Is God Personal?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Apologetics, God, Letters from a Skeptic, Love
Topics: Attributes and Character
Hamed Saber via Compfight How can we trust that God is personally involved in our lives? Are our seemingly “small” lives significant enough for God to get involved when you consider the vastness of all…
Why Doesn’t God Make Himself Obvious?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Apologetics, Doubt, Free Will, God, Letters from a Skeptic
Topics: Attributes and Character, Hearing God, Prayer
Why is faith so difficult? Why isn’t God more obvious? Why doesn’t God come out and provide irrefutable proof that he is God so that there is no more doubt? Greg’s father raised such questions…
Molinism and Open Theism – Part II
Category: Q&A
Tags: Determinism, Molinism, Open Theism, The Great Omission
Topics: Open Theism What it is and is not, Providence, Predestination and Free Will
In the previous post on this topic I briefly outlined Molinism and then discussed “the grounding objection.” In this post I’ll first discuss another fundamental objection to Molinism and then discuss how it is overcome…
Molinism and Open Theism – Part I
Category: Q&A
Tags: Calvinism, Choice, Determinism, Free Will, God, Molinism, Open Theism
Topics: Open Theism What it is and is not, Providence, Predestination and Free Will
I’ve been asked for the umpteenth time on Twitter lately about the difference between “Molinism” and “Open Theism,” and for some reason, today seemed like a good day to begin addressing this question. I’ll do this…
Why Do Some Prayers Go Unanswered?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Is God to Blame?, Prayer
Topics: Free Will and the Future, Hearing God, Prayer, Providence, Predestination and Free Will
All of us have prayed for things and have been left wondering why God did not answer. Clearly, our prayers don’t all bring about what we ask for. It has been popular to say that…
If God Can’t Control, How Can I Trust Him?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Prayer, Problem of Evil
Topics: Open Theism, Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Question: If God can’t always answer our prayers for healing, for example (and I completely understand why—free will etc), then HOW can he promise to bring good out of the bad things that happen? Surely…
Does God Have a Dark Side?
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Father, God, God is Love, Hell, Jesus, Wrath
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cross in the Mirror
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, ReKnew Manifesto, Self-Worth
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Following Jesus, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 4: How Revelation Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, Lamb of God, Non-Violence, Revelation, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 3: How Paul’s Epistles Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Paul, Paul's Letters, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, John's Gospel, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Self-Sacrificial Love, Synoptic Gospels
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Image of Cross-Like Love: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 6
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Enemy Love, Essay, God is Love, Kingdom Living, Love
Topics: Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Why a “Christocentric” View of God is Inadequate: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 5
Category: Essays
Tags: Character of God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Love, ReKnew Manifesto
Topics: Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist” Part III
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Lamb of God, Mark Driscoll, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Revelation, Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part II
Category: Essays
Tags: Book of Revelation, Essay, Jesus, Kingdom Living, Lamb of God, Literalism, Mark Driscoll, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Sacrifice, Word of God
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part I
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Book of Revelation, Essay, Jesus, Love Your Enemies, Mark Driscoll, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Peace, Sixth Commandment
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The “Third Way”: Seeing God’s Beauty in the Depth of Scripture’s Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Non-Violence, Picture of God, Third Way
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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…
The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
“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…
The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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,…