Craig S. Keener, Suffering: Its Meaning for the Spirit-Filled Life (Baker Academic, November 11, 2025).

Craig Keener: Seeing what dominates our culture’s interests reinforced my feeling that the church in the U.S. is largely unprepared for suffering. Although the Bible talks a lot about suffering, sometimes when it strikes people who have heard only messages about blessing, they can feel that God has not treated them as he promised. While we have foretastes of the kingdom today, such as healings, the kingdom isn’t consummated yet. There’s still sickness and suffering and death in this world. Jesus, prophets and apostles also modeled for us how to face suffering.

PneumaReview.com: Suffering can take many forms. What kinds of suffering do you address in your book?

Craig Keener: As you say, suffering comes in many forms; I could therefore illustrate the principles with only some of them. Because persecution features dominantly in the New Testament, and it remains a living reality (even to the point of martyrdom) among Christians in many parts of the world today, that naturally features heavily in the book. But we also suffer from other sources. Some accounts from refugees fleeing other sorts of violence or suffering are heartrending. Most of us have encountered, or know others who have encountered, health or financial challenges for which our theology of healing and blessing do not, sometimes, satisfactorily address. Broken families are among the many other struggles that Christians may face.

PneumaReview.com: All people are susceptible to some forms of suffering. Should Christians expect the possibility of more suffering in their lives because of their faith?

PneumaReview.com: How would you respond to a person who says that suffering is a sign that one has failed God or is out of His will?

Craig Keener: That makes nonsense out of Paul’s lists of sufferings and defies the message of the cross. Granted, some kinds of sufferings are biblically normal for Christians (opposition to our faith) and some are biblically abnormal (punishment for non-Christian behaviors, 1 Pet 4:15). But we have plenty of biblical examples of God-followers who suffered from things from which God often delivers; for example, Elisha died from sickness and Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus.

PneumaReview.com: What teachings or trends in the church today downplay the biblical teaching about suffering?

Craig Keener: I’ve not run into many people who actually teach that Christians will never suffer; but in circles that teach almost exclusively about blessings, some Christians seem to get that idea. I’ve heard some versions of “prosperity teaching” that simply mean that we should trust God to supply our needs for our lives and callings, and I certainly agree with that. But there are also the many versions (what Michael Brown calls “carnal prosperity teaching”) that claim material prosperity as a selfish promise. There are some who insist that everyone with faith will always get healed—although it’s evident that, given enough time, everybody in history, no matter how much faith, without exception, eventually dies.

PneumaReview.com: Do you think ministerial training in the West should place more of an emphasis on the possibility of one suffering for their Christian ministry?

Craig Keener: So many seminary and Bible college graduates go out ready to change the world and are out of ministry after a few years. It would help them to graduate with open eyes. Church people can be mean. We walk with many other church people through their heart-wrenching hardships. We may face opposition from various sources. A church with financial challenges (or even without them) may not pay as much as ministers can get elsewhere (I worked in a restaurant and pastored for free). We also can face discouragement when exaltation does not come as fast as social media sensations might lead us to expect. But faith means not just following God’s call or a heart for ministry when things are going well; it means trusting the God who is trustworthy no matter what.

PneumaReview.com: Please share some things that believers in the persecuted church can teach the church in America.

PneumaReview.com: How can we practically help others when they are suffering?

Craig Keener: It helps us to remember that the sufferings of the present are not worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us; the struggles of this world are birth pangs (Rom 8:22) from which God will bring forth the perfect world to come. It helps to know that in God’s plan, all things work for good, for us ultimately sharing Christ’s glory and image (8:28-29). But these are things we need to learn before we suffer, because not everybody is in a good place to hear them during their suffering. In all cases, though, we can weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15). Loving people means sharing with them as fellow members of the same body, walking with them, as best as possible, in their pain. In that setting, we can also join them in seeking healing and restoration, and reminding them of the hope that we too find in the face of our brokenness.

PR 

Publisher’s page: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9781540969439_suffering

Further Reading

Craig Keener, “How to Succeed at Suffering: Lessons from the Gospel of Mark” Influence (February 14, 2024)

“Why Do Christians Suffer?” WTC Theology (TheoDisc/YouTube, October 1, 2025)

See the announcement from CraigKeener.com.

Three years ago, I was cutting across the campus when a zealous African-American freshman named Lena Marlowe stopped me. We had never met, but she asked if she could pray for me. Lena is now a senior, and she was one of the members of the gospel choir singing when the Spirit fell on February 8.

People in our community had prayed for another outpouring since the last one here, fifty years ago. Asbury experienced significant outpourings of the Spirit in 1905, 1908, 1950, and 1970. Anna Gulick, a French professor at the university in 1970, assured me that during that outpouring one could feel the presence of God from blocks away. Robert Coleman, a professor at the seminary in 1970, told me just enough professors at the seminary were on board with shutting down classes that the seminary joined in.

Hughes Auditorium, February 8, 2023

The university normally has chapel at 10 am three days a week for 45 or 50 minutes. Chapel on Wednesday Feb. 8, 2023, started like chapel any other day. Zach Meerkreebs preached a very ordinary message. The gospel choir closed the service with a song. It was not unusual for a few students to stick around to sing an extra song or two, but this day the gospel choir was so caught up in worship that they didn’t stop. And soon others wouldn’t stop either.

Student Zeke Atha continued to worship in his seat, and then went to class. After class, however, he heard singing still continuing in the chapel. As he entered, he recognized that God had begun pouring out the Spirit and he joined others in spreading word. Eventually hundreds were worshiping God. Some students began to openly confess their sins, weeping and dedicating their lives to Christ.

That evening after small group in our house some friends texted my wife Médine. “You’ve been praying for this!” she called, interrupting my commentary writing. “Why aren’t you there?” It was her way of announcing that an outpouring had begun. We donned our shoes and headed over to Hughes Auditorium.

While I didn’t “feel” much that night, something shifted over the next few days—especially as I moved from trying to feel something to seeking to serve. As worship continued, the sense of God’s presence in a special way became palpable. Walking even beside the chapel or across the street at the seminary, I could now feel God’s presence in an extraordinary way. The university was making no effort to publicize what was happening, but word spread. Soon so many people were visiting from outside that I quit trying to get into the auditorium myself. But even as I served as a doorkeeper at one of the exits, I was caught up in the Spirit of worship. As I joined in the singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I pondered how sad it was that some Christians today object if you sing a song too many times. Yet the glorious living creatures before God’s throne do not rest from crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” What a foretaste of heaven we enjoy in the beauty of God’s presence during worship.

Radical humility

The focus on the Lord himself and his holiness pervaded most of the worship I experienced and witnessed there. It was the sense of his holy presence that led so many—first students and then others—to consecrate their lives more deeply to God.

Although famous preachers and singers visited and worshiped as part of the congregation, they did not lead. The campus leaders maintained the ethos with which it began. Lena and other students continued to lead worship. Zach and others regularly involved at the university periodically preached, including messages about the gospel and holiness (which continued to be needed as new people continued to visit). When they did invite anyone new to help in leading worship, they first succinctly explained the worship “culture” to them: radical humility and racial unity.

No names, no introductions; the focus belonged on King Jesus alone. The outpouring surrounded God’s own manifest presence, and the leaders were careful not to quench his gracious Spirit. Recognizing who God is puts everything else, including ourselves, in perspective: in the presence of a holy God, no flesh can boast. Zach insisted, “Jesus is the only celebrity here” (See further: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/february/asbury-revival-outpouring-protect-work-admin-volunteers.html).

Worship continued seamlessly as worship teams rotated day and night. The worship was low-tech and without human fanfare, promoting neither those on the platform nor Asbury itself. For journalistic and historical purposes, I would share more names of those who displayed sacrificial devotion, but they insist that the honor should go only to Jesus.

I was not one of those secret-identity professors she mentioned, but my seminary colleagues Tom McCall (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/february-web-only/asbury-revival-1970-2023-methodist-christian-holy-spirit.html) and Jessica LaGrone certainly were among those at the front line, as were even more professors from the university. Médine was often up front praying for people one on one, but I stayed more in the intercessor room, engaging the many visitors outside, or (when the chapel began closing at night) praying with students and visitors in the student union.

Eventually I shifted more of my attention to trying to field interviews and calls. As a seminary professor, I was not at the heart of it the way many others were, but those at its heart were tied up on the front line, and I finally realized that I could be of greater service trying to write and speak and counter misinformation. I nevertheless shared a concern that one of the campuses’ ministers expressed to me: pouring out continually to serve during this time, she did not want to miss out on what the Lord had for her as well as for others. Me neither; as the old hymn pleaded, “While on others Thou art calling, do not pass me by!”

Radical unity

While the university is in the Wesleyan tradition, it welcomed all traditions hospitably, occasioning a few complaints from some outside critics (Those don’t like charismatics, for example, have sometimes complained that charismatics attended. But everybody else attended too).

The spirit of unity transcended denomination. One participant who has worshiped in several denominations over her life shared her appreciation for how believers from all denominations were worshiping in one accord. There was nothing there to divide us because it was all about Jesus, the one we adore. Michael McClymond, the St. Louis University revival historian who came to report on the outpouring for Christianity Today, shared that what he experienced in the auditorium was what Acts 1:14 calls homothumadon—a unity of heart with others worshiping in the same place. Believers who had never met before and would never meet again in this life experienced a common heart.

This was often evident outside the auditorium as well, as many of those crowded on the lawn outside the auditorium worshiped and prayed together. Some Korean friends from another evangelical seminary came to visit and we worshiped together on the lawn before moving to one of the overflow destinations. I had more fortuitous, Spirit-led encounters, including with visitors from various nations, than there is space or need to describe.

A Back Story

In 2010, Asbury Seminary interviewed me for a position. Being a night person, I don’t remember what I said at the morning interview and have no idea why they hired me. But afterward I stopped at the university’s Hughes Auditorium, already vaguely familiar with the 1970 Asbury Revival. As I peered in, I was struck by the words “Holiness Unto the Lord” emblazoned above the altar, and I felt the wind of the Spirit sweep through me. I felt there were embers still there, ready to be fanned into flame when God would move in such a way again.

Since then, my wife and I have prayed for revival, all the more so once our son and daughter were students there. But as mentioned earlier, we were far from the only ones. Indeed, Anna Gulick noted that before the 1970 outpouring, various students around the campus had been praying together.

What we call revival is a collective experience of God’s presence that transforms us (cf. Acts 2:4; 4:31; 8:15-17; 10:44; 13:52; and 19:6). In Matthew 7:11, Jesus promises that the Father will give us the good gifts we request, but the parallel passage in Luke 11:13 focuses on the best gift of all: God’s own presence by the Holy Spirit. That insight struck me deeply. One night when I was teaching in Indonesia, I dreamed that the most important insight from the decade of work on my four-volume Acts commentary was how often the outpouring of the Spirit follows prayer.

Scripture offers many prayers for empowerment by or revelation from the Holy Spirit (Ps 143:10; Rom 15:13; Eph 1:17; 3:16), but in Luke’s second volume he develops at greater length this theme of the Spirit coming after prayer (cf. also Luke 3:21-22). After believers spend some days praying together (Acts 1:14), Jesus pours out the Spirit (2:4, 17-18, 33); they pray again with the same effect in 4:31 and 8:15. Although God can pour out the Spirit whenever he wills, often (and in Acts, especially when the outpouring involves those who are already believers) he first moves his people to pray for this. Concerts of prayer also preceded many outpourings in the history of the U.S.

A few years ago, many students at the seminary, especially international students, were meeting together in small groups for prayer. One of the most ardent advocates of revival on campus was Malaysian visiting scholar Hong Leow. He had one time not given much stock to dreams or spiritual experiences, but after a dramatic dream in which he saw God pouring out revival on the campus, Hong insisted that revival was coming and we should be ready.

One big encouragement of this outpouring was that God does hear our prayers. For the first week or two I was walking around disoriented. Something I was used to praying for, I was now seeing, and at a level beyond what I had imagined. I had prayed for an outpouring of the Spirit in our community; I hadn’t expected it to connect so closely and quickly to what he was also doing elsewhere.

But while years of prayer preceded this experience at Asbury, the timing and manner took us all by surprise. Actually, I will confess a secret here (so don’t tell anybody!): in my arrogance, I had sometimes hoped that maybe revival would happen when I preached in chapel or taught my New Testament class at the seminary. But God in his gracious wisdom did it in a way that nobody else could even try to take credit for. The outpouring was God’s action, his initiative. His Spirit fell as students were caught up in worship.

Divine Coordination

Within the first week of the outpouring we heard that the Spirit was now also stirring worship on Christian campuses such as Lee University and Samford University. We also heard that on a nearby secular campus students stirred by the Spirit were sharing their faith boldly and baptizing new believers in public fountains.

Of course, this can happen here or there at any time, but it seemed like it was happening in a special way right now. In fact, it looked coordinated—by the only One who could have coordinated it.

Long before this outpouring began at Asbury’s campus, representatives from a range of campus ministries united to reignite the historic Collegiate Day of Prayer in 2023. Because Asbury University already had a history of campus revivals, the last being in 1970, they settled on Asbury as their host campus for the 2023 event, scheduled for February 23. At that time, campuses and prayer partners around the country would band together through a simulcast to pray that God would stir this new generation of students with his heart. Francis Chan narrated the announcement days before the outpouring began.

Gabe, a freshmen on the university’s planning committee for the event, says that he started praying that God would get the campus ready. God surprised Gabe, along with everybody else, with an answer that began a couple weeks before the human schedule. Most of the students who just kept worshiping on February 8 probably had no thought about the Feb. 23 event. (There are lots of events on campuses, and though I had heard about the planned event from a friend months earlier, I didn’t remember when it would be.)

Nobody humanly planned for more than fifteen days of mostly nonstop prayer before the prayer meeting, and nobody humanly could have recruited most of the participants to engage in such intense prayer. But the inaugural February 23 event now became the closing event of the outpouring’s public phase. Students from other campuses joined those from Asbury, sharing testimonies, reading Scripture, and banding together in worship. Meanwhile, the closing service was simulcast far beyond the walls of Hughes Auditorium (I had planned to watch the simulcast, but got to attend this one in person. A friend snuck me a seat. That’s a secret, though, so don’t tell anybody I was there).

This was not, as originally planned, a prayer for revival to start. It was gratitude for what God had already begun, and a commissioning service for those beyond Asbury to continue the call elsewhere to recognize God’s holy presence. What happened at Asbury was not meant to be simply perpetuated on Asbury’s campus for “revival’s” sake. Nor was it meant to be kept at Asbury as if it was the location that made the difference. The simulcast spread this final service around the country—though the outpouring had already been spreading to other campuses long before this.

God had been getting things ready. Zach Meerkreebs, the humble and low-key preacher from February 8, felt he bombed his sermon that day. But he told me that for a year before he had been feeling that revival was coming.

Nor was Hong the only person at the seminary to feel confidence that God was sending revival. A few years ago, some new students at the seminary insisted that God told them that revival was coming, and they wanted to be here when it happened. One even said God showed him this in a vision. Donna Covington, the seminary’s vice president of formation at the time, told Médine and me about a prophecy that revival would come in Kentucky; she felt that it would begin at the university campus first.

Not unlike Hong, I had dreams in which revival fell. In one, it came during worship, and I just came in the back and joyfully sang in tongues (and somersaulted through the air, which I can do with great agility—in dreams). In another, revival started in Hughes Auditorium, and we were going out into the community to welcome people. As I knocked on one door, an older African-American man asked if he would be welcome. “That,” I answered in the dream, “will be how we know if it’s a true revival.” But happily God fixed that from the beginning, since many of the members of the gospel choir where the outpouring started are Black. Racial unity was one of the outpouring’s central foundations.

Divine coordination also happened on an individual level. To give one example, although Riely Mikrut had led worship at her old church for years, she was not doing it at her new church. On February 5, she journaled, “Lord, I don’t want to be a ‘good’ worship leader; I want to be an anointed one.” Without God’s anointing, she resolved, she didn’t ever need to get on a stage again. On February 10 she was with her former worship colleagues at her old church and insisted, “The Lord would have to force a microphone in my hand right now for me to get up and lead again.”

The next evening she and some friends traveled to Wilmore to experience what was happening at Asbury. Médine and I had just slipped out of the balcony before she arrived. The Lord spoke to her heart that he had made her for leading worship. The next day, as she was kneeling at the altar, one of the worship leaders approached her and declared, “You’re a worship leader, aren’t you?” How could she have known that? Riely wondered. Then the leader shoved a microphone in Riely’s hand. Riely had led hundreds of hours of worship over the previous decade, but she had never felt the fear of the Lord and his presence like she did for the next two hours. God had reconfirmed his calling in her life.

Some piercing observations for a young generation

Madison Pierce, a seminarian from the same generation as the university students, has allowed me to share here some of his experience and insight.

I come from a spiritual background that has left me weary of hype in a culture of spectacle. I’ve grown tired of disingenuous representations of divine work but it is clear God is moving in a surprising and transformative way.

The movements of the spirit in western evangelicalism always exist in the middle of a cultural moment. A generous interpretation of these movements reveals unique traits for each one. For example, fervor for the great commission at the Mt. Hermon Conference, overwhelming joy in Toronto Outpouring, zeal for the lost in Brownsville Revival, acts of healing at the Kansas City awakening, and manifestation of tongues at the Azusa Street revival. In each move of the Spirit, God clearly manifests in a specific way for that generation. I find it interesting that God would mark this [present] outpouring with:

• A tangible sense of peace for a generation with unprecedented anxiety.
• A restorative sense of belonging for a generation amidst an epidemic of loneliness.
• An authentic hope for a generation marked by depression.
• A leadership emphasizing protective humility in relationship with power for a generation deeply hurt by the abuse of religious power.
• A focus on participatory adoration for an age of digital distraction.

It feels as if God is personally meeting young adults in ways meaningful to them. My generation was formed differently than previous generations and so the traits of this revival are different than revivals of old. The new outpouring is not the signs and wonders nor zealous intercession nor spontaneous tongues nor charismatic physicality nor the visceral travail. It is marked by a tangible feeling of holistic peace, a restorative sense of belonging, a non-anxious presence through felt safety, repentance driven by experienced kindness, humble stewardship of power, and holiness through treasuring adoration.

I too witnessed brokenness when I prayed with people, for example, a young man broken by being abused as a child, but now finally able to feel God’s pure love for him. Others struggled with fear or need for direction.

You don’t need to be at Asbury

The university and community labored to receive hospitably the tens of thousands of visitors who came. But the university also wanted everyone to be clear that this wasn’t about Asbury. It was about Jesus. You don’t need to come to Asbury to experience humble adoration of the Lord.

The new movie, Jesus Revolution, brought back old memories of my early Christian experiences at High Mill Christian Center in northern Ohio, a movement that in the 1970s brought some of the fruit of the Jesus movement to our community. The Spirit moved in remarkable ways, with the pastor, Chuck Schumacher, regularly calling out issues by the Spirit and people being converted in virtually every meeting.

Likewise, there was a brother named Ernie at the Assemblies of God Seminary when I was there, who was just so full of the Spirit that it didn’t take much extra for him to spill over. One of us would say something about the Lord; the other would say, “Thank you, Lord!” and within a few moments we would both be worshiping in tongues and prophesying, even there in the seminary corridor (Yes, the Spirit can be expressed that way; note tongues in Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6; prophesying in e.g., 2:17-18; 19:6; Num 11:25-29; 1 Sam 10:5, 10; 19:20-25).

When I was teaching at a predominantly African-American seminary attached to Livingstone College, our undergraduate campus ministry joined up with New Generation, an African-American campus ministry. One year, the moment we entered NGM’s conference, the Spirit was so strong I heard God’s voice immediately. When we returned from the NGM conference, we planned to pray together for half an hour each evening at 5 pm. Instead, the praying and prophesying went on for a couple hours each time; it was just too hard to stop. On Sunday, at the end of that prayer-filled week, the campus minister got up to preach in the campus church. She was also my seminary student, and I was feeling worthless as a professor as I listened to what I thought was a horrible sermon. Then she gave the altar call and one-third of the congregation came forward to give their lives to Christ. I may have underestimated the sermon, but too often we all underestimate prayer.

God is available and even eager to touch us by his Spirit everywhere. Again Luke 11:13: “So if you, even though you’re evil, know how to give your children good gifts, how much more will your Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

But is it “revival”?

One cannot readily identify long-term effects when we are still the short term. What we can say for sure is that the Holy Spirit met us. I am grateful to the leaders for their openness to the Holy Spirit. This time around it was accomplished without canceling classes (except when individual teachers chose to do so). That is fine; God is at work in the ordinary too. When you combine the ordinary and the extraordinary, though, you are doing double duty. Many of us were exhausted after the most labor-intensive period of hospitality and ministry, so the opportunity to rest felt timely.

Sometimes people have preconceptions of what revivals should look like. Some say they have to include healings, or conversions, people falling down and shaking, or massive cultural transformation. But different revivals in history have taken different forms, and part of the problem is that we have lumped a range of different expressions of God’s work under the label “revival.” During the First and Second Great Awakenings in the U.S., many people did fall to the ground, shake, and do other things that Christian descendants of those converted in those awakenings criticize when they happen today. But as Jonathan Edwards pointed out, it’s not such “manifestations” that prove or disprove revival. It is changed lives.

“Revivals” come in different shapes and sizes. The First Great Awakening spanned decades in the eighteenth century, was most prominently Calvinist (on this side of the Atlantic) and especially impacted churchgoers. The Second Great Awakening lasted for half a century (about 1790 to 1840); it was more Wesleyan-Arminian, evangelized the unevangelized, and mobilized Christians against slavery. It included revivals such as the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky for nearly a week in 1801, a revival that involved Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. God has sent revivals among Calvinists (such as the Hebrides and West Timor Revivals) and Wesleyans (such as the Azusa Street Revival). Some events called revivals last for years; some (such as most college revivals, including past Asbury revivals) only for a week or weeks.

The Bible doesn’t use “revival” the way we’ve used it historically, so nobody can, on biblical grounds, claim that something must or must not be defined as a revival. But outpourings of the Spirit are certainly biblical (Acts 2:33; 10:45). As in historic revivals, so in the Bible not everybody showed up for the right reasons (cf. 5:1-2; 8:18-19), but that did not stop God from changing the lives of many others in ways that ultimately shifted their direction and often the course of history. This was often called an “Asbury revival” because that’s the nomenclature used for the earlier outpourings at Asbury, but as I asked in an earlier article (https://julieroys.com/opinion-what-revival-happening-asbury/): “Who cares what we call it?” Let’s not miss out on what God is doing in many people’s lives.

But the key purpose of outpourings of the Spirit in Acts was to empower God’s people for mission (Acts 1:8), and that has characterized all the Asbury outpourings so far. In this one, many, touched by God’s holiness, consecrated their lives to his service (Meanwhile, those who want to make Acts 2 the only template are often the same people who complain about speaking in tongues [2:4] or onlookers thinking disciples are drunk [2:13]. And imagine the uproar if we get so radical as share many of our possessions, 2:44-45!).

Weeping characterized many past revivals, but some worried in the 1990s when cathartic laughter occurred—even though Acts does not describe weeping during outpourings yet once describes being “filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” God does not always do things the same way and does not fit our boxes. Yet early in the outpouring at Asbury many were weeping in repentance for sin, before forgiveness turned their sorrow into joy.

In the final analysis, people met Jesus deeply here. We thank God for the obedience of Lena and the gospel choir, who, overwhelmed by the Spirit, just kept worshiping. By the time they were done, tens of thousands of other people had joined in worshiping the same Lord.

PR

Further Reading

Craig S. Keener, “The outpouring at Asbury University: Responding to a critic” CraigKeener.com (February 19, 2023)

Asbury Outpouring Documentary

Lora Timenia, “Reflections on the 2023 Asbury Revival and its Implications for Pentecostal Christians“

Gordon D. Fee, PhD (University of Southern California) was Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.

Gordon D. Fee went home to be with the Lord on October 25, 2022.

I learned of Gordon Fee’s passing yesterday [October 26] from his gracious and kind daughter, Cherith.

Gordon and his family always treated me so graciously. Gordon kind of took me under his wing and looked out for me. Also, by his being a giant in Pentecostal scholarship and a scholar that was respected outside Pentecostalism, he did so much for the movement and for the generation of scholars I’m a part of. We build on his shoulders.

See also: “Honoring Pentecostal Theologian Gordon Fee” by Rick Wadholm Jr.

From the email promotion:

Whether you are familiar with Dr. Craig Keener or this is your first introduction to his work, we are delighted to announce an upcoming Bible webinar with the professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Well-known for his research on the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of the New Testament, Dr. Keener will join us for a two-day online seminar to teach us more about the Jewish context of key books and passages of the Bible. It will be a wonderful teaching series that you will not want to miss!

Here is the fourth and final session, entitled “The Jewish Context for the Book of Revelation.”

Image: Patrick Fore

From the email promotion:

Whether you are familiar with Dr. Craig Keener or this is your first introduction to his work, we are delighted to announce an upcoming Bible webinar with the professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Well-known for his research on the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of the New Testament, Dr. Keener will join us for a two-day online seminar to teach us more about the Jewish context of key books and passages of the Bible. It will be a wonderful teaching series that you will not want to miss!

Here is the third session, entitled “The Jewish Context For The Gospel Of John.”

Image: Patrick Fore

 
Session 4: The Jewish Context for the Book of Revelation

From the email promotion:

Whether you are familiar with Dr. Craig Keener or this is your first introduction to his work, we are delighted to announce an upcoming Bible webinar with the professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Well-known for his research on the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of the New Testament, Dr. Keener will join us for a two-day online seminar to teach us more about the Jewish context of key books and passages of the Bible. It will be a wonderful teaching series that you will not want to miss!

Here is the second session, entitled “The Jewish Context for the Sermon on the Mount and the Book of Matthew Continued.”

Image: Patrick Fore

 
Session 3: The Jewish Context For The Gospel Of John
 
Session 4: The Jewish Context for the Book of Revelation

From the email promotion:

Whether you are familiar with Dr. Craig Keener or this is your first introduction to his work, we are delighted to announce an upcoming Bible webinar with the professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Well-known for his research on the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of the New Testament, Dr. Keener will join us for a two-day online seminar to teach us more about the Jewish context of key books and passages of the Bible. It will be a wonderful teaching series that you will not want to miss!

Here is the first session, entitled “The Jewish Context for the Sermon on the Mount and the Book of Matthew.”

Image: Patrick Fore

Session 3: The Jewish Context For The Gospel Of John
 
Session 4: The Jewish Context for the Book of Revelation

The Bible has much to say about racial reconciliation. Join New Testament scholar Craig Keener in his basement study for this timely investigation of how the church is called to be ambassadors of ethnic and racial reconciliation.

More from Craig Keener:

Listening for God’s Voice and Heart in Scripture

New Testament scholar Craig S. Keener speaks with PneumaReview.com about his book, Spirit Hermeneutics.
Our God is With Us through It All

Doctors Craig and Médine Keener speak with PneumaReview.com about their book, Impossible Love.
 Rightly Understanding God’s Word

Take a course on biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar, Professor Craig S. Keener.

Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle will both educate and resonate well with its intended audience. One who has heard Gordon Fee preach can hear him preaching in this book, passionately communicating the fruits of his exegesis in language that can profit nonscholars as well as academicians. As I noted in my comments to the publisher, the book is “intertextually rich and theologically provocative,” inviting readers “to rethink traditional academic constructions of Paul’s theology in light of the primary data provided more conspicuously by Paul’s own letters.” While not ignorant of wider scholarly opinions, in this book Fee plunges the reader into more immediate contact with Paul’s own words.

Fee’s extensive Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Hendrickson, 2007; Baker, 2013), which treats all the present work’s questions in far greater detail, is not on a level accessible to the average reader (sort of like my four-volume Acts commentary). By contrast, Jesus the Lord offers a more accessible introduction, in the way that his Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (1996) complemented Fee’s larger academic tome on Pauline pneumatology, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (1994).

Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle is certainly accessible. The foreword also is a touching tribute from Fee’s daughter Cherith Fee Nordling, a theologian in her own right.

As an exegete who has written commentaries on 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, the Thessalonian correspondence and the Pastorals, Fee systematizes some elements of Pauline Christology only after inductive study of the biblical text. Granted, he displays unabashed theological commitments, but they are commitments ably articulated and defended, reflecting carefully considered convictions. For example, although he sees Jesus as divine, he rejects application of the title “God” to Jesus in Rom 9:5 (124n1).

Some of the convictions that he articulates are less widely shared than others. As defended in his Pastorals commentary, Fee accepts a thirteen-letter Pauline canon (albeit with a different amanuensis and thus different vocabulary in the Pastorals; cf. Jesus the Lord, 125n1). Nevertheless, Fee establishes his central case for divine Christology more than adequately from the undisputed letters. (Given their distinctive content, the Pastorals do not figure as heavily in this work as do the earlier letters in any case.) For those of us who do accept the more disputed letters as Pauline at any level, however, Fee’s treatment of ideas there, alongside those in the undisputed epistles, may prove very enlightening for interpretation.

Although a more popular work includes much less documentation than the academic work on which it is based, it can sometimes also provide a more mature synthesis of the issues, highlighting the issues that further reflection deems most central. In Jesus the Lord, Fee develops the central elements of his case clearly.