Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors

What To Do With the Violent God of the Old Testament

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For eight years Greg has been researching for and writing the book entitled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. In it he confronts the commonly held idea that the Old Testament depictions of God behaving violently should be…

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Rethinking Transcendence

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Going back to pre-Socratic philosophers and running through the major strands of the church’s theological tradition, the conception of how God (or, in ancient Greece, “the One”) was arrived at primarily by negating the contingent…

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A Dialogue with Derek Flood Part 2: Is ALL of the Bible Inspired?

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Image by TheRevSteve via Flickr Yesterday, I offered the first part of my response to Flood’s comments regarding my review of his book. Today I’ll finish up my thoughts.  Scripture and Its Interpretation Flood confesses that he is…

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A Dialogue with Derek Flood: Is the Bible Infallible?

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I’m happy to see that Derek Flood has responded to my four part review of his book, Disarming Scripture. His response—and, I trust, this reply to his response—models how kingdom people can strongly disagree on…

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Part 4: An Alternative Cross-Centered Approach

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Image by Karl Pang via Flickr As I mentioned in Part II of this review, I am deeply appreciative of the fact that Flood grasps the centrality of enemy-loving non-violence in Jesus’ revelation of God. And…

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Does God Have a Dark Side?

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In the previous post, I argued that we ought to allow the incarnate and crucified Christ to redefine God for us rather than assume we know God ahead of time and then attempt to superimpose…

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The Cross in the Mirror

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For those who are just tuning in, we are in the midst of a series that is fleshing out the theology of The ReKnew Manifesto. So far I’ve argued that the cross is the definitive…

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The Cruciform Center Part 4: How Revelation Reveals a Cruciform God

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I’ve been arguing that, while everything Jesus did and taught revealed God, the character of the God he reveals is most perfectly expressed by his loving sacrifice on the cross.  Our theology and our reading…

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The Cruciform Center Part 3: How Paul’s Epistles Reveal a Cruciform God

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As we’ve discussed, the four Gospels point to a cruciform revelation of God (click here and here for a review), but what about the most widely read writer of the New Testament? What did the…

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The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God

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In the previous post, we looked at how the Synoptics illustrate the centrality of the cross. While the Gospel of John varies in its structure and language from the Synoptics, the cross remains at the…

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The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God

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In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim…

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The Image of Cross-Like Love: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 6

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In the previous blog I argued that God is cross-like love. In this blog I’d like to take this a step further by demonstrating why the cross alone could function as the definitive revelation of…

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Why a “Christocentric” View of God is Inadequate: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 5

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I’m currently working through a series of blogs that will flesh out the theology of the ReKnew Manifesto, and I’m starting with our picture of God, since it is the foundation of everything else. So…

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Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist” Part III

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This is the last of a three-part response to Mark Driscoll’s post, “Is God a Pacifist?” We’ve seen that, to prove that Jesus was not “a pansy or a pacifist” (meaning that Jesus was okay…

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Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part II

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 Waiting For The Word via Compfight To prove that “Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist,” Driscoll by-passes the Gospels (understandably, given what Jesus has to say about the use of violence) and instead cites…

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Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part I

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I’m sure many of you have read Mark Driscoll’s recent blog titled “Is God a Pacifist?” in which he argues against Christian pacifism. I’ve decided to address this in a series of three posts, not because I think…

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The “Third Way”: Seeing God’s Beauty in the Depth of Scripture’s Violent Portraits of God

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A publishing house recently sent me an advance copy of a book written by a well known scholar on the topic of the non-violent God revealed in Jesus, asking me to endorse it. (Publishing protocol…

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The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits

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“Only a person who is aware of the crucified Christ can properly understand Scripture.” Luther (Table Talks) In the last three posts I’ve been wrestling with how insights from Matthew Bate’s book, The Hermeneutics of…

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The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God

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In my previous post I noted that the prevalent contemporary evangelical assumption that the only legitimate meaning of a passage of Scripture is the one the author intended is a rather recent, and very secular,…

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Getting Behind the “Letter” of Violent Portraits of God

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“I will do to you what I have never done before… in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents…” Ezek. 5:9-10 In my previous post I offered a brief review…

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