God
Crucifying Transcendence
Category: General
Tags: Church Fathers, Cross, Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Philosophy, Platonism, Transcendence
Topics: Attributes and Character
The classical view of God’s transcendence in theology is in large borrowed from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their experience…
Was Jesus Fully Human and Fully God?
Category: General
Tags: God, Incarnation, Jesus
The New Testament is very clear that Jesus was a full human being. He had to grow in wisdom (Lk 2:52) and learn obedience by going through trials, just like every other human being (Heb….
Creating God in Our Own Image
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, God, Greg Boyd, Jesus, Power, The Work of the People, Travis Reed
Topics: Attributes and Character
How have we created God in our own image? In this short video produced by The Work of the People, Greg reflects on various ways that humans typically think about God in terms of power, and how…
How Much Does the Cross Really Matter?
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion, God, God's Character, Jesus, Persecution, Power, Suffering
Topics: Attributes and Character
The cross is as foolishness and weakness to nonbelievers, but Paul wrote that to those who are being saved it is both “the power” and “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:18, 24). In sharp contrast…
God is Different Than You Think
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion, God, Jesus, Love, Sacrifice
Topics: Attributes and Character
The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God…
Does the Doctrine of the Trinity Matter?
Category: Q&A
Tags: God, God is Love, Jesus, Love, The Holy Spirit, Trinity
Topics: Trinity
Jesus reveals the greatest, most beautiful, and mysterious aspect of God when he, despite being himself God Incarnate, relates to God as his “Father” and refers to God as “the Holy Spirit.” There is, of…
Does Prayer Really Change Things?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Change, God, Open Theism, Prayer
Topics: Free Will and the Future, Hearing God, Prayer
Many people operate out of a blueprint model where God is viewed as absolutely unchanging, and all that occurs in the world is the unfolding of an eternal divine plan. If this is the case,…
Is Your Christianity Shaped by Plato or the Bible?
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Blueprint Worldview, Change, God, Open Theism, Perfection, Plato, time
Topics: Apologetics
The Timaeus is a work that Plato wrote that addresses the questions: “What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes but never is?” (Tim. 28a)? These questions…
What Happened on the Cross?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Already Not Yet, Atonement, God, God at War, Jesus, Satan
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Since the time of Anselm (11th century), and especially since the Reformation in the 16th century, the tendency of the Western church has been to focus almost all of its attention on the anthropological dimension…
Who You Are Reflects the Kind of God You Worship
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: God, Love, Picture of God, Seeing is Believing, The Image of God
We always reflect the mental picture of God that we envision, for better or worse. If you have a fear-based picture of God, it will even affect the structure of your brain. You become the kind…
Problems with the Simple Foreknowledge View
Category: General
Tags: Arminianism, Calvinism, Future, God, Open Theism, Satan and the Problem of Evil
Topics: Open Theism
Some have proposed a model of divine foreknowledge which allows them to avoid the dilemma of affirming either that God creates people for the purpose of sending them to hell (Calvinism) or that he creates…
Featured Sermon Series: Scandalous Love
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: God, Greg Boyd, Kingdom Living, Love, Sermons, Theodicy, Theology, Woodland Hills Church
The Scandalous Love series is often considered one of Greg’s and Woodland Hill’s most foundational series. In fact, it was so important that it subsequently led to the Can’t Stop the Love series. Defining…
Don’t Be a Functional Atheist at Christmas
Category: General
Tags: Atheism, Being Present, Christmas, Experiencing God, God, Jesus, Kingdom Living, Myth of a Christian Religion, Practicing the Presence of God, Present Perfect, Secularism
All of us raised in Western culture have been strongly conditioned by what is called a secular worldview. The word secular comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning “the present world.” A secular worldview, therefore, is…
Participating in the Divine Nature (Love)
Category: General
Tags: God, God is Love, Jesus, Love, Love Your Neighbor, The Holy Spirit, Trinity
Topics: Following Jesus, Trinity
When God created the world, it obviously wasn’t to finally have someone to love, for God already had this, within himself. Rather God created the world to express the love he is and invite others…
The Most Beautiful Truth
Category: General
Tags: God, God is Love, Jesus, Love, The Holy Spirit, Trinity
Topics: Trinity
Jesus was God incarnate. Yet he continually referred to, and prayed to, God the Father as someone who was distinct from himself. He also continually referred to, and claimed to be empowered by, God the…
When God is Revealed
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God, God's Character, Jesus, Relationships, Trust
Topics: Christology
Whether we’re talking about our relationship with God or with other people, the quality of our relationships can never go beyond the level of trust the relating parties have in each other’s character. We cannot…
War in the Heavens!
Category: General
Tags: David D. Flowers, God, Quantum Physics, Satan, Satan and the Problem of Evil, Warfare Worldview
What does spiritual warfare look like from the perspective of the physical world? Our friend David D. Flowers speculated on that question in a post he entitled Dark Matter vs Dark Energy: War in the Heavens. Referencing Greg’s…
Reasons God Does Not Control Everything
Category: General
Tags: Change, God, Open Theism, time
First, the belief that God is all-powerful does not mean that God exercises all power. It only means that God is the ultimate source of all power. Fallen people may value the ability to control…
Making God in Our Own Image
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: God, Interview, Jesus, The Work of the People, Travis Reed
In this video, Greg introduces the idea of how we make God into our own image instead of allowing God to define himself through the revelation of Jesus. In an interview performed by Travis Reed…
Is God Immutable? Part I
Category: Q&A
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God, Jesus, time
Topics: Attributes and Character
For a number of reasons, Plato believed that something changes only to become better or to become worse (Rep. II). Since a perfect being can’t be improved or diminished, he argued, God must be completely…