Jeanette Pifer

Jeanette Hagen Pifer has served in a variety of ministry capacities including evangelistic and humanitarian work with orphans in the former Soviet Union, helping to facilitate for theological and ministry training around the world, and serving in a church plant in Whittier, Calif. She completed her Ph.D., studying under Professor John Barclay at Durham University. Her research focused on the Pauline concept of faith. Hagen has presented academic papers at a number of conferences in the U.S. and in Europe. She also contributed to the Lightfoot Legacy, a three volume set of previously unpublished commentaries by this foremost English NT scholar of the 19th century. Prior to coming to Biola, Hagen taught at Cranmer Hall in Durham England, a theological college focused on training individuals called to full-time Christian service.

Affiliation Faculty, Alumnus
Position Affiliate Professor of New Testament
Degree M.A., Talbot School of Theology
Degree B.A., Biola University

Author's books

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Choose Life: Answering Key Claims of Abortion Defenders with Compassion

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You’re pro-life. But can you explain why? You already believe in choosing life. But when the counterarguments are coming at you from every angle—legal, biological, medical, ethical, moral, philosophical, and biblical—how do you defend the pro-life view? And as you defend it . . . how do you speak with wisdom, humility, and compassion? Now more than ever, the times call for a balance of truth and mercy. There are good, wise, and thoughtful rebuttals of every claim made by pro-abortion advocates. Collected here in one place, Choose Life offers you reasonable responses from leading experts in their respective fields. The authors are accomplished women and men from all walks of life. It’s time to set aside the strident fist-shaking and hurled insults. Learn to make the pro-life case with intelligent arguments and compassionate love—just the way a Christian should.

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Choose Life: Answering Key Claims of Abortion Defenders with Compassion – Audiobook

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You’re pro-life. But can you explain why? You already believe in choosing life. But when the counterarguments are coming at you from every angle—legal, biological, medical, ethical, moral, philosophical, and biblical—how do you defend the pro-life view? And as you defend it . . . how do you speak with wisdom, humility, and compassion? Now more than ever, the times call for a balance of truth and mercy. There are good, wise, and thoughtful rebuttals of every claim made by pro-abortion advocates. Collected here in one place, Choose Life offers you reasonable responses from leading experts in their respective fields. The authors are accomplished women and men from all walks of life. It’s time to set aside the strident fist-shaking and hurled insults. Learn to make the pro-life case with intelligent arguments and compassionate love—just the way a Christian should.

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Faith as Participation: An Exegetical Study of Some Key Pauline Texts

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In recent years, three particular debates have risen to the fore of Pauline Studies: the question of the centre of Pauline theology, how to interpret the mula, and the relationship between divine and human agency. In the present study, Jeanette Hagen Pifer contends that several of the apparent conundrums in recent Pauline scholarship turn out to derive from an inadequate understanding of what Paul means by faith. By first exploring the question of what Paul means by faith outside of the classic justification passages in Romans and Galatians, she reveals faith as an active and productive mode of human existence. Yet this existence is not a form of human self-achievement. On the contrary, faith is precisely the denial of self-effort and a dependence upon the prior gracious work of Christ. In this way, faith is self-negating and self-involving participation in the Christ-event.

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Paul and the Giants of Philosophy: Reading the Apostle in Greco-Roman Context

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What forces shaped the intellectual world of the apostle Paul? How familiar was he with the great philosophers of his age, and to what extent was he influenced by them? When he quoted Greco-Roman sources, what was his aim? Pauline scholars wrestle with such questions in journal articles and technical monographs, but now Paul and the Giants of Philosophy brings the conversation into the college classroom and the church. Each essay addresses Paul’s interaction with Greco-Roman philosophical thinking on a particular topic, such as faith, slavery, gift-giving, and the afterlife. And each chapter includes discussion questions and reading lists to help readers engage the material further. Dodson and Briones have gathered contributors with diverse views from various traditions who are united in the desire to make Paul’s engagement with ancient philosophy accessible to many readers.

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Reading Mark in Context: Jesus and Second Temple Judaism

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Over the last several decades, the Jewishness of Jesus has been at the forefront of scholarship and students of the New Testament are more than ever aware of the importance of understanding Jesus and the Gospels in their Jewish context. Reading Mark in Context helps students see the contour and texture of Jesus’ engagement with his Jewish environment. It brings together a series of accessible essays that compare and contrast viewpoints, theologies, and hermeneutical practices of Mark and his various Jewish contemporaries.

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