What does the Bible mean when it says God “sent an evil spirit” on certain people?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Demons, Old Testament, Q&A, Responding to Calvinism, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Verse: 1 Samuel 16, 1 Samuel 18, Judges 9
Question: In Judges 9:23, I Samuel 16:15ff and 18:10 it is said that God sends evil spirits on people. Doesn’t this support the idea that everything Satan and demons do is under God’s sovereign control?…
How do you respond to Ephesians 1:4-5?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Q&A, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Responding to Objections
Verse: Ephesians 1
Question: Ephesians 1 refers to believers as predestined before the foundation of the world. How do you reconcile this with your view that free actions of people (like choosing to believe in Christ) can’t be…
Three Arguments Against Determinism
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Predestination, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
There was an interesting article in the NY Times yesterday by John Tierney entitled “Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s The Only Choice.” The article reviews research that suggests that everybody intuitively believes people are…
Cross Vision Study Guide
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
A companion guide to Greg’s book Cross Vision Buy on Amazon (paperback) Buy for Kindle In his revolutionary book Cross Vision, Gregory A. Boyd proposed his groundbreaking “cruciform hermeneutic,” a way for Christians to make sense…
The All-Too-Common Montage God
Category: General
Tags: Cross Vision, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Attributes and Character, Christus Victor view of Atonement
How do you picture God? It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of a believer’s mental picture of God. The intensity of your love for God will never outrun the beauty of the God you envision…
Final Thoughts on Copan’s Critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
I want to sincerely thank Paul Copan for his well-researched critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) that I’ve been responding to over the last several weeks. He exposed areas in my work that…
Did God Give Violent Laws? A Response to Paul Copan (#13)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Law, Old Testament, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in November, Paul Copan takes issue with my contention that the violent dimension of OT laws reflects God…
Does the Author of Hebrews Condone Capital Punishment? A Response to Paul Copan (#12)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Hebrews 10: 26-29
In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Paul Copan argues that several New Testament authors condone capital punishment as directly willed by God. The most challenging for my thesis, in my estimation,…
Jesus and the “Eye for an Eye” Command: A Response to Paul Copan (#10)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Enemy Love, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Attributes and Character, Biblical Interpretation
Verse: Matthew 5
As I noted in my 9th response to Paul Copan’s critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Copan argues that Jesus merely repudiated wrong applications of OT laws in his sermon on the mount,…
The Violent Vineyard Owner: A Response to Paul Copan (#8)
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgment, Non-Violence, Parables, Paul Copan, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Luke 20, Matthew 21
In my previous post I addressed two of the three parables that Paul Copan argues present God in violent ways. Today I will address the third, which is the parable of a vineyard owner with…
What About Jesus’ Violent Parables? A Response to Paul Copan (#7)
Category: General
Tags: Non-Violence, Parables, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Copan’s Argument. In Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) and Cross Vision (CV) I argue that the violent depictions of God in the OT are incompatible with the non-violent, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing God who is fully…
Who Killed Ananias and Sapphira? A Response to Paul Copan (#6)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Non-Violence, Paul Copan, Power
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Acts 5
In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Paul Copan makes a concerted effort to argue that the God revealed in Jesus Christ and witnessed to throughout the NT is not altogether non-violent….
What About the Harsh Words of Paul? A Response to Paul Copan (#4)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Love, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Attributes and Character
This post is my fourth response to a talk given by Paul Copan at the Evangelical Theological Society in November in which he raised a number of objections to Crucifixion of the Warrior God. A…
Is Longing for Justice Inconsistent with Love? A Response to Paul Copan (#3)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Justice, Love, Paul Copan
Topics: Attributes and Character
In a paper delivered at the Evangelical Theological Society in November, Paul Copan spent a good amount of time arguing that aspects of the NT conflict with the understanding of love that I espouse in…
Does Hebrews 11 Praise Violence? A Response to Paul Copan (#2)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Once or twice a week, as time allows, I will be responding to criticisms of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) that were raised by Paul Copan in a recent paper that he delivered at…
Does Paul Condone Vindictive Psalms? A Response to Paul Copan (#1)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In a recent paper delivered at the Evangelical Theological Society, Paul Copan raised a number of objections against my book, Crucifixion of the Warrior of God. This is the first of several blogs in which…
Cruciform Theology in Four Steps
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, God's Love
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
The culmination of the biblical narrative of the cross reframes everything about who God is, what it means to have faith in God, and how we read the Bible! The entire Old Testament leading up…
Does God Inflict Physical Disabilities?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Sickness, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In Exodus 4, we find Moses claiming that he could not be used by Yahweh to get the children of Israel out of Egypt because he was “slow of speech and tongue.” To this Yahweh…
Does the Lord “Devastate” the Earth?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgment
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
There is this passage that has sometimes been labeled “Isaiah’s Little Apocalypse” that proclaims how the Lord will “lay waste,” “destroy,” and “ruin” the earth. (The following builds on this previous post which identifies a…
Who Curses the Earth?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, The Fall
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
After the “fall” of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, their sin results in a five curses: on nature, on marriage, on human life, on the serpent, and on women during childbirth. Who…