Ethics

If you’re in the Birmingham area from March 21-22, 2014, and you’re interested in evangelical theology, please consider attending the Evangelical Theological Society’s Southeastern Regional Meeting at Beeson Divinity School! This year’s theme is “the theological interpretation of Scripture,” and the plenary speaker is Wheaton’s Daniel J. Treier (incidentally, Dr. Treier and I are both alumni of Cedarville). Furthermore, if you’re free from 5:00-5:30pm on Friday, March 21, consider swinging by room S009 to hear me present “Reconciliation and the Lack Thereof: Atonement, Ecclesiology, and the Unity of God.” The atonement and the unity of the Church are topics that I’m passionate about, and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to give my first ever conference paper. ...

As the briefest member of the Pauline corpus, the epistle to Philemon is a letter of recommendation for the sake of reconciliation in which the apostle Paul brings the gospel truth of mutual participation in the body of Christ to bear on an estranged relationship – making a delicate request of his friend Philemon to receive back a certain Onesimus into full fellowship as a brother in Christ.1 Comprehension of the passage’s contemporaneous Greco-Roman epistolary landscape facilitates a knowledgeable analysis of its constituent parts.2 Subsequently, the interpretive insights yielded by this examination facilitate an application of the letter to the contemporary Christian church. ...

Black Friday proves that the progress of (post)modernity has failed to eradicate the ills of idolatry. Lest we denizens of the “highly-developed” world think that we have left the primitive vestiges of wood, rock, and gold idolatry behind, our shopping patterns (and indeed our shopping identities as consumers) should remind us of our consumerism’s dark side — a lethal one. As I’ve put in “Reconciliation and the Lack Thereof”: “Although physical idols may not be as universally common today as they once were, invisible idols are as prevalent as ever, especially within the context of Western materialism, where money, possessions, influence, and power are the modern-day Baal.” ...

“Violence is not human destiny because the God of peace is the beginning and the end of human history… “Granted, pushing the stone of peace up the steep hill of violence … is hard. It is easier, however, than carrying one’s own cross in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah. This is what Jesus Christ asks Christians to do. Assured of God’s justice and undergirded by God’s presence, they are to break the cycle of violence by refusing to be caught in the automatism of revenge.” (Volf, E&E, 306) ...

The past week has been a great one for slipshod attacks on pacifism. First, from First Things (Stephen H. Webb) on October 15 —- “John Howard Yoder and the Violent Power of Pacifism” (emphasis added below): “Nevertheless, pacifists, at least the ones I know, can be very enthusiastic about the rightness of their cause. Since there is no rational justification for pacifism, defenders typically turn their rhetoric against their critics by casting them as stooges of the status quo. Since pacifists are against all forms of violence, anyone who disagrees with them must be in favor of violence. What this ploy misses is obvious. In a fallen world, not only is violence pervasive but it is also a toxin that, when legitimately used, can cure as well as kill. ...

INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF SCRIPTURE As the illocutionary act which testifies to the Son of God1 as the ultimate redemptive and revelatory locution of the the triune God, Scripture is used by the Spirit of God to accomplish the perlocutionary end of redemption of, in, and through the people of God.2 [Ahem, in order to understand my first paragraph, you must first be familiar with the basics of Speech Act Theory. If you’ve never heard of it before, click that link, and then come back here. It will be worth it, I promise!] ...

I highly encourage the following: 1. Read Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel. 2. Check out Tim Gombis’ insightful series of posts on The Gospel of the Kingdom, pt. 1, 2, and 3. Gombis hits the nail on the head here: Over the last several months, I’ve had several conversations about how the Gospels’ language about “the gospel” should shape how Christians conceive of the gospel. Whereas the New Testament mainly envisions a broader announcement of a larger reality, many evangelicals associate “the gospel” with a brief presentation, or information about the mechanics of an individual transaction that can secure divine forgiveness and the establishment of a personal relationship with God. ...

Update (April 2017): I’ve gone back to update/clean-up the formatting in this wonderful June 2013 guest post on the basics of inductive Bible study from my friend **Amy Elizabeth Chase Ashley,** one of the most gifted students of Scripture with whom I’ve been privileged to study. She blogs at . --- Jeremiah 29:11 When I accepted the invitation to speak at my parents’ church, I immediately started thinking about what message I would deliver. I decided to give a message on something that is very important to me after my four years at Cedarville and something I am very passionate about. I hope it will be engaging; I hope it will make you think; and I hope it will bring glory to God. If I can accomplish those three things, I will be satisfied. ...

Deuteronomy 6:1-15 (NRSV) Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. ...

Without context, words can mean anything and everything, and therefore mean nothing. It is only through the delimiting influence of context that words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs have any meaning at all. Although this seems simple enough, it is often forgotten when interpreting the Bible. Due to influences as simple as our versification of the biblical text and as complex as the historical/theological developments which have dictated how we teach and interpret the Scriptures, many interpreters (wittingly or unwittingly) ignore context when trying to ascertain the meaning of particular biblical texts. ...

(NOTE: I wrote this essay for my Senior Seminar/Capstone at Cedarville University. You can download the original undergraduate thesis PDF.) Introduction: Reconciliation and the Lack Thereof The impetus for this study is a seemingly unanswered prayer. “[I pray] that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.” (John 17:21 NET). Ever since Jesus of Nazareth first uttered these words, his followers have done what appears to be an increasingly-worse job of being one. A simple count of the various denominations and sects within Christianity at large—starting with the three prominent branches of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism—reveals the troubling truth that, although claiming to follow the same Lord, Christians around the world are often divided. In fact, it could be argued that the modus operandi throughout church history has been to pursue unity in orthodoxy through division.1 When dissenting voices arise, the group decides which option is “orthodox,” banishes the “heretics” (who often then form their own camp), and proceeds as the “pure” and “united” bride of Christ. Whether in 1054, 1517, or 2012, followers of Jesus the Messiah have often judged it more important to be correct than to be one.2 ...

The following is an attempt, written in 2012, to distill and paraphrase the main argument/message/story/logic of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Romans 1:1-17 If you don’t catch anything else from what I’m about to say, remember this: God is righteous. He is just. He is faithful. God has proven himself faithful to his promises of restoring the world, working through his faithful Son, the Messiah, to bring about both our faith in and our faithfulness to him. ...

The more I study the New Testament, I become more convinced that the unity of the Church is of utmost importance to God. What bothers me is that this has never been taught to me before. All of the things I’ve learned (specifically in my studies on Philippians, Galatians, and now Romans) about the importance of unity for the sake of the Gospel mission and the Kingdom of God have come as somewhat of a shock. ...

After reading The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited by Scot McKnight, who makes the claim that the gospel is the saving story of Jesus as Messiah, King, and Lord as the completion to the story of Israel, I started to notice some profound gospel messages in the Christmas carols we often sing during this season. I have found that several of these carols go much deeper (much more biblical) than the personal salvation “gospel” of sin-management that we often preach and sing about. What’s tragic is that, even though these carols are quite possibly the best-known Christian songs, their familiarity (and the fact that we only break them out for 1/12th of the year), makes it quite easy to ignore their substance. ...

(Note: for a more recent piece on the relationship between Church and State, see my essay: “Improvising Church and State.”) I just read an article by Kevin DeYoung at The Gospel Coalition: “Thinking Theologically About Memorial Day”. Listen to his intro: This post probably has something to make everyone unhappy. But here goes. With Memorial Day on Monday (in the U.S.) and, no doubt, a number of patriotic services scheduled for this Sunday, I want to offer a few theses on patriotism and the church. Each of these points could be substantially expanded and beg more detailed defense and explanation, but since this is a blog and not a term paper, I’ll try to keep this under 1500 words. ...