Essays
Imaging God Rightly: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 3
Category: Essays
Tags: Benefit of the Doubt, Essay, Jesus, The Image of God
Topics: Apologetics, Christology
In the previous two blogs I noted that the vision of God in our minds is the single most important vision in our lives, for it completely determines whether we’ll have a relationship with God…
Imaging God Wrongly: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 2
Category: Essays
Tags: Adam and Eve, Character of God, Essay, Idolatry, Imaginative Prayer, Picture of God, Religious Idolatry, Repenting of Religion, Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Topics: Christology
Our relationship with God depends on the way we imagine God. When we get the image of God right, the doors open for us to trust and relate to God in the ways we were…
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…
Responding to Critics of a Pacifist View of the Syrian Crisis-Part 2
Category: Essays
Tags: Aric Clark, Current Events, Essay, Friendly Disagreements, Government, Kingdom Living, Non-Violence, Peace, War
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
United Nations Photo via Compfight Yesterday I posted a response to Tyler Tully’s criticism of some of my thoughts on the Syrian crisis. The second blog I’d like to review is Two Friars and a…
Responding to Critics On A Pacifist View of the Syrian Crisis
Category: Essays
Tags: Current Events, Essay, Friendly Disagreements, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Politics, Tyler Tully, Wrath
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
On September 3rd, I wrote a post entitled What I – a Pacifist – Would Say to Obama About the Syrian Crisis in response to a number of questions I was getting, and judging from the…
What I – a Pacifist – Would say to Obama About the Crisis In Syria
Category: Essays
Tags: Current Events, Essay, Government, Just War, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Peace, The Sword, War
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Over the last week many of you have written ReKnew asking me to weigh in on the crisis in Syria. Does being a pacifist mean that I am opposed to America violently intervening to keep…
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…
Does Jesus’ Abandonment on the Cross Destroy the Trinity?
Category: Essays
Tags: Abandonment, An Open Orthodoxy, Cruciform Theology, Dwayne Polk, Essay, Father, God is Love, Godhead, Jesus, Tom Belt, Trinity, Trinity and Process
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Theological Method, Trinity
In my previous blog I argued that Jesus’ experience of God-forsakenness on the cross was genuine and that, as a matter of fact, there was a genuine abandonment of Jesus by the Father on the…
When God Abandoned God
Category: Essays
Tags: Abandonment, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Father, Son, Trinity
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Trinity
On the cross, Jesus’ cried out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt. 27:46). These are arguably the most shocking, beautiful, and profoundly revelatory words…
Terror in the Night
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Fear, God, God's Love, Q&A, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
I’ll never forget the night it first happened to me. I was thirteen, sharing a bedroom with my older brother. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as if something was…
God’s Aikido Way of Defeating Evil
Category: Essays
Tags: Atonement, Christus Victor, Demons, Essay, God, Jesus, Love, Non-Violence, Redemption
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement
Greg continues his thoughts on the atonement with this installment highlighting the way God uses the evil intentions and actions of his enemies to bring about good. And because this strategy is based in love,…
Open Theism Timeline
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism, Tom Lukashow, Woodland Hills Church
Topics: Open Theism
Open Theism Timeline by Tom Lukashow An argument that is frequently raised against the open view is that it is a recent innovation. Paul Eddy had discovered Calcidius, a fifth century advocate, and I and…
Penal Substitution View of Atonement: Did God the Father Just Need to Vent?
Category: Essays
Tags: Atonement, Essay, Forgiveness, God, God's Wrath, Jesus, Penal Substitution View of Atonement, Picture of God, Sin
Topics: Atonement and The Cross
In this video blog, Greg outlines the penal substitution view of atonement which says that the Father poured out his wrath on Jesus instead of us so that we could be forgiven. This view is…
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…