy successor to his earlier magisterial studies, laying out again very plainly the ways in which the faith of the New Testament is focused on God's purpose to re-create, through the fact of Jesus crucified and risen, our entire understanding of authority and social identity." --Rowan Williams, Magdalene College, Cambridge

"Only once in every other generation or so does a project approaching the size, scope, and significance of Paul and the Faithfulness of God appear. Paul's world, worldview, controlling stories, and theology spring to life through N. T. Wright's brilliant scholarship and spirited writing. Arguing for narrative and theological coherence in Paul's thought, Wright seeks to overcome numerous dichotomies that have characterized recent Pauline scholarship. Readers will be richly rewarded and challenged at every turn—even when they do not fully agree. Each chapter reveals something profound about the surprising faithfulness of the God freshly revealed in Jesus the Messiah and conveyed to Paul's communities, and to us, by the Spirit." --Michael J. Gorman, St. Mary's Seminary & University, Baltimore, Maryland

"Breath-taking, mind-expanding, ground-breaking, and more—it is easy to run out of adjectives to describe what N. T. Wright has already accomplished in his multi-volume account of New Testament history and theology. This fourth volume in the series is likewise a game-changer, above all for its adventurous presentation of Paul's ‘mindsetrsquo; and theology, so thoroughly contextualized at the confluence of the apostle's Jewish, Roman, and Greek worlds. This is Wright at his best—part historian, part exegete, part theologian, part pedagogue." --Joel B. Green, Fuller Theological Seminary, California