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The Cruciform Center Part 4: How Revelation Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, Lamb of God, Non-Violence, Revelation, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 3: How Paul’s Epistles Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Paul, Paul's Letters, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, John's Gospel, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Self-Sacrificial Love, Synoptic Gospels
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Image of Cross-Like Love: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 6
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Enemy Love, Essay, God is Love, Kingdom Living, Love
Topics: Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Why a “Christocentric” View of God is Inadequate: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 5
Category: Essays
Tags: Character of God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Love, ReKnew Manifesto
Topics: Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist” Part III
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Lamb of God, Mark Driscoll, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Revelation, Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part II
Category: Essays
Tags: Book of Revelation, Essay, Jesus, Kingdom Living, Lamb of God, Literalism, Mark Driscoll, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Sacrifice, Word of God
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part I
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Book of Revelation, Essay, Jesus, Love Your Enemies, Mark Driscoll, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Peace, Sixth Commandment
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The “Third Way”: Seeing God’s Beauty in the Depth of Scripture’s Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Non-Violence, Picture of God, Third Way
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
“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 Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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,…
Getting Behind the “Letter” of Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Character of God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Hermeneutics, Jesus, Matthew Bates, New Testament, Non-Violence, Old Testament, Reformed Theology, Scripture, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
“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…
Finding Christ Behind the “Letter” That Kills
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
“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…
Why do some of Jesus’ parables depict God in violent ways?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Parables, Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Are You Guilty of Marcionism?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Cruciform Theology, Heresy, Jesus, Non-Violence, Old Testament, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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.)
A Revelation of Beauty Through Ugliness
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, OT Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
What I Am, and Am Not, Doing In These Blog Posts
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Picture of God
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In this post I’d like to try to help some potentially frustrated readers by explaining what I am, and am not, trying to accomplish in this series on the violent portraits of God in the…
A Coming Storm
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Cruciform Theology, Debate, Essay, Evangelism, Jesus, OT Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
There is a storm beginning to brew on the horizon. It is a debate among Evangelicals about the violent depictions of God, stirred up largely by Eric Seibert’s Disturbing Divine Behavior. Here is a post…
The Phinehas vs. Jesus Conundrum
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, OT Violence, Phinehas, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
I’ll be frank. This is not a blog that will be easy for some people to read. But it’s a blog I believe every follower of Jesus should read – even if you have to…