Posts
The God Who Over-Knows The Future
Category: General
Tags: God's Sovereignty, Open Theism, Possibility, Providence
Topics: Free Will and the Future
God perfectly knows from all time what will be, what would be, and what may be. He sovereignly sets parameters for all three categories. His knowledge of what might occur leaves him no less prepared…
Lighten Up: Literally
Category: Lighten Up
Tags: Fundamentalism, Literalism
Comic from @postbarthian on Twitter
Was Jesus Fully Human and Fully God?
Category: General
Tags: God, Incarnation, Jesus
The New Testament is very clear that Jesus was a full human being. He had to grow in wisdom (Lk 2:52) and learn obedience by going through trials, just like every other human being (Heb….
Greg Interviews Jeremy Jernigan on “Redeeming Pleasure”
Category: General
Tags: Christian Living, God's Character, Interview, Jeremy Jernigan, Redeeming Pleasure
Greg: Thanks for agreeing to this interview Jeremy. Having read your soon-to-be-published book Redeeming Pleasure, I’m really looking forward to its September 15 publication. Okay, to get started, suppose I’m a stranger and we meet in an…
Why Compatibilistic Freedom Does Not Make Sense
Category: General
Tags: Determinism, Evil, Free Will, Problem of Evil, Satan and the Problem of Evil
Compatibilism is the view that free will is compatible with determinism. In this view, freedom is defined as the ability to do what you want, though what you want is determined by factors outside of…
The God of Wisdom: Romans 9, Part 5
Category: General
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
This week we have been looking at Romans 9. In this post, we will look at the sixth and final argument against the deterministic interpretation of this famous chapter. Argument #6: It’s About Wisdom, Not…
God is Flexible: Romans 9, Part 4
Category: General
Tags: Determinism, Israel, Open Theism, Potter and Clay, Predestination, Romans 9
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Verse: Romans 9
As we continue this series on Romans 9, [Here’s the link to the first post in the series.] today we will look at the famous potter/clay analogy. Most tend to interpret the potter and clay image…
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”…
Lighten Up: Biblical Idolatry
Category: Lighten Up
Is the way you read your Bible drawing you closer to Jesus or further away? Something to think about. Image by David Hayward at nakedpastor.com.
Christena Cleveland on Practices for Sociological Imagination
Category: General
Tags: Christena Cleveland, Humility, Leadership, Multicultural Ministry, Privilege, Racial Reconciliation
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Christena Cleveland recently sat down with Tod Bolsinger (Vice President for Formation and Vocation at Fuller Theological Seminary) to discuss the intersection of privilege and leadership. You can find a series of short videos capturing different aspects…
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.)…
Creating God in Our Own Image
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, God, Greg Boyd, Jesus, Power, The Work of the People, Travis Reed
Topics: Attributes and Character
How have we created God in our own image? In this short video produced by The Work of the People, Greg reflects on various ways that humans typically think about God in terms of power, and how…
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 To Do With the Violent God of the Old Testament
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, OT Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
For eight years Greg has been researching for and writing the book entitled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. In it he confronts the commonly held idea that the Old Testament depictions of God behaving violently should be…
