Posts
A FREE Resource on Spiritual Formation
Category: General
Tags: Spiritual Formation, Woodland Hills Church
Topics: Following Jesus
Last week, we began a 6-week series at Woodland Hills Church entitled Formed: The Shaping of a Life. The first sermon by Greg can be watched here. As a part of this series, the church has…
Lighten Up: The Good Shepherd
Category: Lighten Up
Tags: Psalm 23
Verse: Psalm 23
You’ll never read the 23rd Psalm quite the same again. Video courtesy of Deidox.
When the Law Demanded the Death Penalty
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Law, Old Testament, Religious Violence, Violence
The Sinai covenant is significantly structured around violence. It motivates behavioral conformity by promising rewards and threatening violence. Without the threat of violence, the law looses its “teeth.” If the law is an acquiescence to…
Trusting in a King = Rejecting God
Category: General
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
As Israel’s renowned prophet Samuel approached death, the Israelites grew insecure about God’s ability to protect them from the perpetual threat posed by the surrounding nations. They therefore complained to Samuel that they wanted to…
Did God Want a King for Israel?
Category: General
Tags: Divine Accommodation, Moses, Old Testament, Power
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
Verse: Deuteronomy 17
By the time God was ready to form a nation for himself by delivering the Israelites from the oppressive rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh, every nation was ruled by someone and existed in tension with,…
God’s Way of War
Category: General
Tags: God, Non-Violence, Old Testament, War
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
As Judah was facing impending doom, the Lord told Hosea that he would save them “not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God” (Hos 1:7). So…
God’s “Ways” and “Thoughts” are Higher
Category: General
Tags: Covenant, God, Israel, Nationalism, Transcendence
Topics: God
Verse: Isaiah 55
Isaiah 55:8-9 is one of the more often quoted passages in the Bible. It reads: … my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways … As the heavens are higher…
When God Endorsed Polygamy
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Cruciform Theology, God
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
We often find God acting as if he supports things we know, by other means, that he does not. For example, though his ideal was monogamy, it’s clear in the biblical narrative that, once God…
Lighten Up: When Jesus Walks into a Bar
Category: Lighten Up
Tags: Lighten Up
Image via Laughing Redhead Studio
How to Interpret the Law of the Old Testament
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Law, Old Testament
Topics: Attributes and Character, Biblical Interpretation
While there are multitudes of passages in the OT that reflect an awareness that people are too sinful to be rightly related to God on the basis of the law, there is a strand that…
What Is Required to See God for Who God Is?
Category: General
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
The way individuals and groups view God often says more about them than it does about God. Our perception of God, as well as other spiritual truths, is conditioned by the state of our heart….
The Starting Point for “Knowing God”
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Luther, Transcendence
While it makes sense that Hellenistic philosophers embraced knowledge of God as the simple, necessary and immutable One in an attempt to explain the ever-changing, composite, contingent world (see post here for what this means),…
A Police Officer Questions Pacifism
Category: General
Tags: Non-Violence, Pacifism
Police Officer: My theology totally lines up with your theology, except in one area: namely, your pacifism. I am a police officer, and it frankly seems obvious to me that there are times when it is…
Crucifying Transcendence
Category: General
Tags: Church Fathers, Cross, Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Philosophy, Platonism, Transcendence
Topics: Attributes and Character
The classical view of God’s transcendence in theology is in large borrowed from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their experience…
The Greatest Mystery of the Christian Faith
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, Incarnation, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love, Trinity
God has always been willing to stoop to accommodate the fallen state of his covenant people in order to remain in a transforming relationship with them and in order to continue to further his sovereign…
The Rule of Love
Category: General
Tags: Augustine, Cross, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Love, Rule of Love
The traditional confession that Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres (“Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter”) presupposes that there is one divine mind behind Scripture, for example. Moreover, Church scholars have traditionally assumed that Scripture’s unity can be…
Should Innovative Theology Be Rejected?
Category: General
Tags: Approaches to Theology, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In some conservative Christian circles innovation is suspect, if not sin. And as a result, theologians and pastors who take this stance often criticize what I propose in my writings simply because it’s innovative. However,…