I am blogging from Rome for the next four months I arrived with my family on September 21 in order to spend a semester teaching University of St Thomas St Paul Minnesota students at the Angelicum Is there an easier place to be a Catholic biblical scholar than in Rome the city of Peter and
John W. Martens
John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.
Posted inThe Good Word
The Example of Mother Teresa
This past Saturday night I was invited to take part in a show on WCCO radio in Minneapolis The topic for the hour was the recent revelation and publication of Mother Teresa s private correspondence concerning her long periods of spiritual darkness regarding the presence of God The host of the sh
Posted inThe Good Word
Early Christian Family Values
The juxtaposition of the readings from Philemon 9-10 12-17 and the Gospel of Luke 14 25-33 place in high relief the issue of ancient Christian family values and much to the surprise and chagrin of some they do not replicate the values necessarily of either Mayberry or Riverdale or whatever
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Romans 5:1-5
This passage might be seen as a theological call to arms for the scholar of Paul justification faith and grace Sound the trumpet draw the battle lines let the weary warriors of the 16th century come forth By now we all know or ought to that we are all justified by faith in Christ and so sta