Writing about faith, theology, culture, and life.
What does it mean that God is “personal”? Roughly speaking, that he is “like us” in many ways. But for Jews and Christians, it is actually we who are like him: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). …
Continue reading “A “Maximally Personal” Understanding of the Incarnation”
Readers of the Confessions know how surprisingly relevant this ancient masterpiece is to our modern age. In the process of interleaving his intellectual development with his personal confusion and consternation over his lifestyle and relationships, Augustine speaks to many facets of human experience. Far from being a dry patristic tract, Confessions paints a picture of …
I recently finished New Testament scholar N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, one of the most thorough surveys of resurrection belief in the Jewish and Christian traditions. This academic 700+ page tome is just a fraction of Wright’s larger project of documenting the origin of Christian belief and the question of its …
Continue reading “Reflections on The Resurrection of the Son of God”
I’m currently reading The Essential Jonathan Edwards by Owen Strachan and Douglas Sweeney, a compact introduction to the great pastor-theologian’s life and teachings. I may later write about the book as a whole, but my discussion here centers around a curious description from the authors about the Northampton revival Edwards presided over. If ministers in …
Continue reading “Musings on the use of “God’s glory” in Reformed theology”
Underlying Christian discussions about the nature of salvation are philosophical assumptions about possibility and the nature of God. We often are trying to square Christian doctrines with philosophical consistency when we discuss how individuals are saved, and this is a worthwhile goal. Therefore, evaluating the philosophical worldviews we each bring to both the biblical text …
In Christian discussions about soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), the greatest impasse between Calvinists and Arminians* is what’s known as proof-texting. With respect to the Bible, this is the practice of cherry-picking isolated, often out-of-context verses and eisegeting one’s view on to them. Using proof-texting, one can claim that practically anything, however outlandish, is supported …
Continue reading “Calvinism, Arminianism and the Problem of Proof-Texting”
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