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Why Did God Require Animal Sacrifice in the Old Testament?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Animal Sacrifice, Atonement, Christus Victor, Forgiveness, God, God's Wrath, Satan
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Question: I have a question about the atonement. Why did YHWH in the OT demand that people sacrifice animals? And if these sacrifices anticipated the ultimate sacrifice of the Messiah, as the author of Hebrews…
That Weird Episode with the Pigs
Category: General
Tags: Demons, God's Character, Jesus, Non-Violence, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Creation Care, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In my opinion, the single strangest episode recounted in the Gospels is the account of Jesus’ encounter with a demonized man that ended with two thousand pigs drowning themselves in the Sea of Galilee (Mk…
What Does It Mean that God Hardens Hearts?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Choice, Determinism, Free Will, Is God to Blame?, Open Theism, Predestination
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Some argue that passages which speak of God hardening human hearts (Jos 11:19-20; Ex 7:3; 10:1; Rom 9:18) demonstrate that God controls everything, including people resistant to this declared intentions. He hardens whomever he wills,…
What does the Bible mean when it says God “sent an evil spirit” on certain people?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Demons, Old Testament, Q&A, Responding to Calvinism, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Verse: 1 Samuel 16, 1 Samuel 18, Judges 9
Question: In Judges 9:23, I Samuel 16:15ff and 18:10 it is said that God sends evil spirits on people. Doesn’t this support the idea that everything Satan and demons do is under God’s sovereign control?…
Final Thoughts on Copan’s Critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
I want to sincerely thank Paul Copan for his well-researched critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) that I’ve been responding to over the last several weeks. He exposed areas in my work that…
Did God Give Violent Laws? A Response to Paul Copan (#13)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Law, Old Testament, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in November, Paul Copan takes issue with my contention that the violent dimension of OT laws reflects God…
Does the Author of Hebrews Condone Capital Punishment? A Response to Paul Copan (#12)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Hebrews 10: 26-29
In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Paul Copan argues that several New Testament authors condone capital punishment as directly willed by God. The most challenging for my thesis, in my estimation,…
The Violent Vineyard Owner: A Response to Paul Copan (#8)
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgment, Non-Violence, Parables, Paul Copan, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Luke 20, Matthew 21
In my previous post I addressed two of the three parables that Paul Copan argues present God in violent ways. Today I will address the third, which is the parable of a vineyard owner with…
What About Jesus’ Violent Parables? A Response to Paul Copan (#7)
Category: General
Tags: Non-Violence, Parables, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Copan’s Argument. In Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) and Cross Vision (CV) I argue that the violent depictions of God in the OT are incompatible with the non-violent, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing God who is fully…
Who Killed Ananias and Sapphira? A Response to Paul Copan (#6)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Non-Violence, Paul Copan, Power
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Acts 5
In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Paul Copan makes a concerted effort to argue that the God revealed in Jesus Christ and witnessed to throughout the NT is not altogether non-violent….
Does Hebrews 11 Praise Violence? A Response to Paul Copan (#2)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Once or twice a week, as time allows, I will be responding to criticisms of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) that were raised by Paul Copan in a recent paper that he delivered at…
Does Paul Condone Vindictive Psalms? A Response to Paul Copan (#1)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In a recent paper delivered at the Evangelical Theological Society, Paul Copan raised a number of objections against my book, Crucifixion of the Warrior of God. This is the first of several blogs in which…
Cruciform Theology in Four Steps
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, God's Love
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
The culmination of the biblical narrative of the cross reframes everything about who God is, what it means to have faith in God, and how we read the Bible! The entire Old Testament leading up…
Does God Inflict Physical Disabilities?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Sickness, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In Exodus 4, we find Moses claiming that he could not be used by Yahweh to get the children of Israel out of Egypt because he was “slow of speech and tongue.” To this Yahweh…
Does the Lord “Devastate” the Earth?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgment
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
There is this passage that has sometimes been labeled “Isaiah’s Little Apocalypse” that proclaims how the Lord will “lay waste,” “destroy,” and “ruin” the earth. (The following builds on this previous post which identifies a…
Who Curses the Earth?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, The Fall
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
After the “fall” of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, their sin results in a five curses: on nature, on marriage, on human life, on the serpent, and on women during childbirth. Who…
How Job’s Suffering Points to Jesus
Category: General
Tags: Book of Job, Cruciform Theology, Suffering
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
As I introduced in my previous post, when we read the book of Job we must refute the common assumption that Yahweh is a Machiavellian deity who is controlling all that transpires in his creation,…
Who is Responsible for Job’s Suffering?
Category: General
Tags: Book of Job, Cruciform Theology, Suffering, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the prologue of the Book of Job, the author seems to ascribe the responsibility for Job’s affliction to Yahweh. For instance, Satan challenges God to “stretch out [his] hand and strike everything he has,“…
God’s Heart to Prevent Judgment
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgment, Prayer
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Ezekiel 21, Ezekiel 22
In Ezekiel we read a passage that depicts Yahweh as warning his people about their impending punishment by saying, “I will pour out my wrath on you and breathe out my fiery anger against you”…
Revolting Beauty
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Sermons, Woodland Hills Church
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In this sermon clip, Greg shares the story of how foster parents entered into the pain of a severely abused child and demonstrated compassion rather than judgment when she displayed puzzling and revolting behaviors. This…