Essays
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…
The REAL Problem with Divine Violence in the OT
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
As I mentioned in my previous blog, while I will continue to offer video-blogs responding to questions that come in, I’m also planning on sprinkling in reflections based on my forthcoming book, Crucifixion of the…
Reflections on Divine Violence in the Old Testament
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, Love, Old Testament, Picture of God, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
As some of you know, for the last five years I’ve been working on a book addressing the problem of divine violence in the OT. (For alleged violence in the NT, see Thomas R. Yoder…
The Rorschach Test
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, God, Non-Violence, Open Theism, Rorschach Test, Truth
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
The choices we make will either increase or decrease our ability to recognize light when we see it. As we choose goodness, we increase our capacity for goodness. What do you see when you read the…
How NOT To Be Christ-Centered: A Review of God With Us – Part IV
Category: Essays
Tags: Book Reviews, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God With Us
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In the first three parts of this review of Scott Oliphint’s God with Us we’ve outline his attempt to reframe all God’s accommodations in Scripture in light of the Chalecedonian Creed. He, in essence, uses…
How NOT to be Christ-Centered: A Review of God With Us – Part III
Category: Essays
Tags: Book Reviews, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God With Us
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In the previous two posts on Oliphint’s God With Us, we’ve seen that Oliphint is trying to reframe divine accommodations in a Christ-centered way, but that what he means by this is not that he…
How NOT to be Christ-Centered: A Review of God With Us – Part II
Category: Essays
Tags: Book Reviews, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God With Us
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
In Part I of my review of Scott Oliphint’s God With Us we saw that Oliphint is attempting to reframe divine accommodation in a Christ-centerd way. Yet, while he affirms that “Christ is the quintessential…
How NOT To Be Christ-Centered: A Review of God With Us – Part I
Category: Essays
Tags: Book Reviews, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God With Us
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
Theologians throughout Church history have used the concept of divine accommodation to account for everything in Scripture that seemed “unworthy” of God. Whatever didn’t line up with what we know about God was seen as…
The Case for Including Open Theism Within Arminianism
Category: Essays
Tags: Arminianism, Essay, Open Theism, Roger Olson
Topics: Open Theism
Here is an excellent post by my good friend Roger Olson in which he makes the case that Open Theism should be embraced by Arminians as an orthodox, if somewhat non-traditional, form of their faith….
Homosexuality and the Church: Finding a “Third Way”
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Homosexuality, Love, Politics, Sexuality
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Here is a word I a shared this last weekend with Woodland Hills Church (where I’m senior pastor) in response to numerous questions I’ve received over the last several months. People have asked me why…
A Response to Tony Campolo on Taxes
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Politics, Tony Campolo
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
In this and the next several blogs that I’ll be writing, I’d like to respond to views of Tony Campolo on several topics related to Christians and politics. I have had the privilege of dialoguing…
Insights from a Technology Fast
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Technology
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Hannah Brencher took a two week technology fast and shared what she learned last week. Of course, if you’re reading this, you obviously make use of technology and we’re not saying that there’s anything wrong…
Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations for Ascribing Exhaustively Definite Foreknowledge to God
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View
A historic overview and critical assessment Abstract: The traditional Christian view that God foreknows the future exclusively in terms of what will and will not come to pass is partially rooted in two ancient Hellenistic…
Kingdom Centeredness
Category: Essays
Tags: Discipleship, Essay, Kingdom Living
Topics: Following Jesus
A Silent Center white knuckles cling against peace and cries for release into chaos flying, centrifugal to death in attempt to salvage human breath for breathing, through peeling purge that burns away flesh to…
Living With a Kingdom Consciousness
Category: Essays
Tags: Discipleship, Essay, Kingdom Living
Topics: Following Jesus
What Is the Kingdom of God? I want to begin by asking, “What is the kingdom of God?” This may seem like a rather obvious question. We all know what the Kingdom of God is,…
Gospel “Contradictions” and Orality Studies
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Bible, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Biblical Reliability
* This essay has been adopted from G. Boyd and Paul Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007). One of the standard tests historians put to ancient documents to assess their veracity is self-consistency. Generally speaking,…
The Lord of Legend and Love
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Faith
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
However secularized a person may be, if they have any sense at all that life has a meaning, they know it must have something to do with love. Indeed, one could argue that all of…
Jesus: True Myth and True History
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Jesus
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
Though the Jesus story gives us every reason to believe it is substantially rooted in history, it has a curious, and fascinating, relationship with myth and legend. The story of God coming to earth, being…