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Part 4: An Alternative Cross-Centered Approach

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Image by Karl Pang via Flickr As I mentioned in Part II of this review, I am deeply appreciative of the fact that Flood grasps the centrality of enemy-loving non-violence in Jesus’ revelation of God. And while many, if not most, of the depictions of Yahweh in the Old Testament…

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Does God Have a Dark Side?

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In the previous post, I argued that we ought to allow the incarnate and crucified Christ to redefine God for us rather than assume we know God ahead of time and then attempt to superimpose this understanding of God onto Christ. When we do this, I’ve argued, we arrive at…

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The Cross in the Mirror

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For those who are just tuning in, we are in the midst of a series that is fleshing out the theology of The ReKnew Manifesto. So far I’ve argued that the cross is the definitive revelation of God and that it should therefore be the centerpiece of our hermeneutic (interpretation…

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The Cruciform Center Part 4: How Revelation Reveals a Cruciform God

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I’ve been arguing that, while everything Jesus did and taught revealed God, the character of the God he reveals is most perfectly expressed by his loving sacrifice on the cross. Our theology and our reading of Scripture should therefore not merely be “Christocentric”: it should be “crucicentric.” My claim, which…

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The Cruciform Center Part 3: How Paul’s Epistles Reveal a Cruciform God

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As we’ve discussed, the four Gospels point to a cruciform revelation of God (click here and here for a review), but what about the most widely read writer of the New Testament? What did the Apostle Paul have to say about how the cross reveals who God is? Before turning…

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The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God

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In the previous post, we looked at how the Synoptics illustrate the centrality of the cross. While the Gospel of John varies in its structure and language from the Synoptics, the cross remains at the center. This centrality is expressed in a number of different ways. 1. The role that…

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The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God

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In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim to be “Christocentric.” The confession that Jesus reveals what God is like is simply too…

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The Image of Cross-Like Love: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 6

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In the previous blog I argued that God is cross-like love. In this blog I’d like to take this a step further by demonstrating why the cross alone could function as the definitive revelation of God’s true character and by showing how this revelation weaves together everything Jesus was about….

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Why a “Christocentric” View of God is Inadequate: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 5

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I’m currently working through a series of blogs that will flesh out the theology of the ReKnew Manifesto, and I’m starting with our picture of God, since it is the foundation of everything else. So far I’ve established that Jesus is the one true portrait of God (See: Part 1,…

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Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist” Part III

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This is the last of a three-part response to Mark Driscoll’s post, “Is God a Pacifist?” We’ve seen that, to prove that Jesus was not “a pansy or a pacifist” (meaning that Jesus was okay with justified killing), Mark Driscoll skips over what Jesus actually taught and modeled in the…

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Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part II

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Waiting For The Word via Compfight To prove that “Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist,” Driscoll by-passes the Gospels (understandably, given what Jesus has to say about the use of violence) and instead cites a passage from Revelation. This is a strategy Driscoll has used before. In an…

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Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part I

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I’m sure many of you have read Mark Driscoll’s recent blog titled “Is God a Pacifist?” in which he argues against Christian pacifism. I’ve decided to address this in a series of three posts, not because I think Driscoll’s arguments are particularly noteworthy, but because it provides me with an…

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The “Third Way”: Seeing God’s Beauty in the Depth of Scripture’s Violent Portraits of God

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A publishing house recently sent me an advance copy of a book written by a well known scholar on the topic of the non-violent God revealed in Jesus, asking me to endorse it. (Publishing protocol stipulates that endorsers not critique a book before it’s released, so I will not mention…

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The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits

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“Only a person who is aware of the crucified Christ can properly understand Scripture.” Luther (Table Talks) In the last three posts I’ve been wrestling with how insights from Matthew Bate’s book, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation might help us interpret violent portraits of God in the OT in…

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The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God

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In my previous post I noted that the prevalent contemporary evangelical assumption that the only legitimate meaning of a passage of Scripture is the one the author intended is a rather recent, and very secular, innovation in Church history. It was birthed in the post-Enlightenment era (17th -18th centuries) when…

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Getting Behind the “Letter” of Violent Portraits of God

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“I will do to you what I have never done before… in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents…” Ezek. 5:9-10 In my previous post I offered a brief review of Matthew Bates’ fascinating work, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation by Matthew Bates…

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Finding Christ Behind the “Letter” That Kills

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“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” Paul (2 Cor. 3:6) The Odd Way NT Authors Use the OT Have you ever noticed the rather strange way authors in the NT tend to use OT citations? Whereas most western Christians today stress the importance of seeking the “original intended…

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Why do some of Jesus’ parables depict God in violent ways?

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http://youtu.be/yUW5orPJlyQ Greg deals with the question of what it means that some of Jesus’ parables seem to depict God in violent terms. In addition to getting an answer to this question you’ll be treated to a window into Greg’s graceful way of moving through the world. Really classy. Enjoy!…

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Are You Guilty of Marcionism?

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http://youtu.be/-CXIGbVMb5I Greg responds to the question of whether or not his cruciform hermeneutic is anything like the heresy of Marcion, who basically advocated throwing out the Old Testament. (Spoiler: it’s not.)…

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A Revelation of Beauty Through Ugliness

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In my recent post, Getting Honest About the Dark Side of the Bible, I enlisted no less an authority than John Calvin to support my claim that we need to be forthright in acknowledging that some of the portraits of God in the OT are, as he said, “savage” and…

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