God
How Do You “See” God? God’s Self-Portrait, Part 1
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, God, Picture of God, ReKnew Manifesto, Seeing is Believing
Topics: Apologetics, Christology
When ReKnew first launched a year and a half ago, I planned on initially using the blog primarily to flesh out the theology and significance of the ReKnew Manifesto. As happens all-too-frequently in my ADHD…
What Does a Perfect God Look Like?
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Classical Theism, God, Jesus, Open Theism
Topics: Attributes and Character
The “classical view of God” refers to the view of God that has dominated Christian theology since the earliest Church fathers. According to this theology, God is completely “immutable.” This means that God’s being and…
Why Did God Require Animal Sacrifice in the Old Testament?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Animal Sacrifice, Atonement, Christus Victor, Forgiveness, God, God's Wrath, Satan
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Question: I have a question about the atonement. Why did YHWH in the OT demand that people sacrifice animals? And if these sacrifices anticipated the ultimate sacrifice of the Messiah, as the author of Hebrews…
Do All Roads Lead to God?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Apologetics, Christianity, Debate, God, Jesus, Reasoning, Theology
Topics: Christology, Death and Salvation
First, if it’s really true that Jesus is the way to Father and that no one comes to the Father except through him, (Jn 14:6) then it seems that no other religious leader or religious…
What are the different models of the Trinity in the Christian tradition?
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, God, Trinity
Topics: Theological Method, Trinity
The Psychological and Social Models of the Trinity The Bible teaches that there is only one God. At the same time, it teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God. For…
What Makes the Good News So Good
Category: General
Tags: God, God is Love, God's Character, Jesus
Topics: Attributes and Character
While God was revealed in various ways and to various degrees through the law and the prophets of the Old Testament, in Jesus we finally have the one who is “the exact representation of God’s…
A Foolish and Weak-Looking God
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus
The New Testament assumes that the God of Israel and the God revealed in Jesus Christ are one and the same God. But there also can be no question that the portrait of God that…
Jesus: Our Vision of God
Category: General
Tags: Father, God, God's Character, Jesus, Word of God
Topics: Christology
At the beginning of his Gospel John taught that “no one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made…
Astronomy and God’s Greatness
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Creation, God, Transcendence
What does modern astronomy teach us about God’s Transcendence? Much indeed. Consider God’s words to Job about the universe: Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orionʼs belt? Can you bring…
Greg Uncovers Flaws in Aquinas, and It Could Change Everything
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: God, Philosophy, Theology
In this episode Greg shares some intriguing insights about Aquinas and Aquinas’ concept of God.
A Brief Theology of the Trinity
Category: General
Tags: God, God is Love, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, Trinity
Topics: Trinity
“The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.” This is the maxim introduced by the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner that should shape our discussion of the Trinity. It…
The Cross Reveals God’s Love
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Cross, Cruciform Theology, Easter, God, Jesus
The central way Christ functions as the perfect image and exact representation of God is by dying on the cross. While Christ’s entire life manifests the true God, Christ came primarily to die. It was…
The Revelation of God in the Cross
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love
The cross cannot be understood apart from the resurrection, just as the resurrection can never be understood apart from the cross. They are two sides of the same coin. If you consider the cross apart…
Thankful for the Passion of God
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, Classical Theism, God, Jesus, Thanksgiving
The classical view of God has held that God is impassible, meaning he is above pathos (passion or emotions). The main reason the church came to this view was that, following the Hellenistic philosophical tradition, they associated…
God Became What He is Not To Reveal What He Is
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, Salvation
Topics: Attributes and Character
We are saved because Jesus became the curse of the law for us (Gal. 3:13). So too, the way Christ freed us from the condemnation of sin and enabled us to “become the righteousness of…
God’s Way of War
Category: General
Tags: God, Non-Violence, Old Testament, War
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
As Judah was facing impending doom, the Lord told Hosea that he would save them “not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God” (Hos 1:7). So…
God’s “Ways” and “Thoughts” are Higher
Category: General
Tags: Covenant, God, Israel, Nationalism, Transcendence
Topics: God
Verse: Isaiah 55
Isaiah 55:8-9 is one of the more often quoted passages in the Bible. It reads: … my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways … As the heavens are higher…
When God Endorsed Polygamy
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Cruciform Theology, God
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
We often find God acting as if he supports things we know, by other means, that he does not. For example, though his ideal was monogamy, it’s clear in the biblical narrative that, once God…
How to Interpret the Law of the Old Testament
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Law, Old Testament
Topics: Attributes and Character, Biblical Interpretation
While there are multitudes of passages in the OT that reflect an awareness that people are too sinful to be rightly related to God on the basis of the law, there is a strand that…
The Starting Point for “Knowing God”
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Luther, Transcendence
While it makes sense that Hellenistic philosophers embraced knowledge of God as the simple, necessary and immutable One in an attempt to explain the ever-changing, composite, contingent world (see post here for what this means),…