Greg Boyd
Paul Teaches Free Will, Not Determinism: Romans 9, Part 3
Category: General
Tags: Belief, Determinism, Faith, Free Will, Mercy
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Verse: Romans 9
In this series of posts, I am challenging the deterministic reading of Romans 9, which interprets Paul’s teaching as saying that God chooses some to be saved and others to be damned. There are six arguments…
Paul Was Not Writing about Personal Salvation: Romans 9, Part 2
Category: General
Tags: Covenant, Determinism, Election, Israel, Romans 9, Salvation
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Verse: Romans 9
In yesterday’s post, I summarized the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 and offered the first argument against it. In this post I offer the second and third of six arguments that reveal that there is something…
Rethinking Election: Romans 9, Part 1
Category: General
Tags: Christ, Determinism, Love, Predestination, Romans 9, Unconditional Election
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Verse: Romans 9
Many people believe that Romans 9 demonstrates that God has the right and power to save whichever individuals he wants to save and damn whichever individuals he wants to damn. I’ll call this the “deterministic”…
Was Jesus Abandoned by the Father on the Cross?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Abandonment, Cross, Jesus, Love, Trinity
Topics: Atonement and The Cross
As Jesus hung on the cross, he cried, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (Mt 27:46). This is the cry of our God who stooped to the furthest possible depths to experience his own antithesis, as the…
Does the Old Testament Justify “Just War”?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Augustine, Cruciform Theology, Just War, Kingdom Living, Non-Violence, Old Testament, OT Violence, Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
Since the time of Augustine, Christians have consistently appealed to the violent strand of the Old Testament to justify waging wars when they believed their cause was “just.” (This is Augustine’s famous “just war” theory.)…
The Cruciform Trinity
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Crucifixion, Jesus, Kenosis, Love, Trinity
Topics: Trinity
As paradoxical as it sounds, if God is supremely revealed when he stoops to the infinite extremity of becoming his own antithesis on the cross, then we must conclude that stooping to this extremity out…
How Much Does the Cross Really Matter?
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion, God, God's Character, Jesus, Persecution, Power, Suffering
Topics: Attributes and Character
The cross is as foolishness and weakness to nonbelievers, but Paul wrote that to those who are being saved it is both “the power” and “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:18, 24). In sharp contrast…
God is Different Than You Think
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion, God, Jesus, Love, Sacrifice
Topics: Attributes and Character
The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God…
What Does it Mean to be “Saved”?
Category: General
Tags: Forgiveness, Salvation, Satan, Sin
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement
The common legal-framework view of salvation encourages people to understand it as mere acquittal, but there is much more to it than that. First let’s consider what God saved us FROM. It’s certainly true that…
God is Like a Trojan Horse
Category: General
Tags: Atonement, Christus Victor, Jesus, Satan
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement
Yesterday, I introduced a basic understanding of the Christus Victor view of Christ’s work on the cross. [Click here to read it.] Today, I want to expand on this briefly. Because God is a God…
Why Did God Heal or Not?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Faith, healing, Sickness, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Faith & Doubt, The Problem of Evil
In 1996 a 27-year-old man in my church named David was diagnosed with an inoperable brain cancer. The doctors decided to send David to the Mayo Clinic to receive some experimental treatments on the slim…
Sinful Nature and Free Will
Category: Q&A
Tags: Adam and Eve, Free Will, Sin, Sinful Nature
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Sin
Q: If our sinful nature is what causes us to sin/reject God, can we be held responsible for our sins, when this nature resulted from Adam and Eve’s sin? Do we really have the freedom…
Does God Still Heal?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Faith, healing, Sickness, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Faith & Doubt, The Problem of Evil
In the ancient world Jesus was known first and foremost as an exorcist and a healer. These two activities are mentioned in every summary of Jesus’s ministry found in the Gospels. It’s common for Western…
Why Doesn’t God Heal When We Ask?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Faith, healing, Sickness, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Faith & Doubt, The Problem of Evil
If we are called to manifest what Jesus manifested and revolt against what Jesus revolted against, and Jesus carried out the kingdom through healing, then why doesn’t God heal those we pray for? One of…
Is America Uniquely Favored by God?
Category: General
Tags: America, Greed, Poverty
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
The tendency of wealth to entrap people in greed has been confirmed in numerous studies. Research has consistently shown that, generally speaking, the more people have, the less percentage of their income they tend to…
Did Jesus Say That God Causes Blindness?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Blueprint Worldview, God at War, Sickness, Spiritual Warfare, Theodicy, Warfare Worldview
Topics: The Problem of Evil
Verse: John 9
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this…
When to Do Spiritual Warfare
Category: General
Tags: Demonization, Demons, Mental Illness, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
If the world is engulfed in spiritual warfare, how do we know when we’re confronting a demon that requires deliverance prayer, or simply confronting a “natural” by-product of the fallen world that requires medical or…
Are you Afraid of Demons?
Category: General
Tags: Demonization, Demons, Fear, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
I remember learning about germs in fourth grade. We were told our world was saturated with tiny invisible creatures that can infect wounds and make us sick. I immediately stopped sharing already-chewed gum with other…
The Demonic Affects Us All!
Category: General
Tags: Christian, Satan, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Many contemporary Western Christians think we only engage in spiritual warfare when we encounter somebody who is exhibiting bizarre, demonically-inspired behavior, such as the demonized people Jesus confronted in the Gospels. Since most Western Christians…
Can Christians be Demon Possessed?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Christian Life, Demonization, Demons, Possession
Topics: Sin
The Greek word that is usually translated “demon-possessed” in the Gospels is demonizomai, which literally means “to be rendered passive toward a demon.” It’s unfortunate, in my view, that the term is usually translated “demon possession.”…