Essay
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…
The Bible, Government and Christian Anarchy
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
This “essay” contains my informal reflections on biblical texts that I believe support what some call “Christian Anarchy.” Consider it a very rough draft of a future project. I’ll argue that Kingdom people are called…
The Case for Annihilationism
Category: Essays
Tags: Afterlife, Essay, Heaven and Hell, Judgement
Topics: End Times
Annihilationism is the view that whoever and whatever cannot be redeemed by God is ultimately put out of existence. Sentient beings do not suffer eternally, as the traditional view of hell teaches. While I am…
Open Theism and the Nature of the Future
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View, Free Will and the Future
In this philosophical essay Alan Rhoda, Tom Belt and I argue that the future cannot be exhaustively described in terms of what will and will not happen, but must also be described in terms of…
The Hexagon of Opposition
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View
Throughout the western philosophical and theological tradition, scholars have assumed that the future can be adequately described in terms of what will and will not happen. In this essay I, Alan Rhoda and Tom Belt…
What is the Warfare Worldview?
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
The warfare worldview is based on the conviction that our world is engaged in a cosmic war between a myriad of agents, both human and angelic, that have aligned themselves with either God or Satan….
Old Testament Support for the Warfare Worldview
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Essay, Old Testament, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Rebuking Hostile Waters Satan plays a minor role in the Old Testament relative to the New Testament. Instead, the warfare worldview in the Old Testament is expressed in terms of God’s conflict with hostile waters,…
New Testament Support for the Warfare Worldview
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Essay, New Testament, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Warfare in Jesus’ Ministry The theme of God striving to establish his sovereign will (his Kingdom) on earth over and against forces that oppose him is prevalent in the New Testament. In keeping with the…
Naturalism and the Historical Jesus
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
The quest for a “merely human” Jesus The various radical views of Jesus now being advocated by certain scholars and propagated through the press are buttressed by a number of different historical arguments. Some argue,…
Twenty Arguments Against Cameron’s “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
On March 4th, 2007, the Discovery Channel aired James Cameron’s much celebrated documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” The documentary basically gives a new spin on an old discovery. In 1980, a first century tomb…
William Wilberforce and the Possibility of “Christian” Politics
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Creation Care, Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
William Wilberforce was a passionate Christian who entered politics for the sole purpose of ending the slave trade. For more than thirty years he passionately and courageous labored to get Parliament to outlaw the practice….
How Details in the Gospels Support Their Historicity
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Biblical Reliability
*This essay is adapted from G. Boyd & P. Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007). For a fuller discussion, see P. Eddy & G. Boyd, The Jesus Legend (Baker, 2007). There are a number of…
Trapped in a Constantinian Paradigm
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
A Response to James Smith’s Review of The Myth of a Christian Nation In my book The Myth of a Christian Nation I repeatedly call on Christians to engage in social activism. Followers of Jesus…