Classical Theism’s Unnecessary Paradoxes
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Suffering
Topics: Attributes and Character
The traditional view of God that is embraced by most—what is called “classical theology”—works from the assumption that God’s essential divine nature is atemporal, immutable, and impassible. The Church Fathers fought to articulate and defend…
Challenging the Assumptions of Classical Theism
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Platonism
Topics: Attributes and Character
What came to be known as the classical view of God’s nature has shaped the common, traditional way that most people think about God. It is based in the logic borrowed, mostly unconsciously, from a…
Yahweh as the Dark Knight
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Attributes and Character
I recently received an interesting analogy for The Crucifixion of the Warrior God from Aaron Reini. Thank you Aaron! In the final scene of “The Dark Knight,” Batman and Commissioner Gordon are standing over Harvey…
Crucified Transcendence
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Nature of God, Transcendence, Trinity
Topics: Attributes and Character
If our thinking about God is to be faithful to the New Testament, then all of our thinking about God must, from beginning to end, be centered on Christ. I’m persuaded that even our thinking…
The Trinity and the Crucified God
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Cruciform Theology, Love, Nature of God, Trinity
Topics: Attributes and Character, Trinity
God has always been willing to stoop to accommodate the fallen state of his covenant people in order to remain in a transforming relationship with them and in order to continue to further his sovereign…
The Heavenly Missionary
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Greg Boyd, Sermons, Woodland Hills Church
Topics: Attributes and Character
In his second sermon introducing the ideas in Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Greg suggests a metaphor to help us frame the things we encounter in the Old Testament that seem at odds with the…
A Cruciform Dialectic
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Cross, Cruciform Theology, Love
Topics: Attributes and Character
One of the most important aspects of God’s action on Calvary, I believe, is this: God revealed himself not just by acting toward humans, but by allowing himself to be acted on by humans as…
God’s Love is Cruciform
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, God is Love, God's Love
Topics: Attributes and Character
Paul instructs us in what it means to follow Jesus, when he stated, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself…
God as Covenant Keeper
Category: General
Tags: Covenant, Salvation, Trinity
Topics: Attributes and Character
Covenant lies at the heart of the biblical understand of God’s relationship to the world. Simply put, a covenant stands in contrast to a contract where parties enter into a quid pro quo arrangement. With…
The Perfect Love of God
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, God is Love, Jesus, Triune Love
Topics: Attributes and Character
The Father, Son and Spirit exist as the infinite intensity and unsurpassable perfection of eternal love. We know this about the triune God not by speculation but because Jesus demonstrated that love (Rom 5:8) in…
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…
The Cross and The Trinity
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, Trinity
Topics: Attributes and Character
Out of love for humankind, Scripture tells us, Jesus emptied himself of his divine prerogatives, set aside the glory he had with the Father from before the foundation of the world, became a human being…
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 and Experiencing God
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Revelation, The Holy Spirit
Topics: Attributes and Character
The way we view God is in part conditioned by the state of our minds and hearts. Origen put it this way: “[T]he Holy Spirit addresses our nature in a manner appropriate to its imperfection,…
Can You Believe It?
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Jesus, Truth
Topics: Attributes and Character
The origin of human sin and the world’s oppression goes back to a deceptive, untruthful picture of God given to Eve by Satan. Jesus came, in part, to finally reveal the absolute truth about God….
The Twist that Reframes the Whole Story
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Jesus
Topics: Attributes and Character
Many people read the Bible as if everything written within it is equally authoritative. As a result, people read it along the lines of a cookbook. Like a recipe, the meaning and authority of a…
Redefining Transcendence
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Revelation
Topics: Attributes and Character
God is transcendent, which basically means that God is “other” than creation. The problem is that classical thinking about God’s “otherness” has been limited to what reason can discern about God. As a result, all…
Redefining Omnipotence
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Love, Omnipotence
Topics: Attributes and Character
Traditional, classical theology has equated divine power with God causing and determining all things to exist. God supposedly acts on everything as their cause, but nothing in any way acts on him. Yet, these assumptions…
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…