Books I’m Currently Working On

I get asked a lot about what new things I’m working on, and since I’m always working on something, I thought I’d share it with you. Currently, I am working on five books for publication:

Discovering the Kingdom: Theological Foundations for Jesus Radicals (with Paul Eddy) (Publisher pending: projected publication date, 2010). Some of the perspectives of Woodland Hills Church where I am senior pastor are a bit atypical by standard American “evangelical” standards. Specifically, our intensely Christ-centered understanding of God; the centrality of Spiritual warfare; our perspective on the problem of evil; our Christus Victor view of the atonement; our understanding of salvation and discipleship (they are inseparable); and our view of the church as intensely communal are all outside-the-box of standard evangelicalism. We decided we needed a foundational theology book to bring everybody “up to speed” and introduce new comers to our distinct perspectives. Paul Eddy and I are in the process of writing this book.

Jesus Verses Jehovah: Wresting With the Genocidal God of the Old Testament in Light of the Crucified God of the New (Publisher pending: projected publication date, 2010). How could the God revealed in Christ who gave his life out of love for all people be the same God who commanded his people to engage in genocide against the Canaanites? For all who believe our understanding of God and our lifestyle should be exclusively based on Jesus, this is the most important, and the most difficult, theological question we face. I’ve probably read close to a thousand books and articles on this topic, but I know of no work that contains all the elements needed to adequately address this issue and that is written at a lay person’s level. This book intends to fill that void.

A Transformed Transcendence: Being and Becoming in Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christian Theology (Myth of the Blueprint, Vol. 1: InterVarsity Press, projected publication, 2013). In this volume I trace the themes of being and becoming in ancient Hellenistic philosophy and early Christian theology up to Boethius. I hope to demonstrate that the classical Christian understanding that God (ultimate being) is devoid of becoming and is therefore immutable, impassible and atemporal arises from Hellenistic philosophical assumptions rather than Scripture.
A Transformed Sovereignty: Providence, Free Will and Evil in Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christian Theology (Myth of the Blueprint, Vol. 2: InterVarsity Press, projected publication, 2013). In this volume I trace the themes of providence, fate, free will and evil in ancient Hellenistic philosophy and the early church. I hope to demonstrate the traditional Christian assumption that everything that comes to pass in history directly or indirectly reflects God’s will (what I call the blueprint world view) arises out of pagan philosophy rather than the biblical tradition.

The Cosmic Dance: What New Scientific Theories are Teaching Us About God, Time, Freedom and Life (publisher pending, projected publication 2010). I hold that the western world is right now undergoing a major paradigm shift, due in large part to new advances in science over the last hundred years. We are moving away from the classic Newtonian, deterministic worldview to a much more open, dynamic worldview. In this book I attempt to show how neuroscience, quantum theory, chaos theory, complexity theory, non-equilibrium dynamics and even relativity theory each contribute to a picture of reality as an open-ended dance. This may sound very academic, but what makes this book particularly interesting is that I’m striving to present this material in a readable, humorous way that lay people can understand. I’m working with an artist (Nathan Malvig), a graphic designer (Jim LePage) and a photographer (Marcia Erickson) to provide artistic illustrations on every page. The result is a science/philosophy book that reads a bit like a graphic novel.