Bible
Justice and Biblical Clarity in Hindsight
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Hermeneutics, Justice, Scripture
Murky1 via Compfight Rachel Held Evans posted a challenging look at our history of using the Bible to uphold things like slavery and to condemn people like Galileo for his scientific findings. You really need…
The One True Image of God: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 4
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Essay, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament, Prayer, The Image of God
Topics: Apologetics, Christology
This point is emphasized throughout the New Testament because, if we don’t get this, we are left to our own imaginations about God, and we’ll draw from a multitude of different sources to construct a…
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…
A Review of a Review of Benefit of the Doubt
Category: General
Tags: Benefit of the Doubt, Bible, Book Reviews, Greg Boyd, Historical Criticism, Inerrancy, Inspiration, Reviews
I’d like to offer a brief response to a curious on-line review of Benefit of the Doubt, published on thechristians.com. It’s titled, Which came first, Jesus or the Bible? A clever heretic draws a false…
The Bible Is Insufficient
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Community, Jesus, Kurt Johnson, Scripture
Patrick Feller via Compfight Kurt Johnson wrote a piece a few days ago on the proper place of Scripture in the life of a believer. He reflects on the fact that we have elevated the…
Sermon Clip: Creation Week 1
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Creation, Sermons, Woodland Hills Church
The story of creation has interesting details. But getting lost in those details can make us miss the big picture. In this short sermon clip, Greg Boyd talks about the importance of properly interpreting the…
The God Who Embraces Our Doubt
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Doubt, Faith, God, Honesty, Jesus, The American Jesus, Upside-Down Kingdom, Zack Hunt
Lawrence OP via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus posted some of his thoughts on doubt, and it seemed fitting on this week before the Doubt, Faith & the Idol of Certainty conference…
Benefit of the Doubt Is Here!
Category: General
Tags: Benefit of the Doubt, Bible, Cruciform Theology, Doubt, Faith, Frank Viola, Greg Boyd, Interview, Jesus
Benefit of the Doubt is finally here and you should definitely get yourself a copy! Frank Viola interviewed Greg about the book recently and you can read it over on Frank’s blog Beyond Evangelical. In fact,…
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…
Why do some of Jesus’ parables depict God in violent ways?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Parables, Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Greg deals with the question of what it means that some of Jesus’ parables seem to depict God in violent terms. In addition to getting an answer to this question you’ll be treated to a…
The Idolatrous Devotion to Inerrancy
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Ed Cyzewski, Inerrancy, Religious Idolatry, Truth
Luca Rossato via Compfight Ed Cyzewski posted some thoughts on his blog on why he hates the word “inerrancy”. He agrees with something Greg has been saying for a while now that seems shocking to many:…
Are You Guilty of Marcionism?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Cruciform Theology, Heresy, Jesus, Non-Violence, Old Testament, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Greg responds to the question of whether or not his cruciform hermeneutic is anything like the heresy of Marcion, who basically advocated throwing out the Old Testament. (Spoiler: it’s not.)
Is There an Actual Satan?
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Demons, Roger Olson, Satan, Satanic Realism
Roger Olson wrote an excellent piece on how contemporary Christianity has tended to ignore or altogether extract Satan from the Biblical text. He explores some of the possible reasons for it and also discusses his…
Old and New
Category: General
Tags: Art, Bible, Old and New Project
Old & New – Round 3 Trailer by Fred Sprinkle. Our good friend Jim LePage is a graphic artist with amazing talent. Some of you are familiar with him via his work for Woodland Hills or…
Still Forming
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Christianne Squires, Lectio Divina, Meditation, Prayer, Scripture
Hi Everyone, The Open Theism conference was a huge blessing for us. We’ll be talking more about that in the coming days and giving you information on how to access video of some of the…
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…
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…
God in Our Image
Category: General
Tags: Bible, God, Jesus, Jonathan Storment, Religious Idolatry, Religious Violence
zen Sutherland via Compfight We came across this piece written by Jonathan Storment earlier this month and we had to share it here. The title of the piece is Everyday Idolatry: My God. He does a…