Cruciform Theology
Where Psychology and Theology Meet
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God's Character, Guilt, Love, Sin
Topics: Attributes and Character
Guest post by Ty Gibson The biblical narrative reveals that God bears our guilt—not merely in the penal sense that Reformed theology asserts—but in the sense that He bears our misconceptions of His character as…
Is the New Testament Ambiguous About Non-Violence?
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Non-Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
One could argue, with some legitimacy, that the portrait of God in the NT is not unambiguously non-violent, the revelation of God on Calvary notwithstanding. It can’t be denied that there are violent-appearing images of…
Reviewing the Reviews: Tom Belt (Part 2)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Tom Belt
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In my previous post I reviewed Tom’s critical review of volume 1 of CWG, and in this post I’d like to do the same for his critical review of volume 2. As he did in his…
Reviewing the Reviews: Tom Belt (Part 1)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Reviews, Tom Belt
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Tom Belt has written a four-part review of Crucifixion of the Warrior God on his blog An Open Orthodoxy. Parts 1 and 2 offer an overall fair and balanced summary of CWG, at least to the point that…
The Problem with Christocentrism
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Christocentrism, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
As we’ve discussed in the previous posts, there has been a growing move toward a Christocentric orientation in theology since Barth, and especially over the last fifty years. I enthusiastically applaud this trend, for I’m…
Overemphasizing Christ?
Category: General
Tags: Christocentrism, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Orthodoxy
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In response to my work, some have argued that I tend to overemphasize Christ. In light of the claim that in Jesus we have the one and only definitive Word of God and that no…
Modern Theologians and the Centrality of Christ
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Christocentrism, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Theology
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
During the twentieth century the development of a Christocentric reading of the Scriptures—which is crucial to understanding what I argue in Crucifixion of the Warrior God—surged in the wake of Karl Barth’s publication of his…
Christus Victor Atonement and Girard’s Scapegoat Theory
Category: General
Tags: Atonement, Character of God, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Love, Rene Girard, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Many of the major criticisms of Crucifixion of the Warrior God that have been raised since it was published four weeks ago have come from folks who advocate Rene Girard’s understanding of the atonement. A…
Early Anabaptists and the Centrality of Christ
Category: General
Tags: Anabaptists, Cruciform Theology, Menno Simons
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In a previous post, I wrote about the Christocentric interpretation of the Scriptures espoused by the magisterial Reformers, specifically Luther and Calvin. Their hermeneutic was focused on the work and the offices of Christ, but…
The Reformers and the Centrality of Christ
Category: General
Tags: Christocentrism, Cruciform Theology, John Calvin, Martin Luther
The Christocentric nature of the Church’s hermeneutic approached a zenith in the Protestant Reformation. While Luther and Calvin rejected allegorical interpretation, in theory if not in practice, they nevertheless relied on typology and other creative…
How the Church Fathers Read the OT
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Church Fathers, Cruciform Theology
After the completion of the New Testament, the church fathers developed theology in their increasingly Gentile post-apostolic church in such a way that many of the distinctively Jewish features of the NT’s use of the…
When God Wears Masks
Category: General
Tags: Bride of Christ, Character of God, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Attributes and Character
At various times throughout the OT we find Yahweh assuming the role of a tester, refiner, punisher and even an enemy of Israel (e.g. Jer. 9:7; Lam. 2:5; Isa 63:10). Yet, when we examine these…
Divine Accommodation in the Early Church
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Revelation
Topics: Attributes and Character, Biblical Interpretation
One of the basic points made in The Crucifixion of the Warrior God is that the Old Testament reveals how God adjusts his revelation and instructions to accommodate the weakness of his covenant people. This…
The Entire Old Testament is About Jesus
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Old Testament
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
Jesus himself taught that he carried more authority than any prophet that predated him. Though Jesus regarded John as the greatest prophet up to himself (Matt 11:11), he claimed his own “testimony” was “weightier (megas)…
The God Who Stoops
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
The way that one imagines God can be thought of along the lines of a Rorschach test. That is, I submit that the way a person imagines and experiences God says at least as much…
Classical Theism’s Unnecessary Paradoxes
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Suffering
Topics: Attributes and Character
The traditional view of God that is embraced by most—what is called “classical theology”—works from the assumption that God’s essential divine nature is atemporal, immutable, and impassible. The Church Fathers fought to articulate and defend…
Challenging the Assumptions of Classical Theism
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Platonism
Topics: Attributes and Character
What came to be known as the classical view of God’s nature has shaped the common, traditional way that most people think about God. It is based in the logic borrowed, mostly unconsciously, from a…
Yahweh as the Dark Knight
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Attributes and Character
I recently received an interesting analogy for The Crucifixion of the Warrior God from Aaron Reini. Thank you Aaron! In the final scene of “The Dark Knight,” Batman and Commissioner Gordon are standing over Harvey…
Crucified Transcendence
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Nature of God, Transcendence, Trinity
Topics: Attributes and Character
If our thinking about God is to be faithful to the New Testament, then all of our thinking about God must, from beginning to end, be centered on Christ. I’m persuaded that even our thinking…