God’s Character
God Clearly Can, So Why Doesn’t He? (podcast)
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God's Character, Objections to Open Theism, Open Theism
Leah expects more from God. Should she? Greg confronts God’s inactivity and underperformance. Episode 510 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0510.mp3
That Weird Episode with the Pigs
Category: General
Tags: Demons, God's Character, Jesus, Non-Violence, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Creation Care, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In my opinion, the single strangest episode recounted in the Gospels is the account of Jesus’ encounter with a demonized man that ended with two thousand pigs drowning themselves in the Sea of Galilee (Mk…
Podcast: Does a Jesus-Centric Theology Reduce God?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, God's Character
Greg challenges the traditional starting point of many theologies and defends starting our theology about God’s nature and character with what has been revealed about Jesus. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0325.mp3
Where Psychology and Theology Meet
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God's Character, Guilt, Love, Sin
Topics: Attributes and Character
Guest post by Ty Gibson The biblical narrative reveals that God bears our guilt—not merely in the penal sense that Reformed theology asserts—but in the sense that He bears our misconceptions of His character as…
Podcast: What is God’s Glory?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Glory, God's Character
Greg considers competing concepts of what God’s glory is. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0126.mp3
Defining Love
Category: Essays
Tags: Augustine, God is Love, God's Character, Jesus, Non-Violence, Religious Violence
Topics: Attributes and Character
If God’s eternal essence is love, as discussed in this post, then we must ask: What does this confession actually mean? We must explore this question carefully because “love” has been defined in many theological…
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…
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…
Cross-Shaped Transcendence
Category: General
Tags: Cross, God's Character, Nature of God, Transcendence
Topics: Attributes and Character
Hellenistic philosophers traditionally embrace a conception of God as the simple, necessary, and immutable One. They do this in order to try to explain the “unmoved mover” who is absolutely distinct from the ever-changing, composite,…
Knowing the Eternal God
Category: General
Tags: Cross, God's Character, Perichoresis, Trinity
If all our knowledge about God is to be oriented around the cross, as I argue in many places (see this post for instance), what does this mean for how we reflect on God’s transcendence?…
How God is Glorified
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, God's Character, Love
Peter wrote, “[God] has given us … his precious and very great promises, so that through them … [we] may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). With the coming of Christ, God…
Podcast: Was it God Who Sent the Plagues in Exodus?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, God's Character, God's Sovereignty
Greg discusses how God’s restraint from action is often written as an act (rather than a non-act). http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0075.mp3
God’s Moral Immutability
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, God's Character, Open Theism
Topics: Attributes and Character
Classical theologians from the fourth and fifth centuries on were very concerned with protecting their understanding of the metaphysical attributes of God—like timelessness, immutability, impassibility—by assessing biblical portraits that conflicted with these attributes to be…
Resisting Evil
Category: General
Tags: God's Character, God's Will, Open Theism, Satan, Warfare Worldview
The New Testament refers to Satan as the “god of this age” and the “ruler of the power of the air” (2 Cor 4:4; Eph.2:2). In the first century Jewish worldview, “air” referred to the…
Good From Evil
Category: General
Tags: Evil, God's Character, God's Will, Open Theism, Warfare Worldview
The Bible is very clear that God has nothing to do with evil. There is “no darkness” in God. (I Jn 1:5). Far from intentionally bringing about evil, God’s “eyes are too pure to look…
Violent Parables?
Category: General
Tags: God's Character, Jesus, Non-Violence, Parables
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
Some try to argue that Jesus did not make loving enemies and refraining from violence an absolute mandate. They make their case on the basis of several passages from the Gospels. The first concerns the…
Greg Interviews Jeremy Jernigan on “Redeeming Pleasure”
Category: General
Tags: Christian Living, God's Character, Interview, Jeremy Jernigan, Redeeming Pleasure
Greg: Thanks for agreeing to this interview Jeremy. Having read your soon-to-be-published book Redeeming Pleasure, I’m really looking forward to its September 15 publication. Okay, to get started, suppose I’m a stranger and we meet in an…
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…
The Ultimate Criteria for Theology
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God's Character, God's Love, Theology
Topics: Theological Method
Theology is thinking (logos) about God (theos). It is a good and necessary discipline, but only so long as it is centered on Christ. All of our speculation and debate about such things as God’s…
The Open View and Predestination
Category: General
Tags: Divine Foreknowledge, freedom, God's Character, Open Theism, Predestination, Satan and the Problem of Evil
Topics: Open Theism
Paul wrote in Ephesians, “For he [God] chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through…