William R G Loader FAHA

This paper explores the way in which New Testament writers responded to the experience of rejection, its grief and sometimes resultant anger, both by those who refused to respond positively to the message of the gospel and by those who ceased to continue to believe and left the faith communities. It does so initially by giving attention to the Parable of the Sower in the context of Jesus’ ministry, then as interpreted in the context of the early Christian movement and finally in its Markan context. It then considers the processing of rejection in Mark as a whole, the responses to Jesus’ rejection both in a sense of solidarity and going beyond it. The paper then discusses Paul’s passionate response to rejection from within his own people and his theological response of hope before turning to consider the issues in Matthew and Luke, and briefly in the fourth gospel. Its conclusions are that responses were diverse, both in their scope and in their potential to cause harm and to heal.

The title of this book might give the impression that it is a major treatment of the atonement in relation to Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. Its focus is in fact narrower but no less significant for that. It is a collection of fourteen essays (all but two previously published), ten of which are about Hebrews, Moffitt’s primary area of research. The remaining four are about specific passages related to the theme in Matthew, Acts, and 1 Corinthians...

I grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. My first engagement with the New Testament came as I attended Sunday School at the Sandringham Methodist Church. Sunday School was the name given to classes given to children, where they were taught Bible stories and nurtured in the Christian faith. Perhaps the earliest memories are of Old Testament stories, such as the heroics of David, but there were also stories of Jesus, such as his welcoming children, and, of course, the Christmas stories which surrounded the summer holiday period, as it was in the southern hemisphere. More earnest young teachers at the Bible Institute, put on placement at our church, introduced me as a teenager to the challenges of evangelism and “decision”-making. Their approach to the Bible was fundamentalist, the infallible Word of God, and by thirteen I was set upon a path taking my faith, that version of it, very seriously…