Essay
The Cross in the Mirror
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, ReKnew Manifesto, Self-Worth
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Following Jesus, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
For those who are just tuning in, we are in the midst of a series that is fleshing out the theology of The ReKnew Manifesto. So far I’ve argued that the cross is the definitive…
The Cruciform Center Part 4: How Revelation Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, Lamb of God, Non-Violence, Revelation, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
I’ve been arguing that, while everything Jesus did and taught revealed God, the character of the God he reveals is most perfectly expressed by his loving sacrifice on the cross. Our theology and our reading…
The Cruciform Center Part 3: How Paul’s Epistles Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Paul, Paul's Letters, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
As we’ve discussed, the four Gospels point to a cruciform revelation of God (click here and here for a review), but what about the most widely read writer of the New Testament? What did the…
The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, John's Gospel, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the previous post, we looked at how the Synoptics illustrate the centrality of the cross. While the Gospel of John varies in its structure and language from the Synoptics, the cross remains at the…
The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Self-Sacrificial Love, Synoptic Gospels
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim…
The Image of Cross-Like Love: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 6
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Enemy Love, Essay, God is Love, Kingdom Living, Love
Topics: Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the previous blog I argued that God is cross-like love. In this blog I’d like to take this a step further by demonstrating why the cross alone could function as the definitive revelation of…
Why a “Christocentric” View of God is Inadequate: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 5
Category: Essays
Tags: Character of God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Love, ReKnew Manifesto
Topics: Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
I’m currently working through a series of blogs that will flesh out the theology of the ReKnew Manifesto, and I’m starting with our picture of God, since it is the foundation of everything else. So…
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…
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…