Theology

Your browser does not support the audio element. (PDF: The Hope of the Holy Innocents) Today is December 28 (2014) – just the third day since Christmas – a commemoration of what is often called “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” the killing of the baby boys of Bethlehem by King Herod. The Church’s regard for this day as a feast day is quite early, going back to at least the fifth century. In the fourth century, Chromatius described these babies as the first martyrs of Christ – the first counted worthy to die on Christ’s behalf. Around the same time, St. Augustine claimed that these nameless victims, ...

Not to take away from the undeniably biblical teaching that God is almighty, but sometimes I think we lose sight of God’s love for his image-bearers when we emphasize certain “strong” portraits of God at the expense of (instead of alongside of) other “weak” portraits found in Scripture. (I put “strong” and “weak” in quotes because perhaps our definitions of strength and weakness therefore need to change!) It might make some of us uncomfortable to read about God portrayed as a jilted lover or a frustrated mother, but those portraits just might be desperately needed in a time when so many people turn away from God because they can’t understand how he can possibly be the good Lord of a world so broken and dying. ...

Karl Barth’s exegesis of Christ’s wilderness temptations isperenniallyinspiring, but particularly poignant during this season of Lent. What does it mean for Christ to be the Perfect Penitent? And how should this influence our own repentance? The following series of quotations comes from a lengthy small-print section in CD IV/1, 259-73 (§ 59 The Obedience of the Son of God; 2. The Judge Judged in Our Place). There Barth walks through the three wilderness temptations before masterfully connecting them to Christ’s experience in the Garden of Gethsemane. ...

Yesterday I posted the beginning of Karl Barth’s exegesis of Christ’s wilderness temptations. He does a masterful job of explaining how Christ was tempted, not to violate the Law or commit a moral infraction, but to abandon his role as the obedient, Perfect Penitent. Put differently, Barth clarifies that Jesus’ sinlessness is not a vague moral perfection, but rather obedience and repentance. Christ’s first temptation was to turn stones into bread, thereby using divine power as a “technical instrument” to save and maintain his own life. Today’s temptation contains an incisive critique of Christendom’s desire for influence, relevance, and power. ...

I’ve been reproducingKarl Barth’smagnificent exegesis of Christ’s wilderness temptations in Church Dogmatics IV/1. It is a particularly appropriate discussion for this season ofLent, for Jesus was not tempted to break the Law or commit a moral infraction. Instead, he was tempted to abandon his role as the Perfect Penitent. For Barth, if Christ had capitulated to any of the temptations, he would have abandoned God’s redemptive mission. Jesus Christ had to persist in penitence in order to be “the Judge Judged in Our Place” (Barth’s most concise description of the atonement proper). ...

The following essay deals with the theme of the fear of death in White Noise, the novel by Don DeLillo (affiliate link). It is better to go to a funeral than a feast. For death is the destiny of every person, and the living should take this to heart.[1] Don DeLillo’s White Noise, “a paradigm of postmodern literature,”[2] yields the kind of cognitive dissonance that makes you wonder whether the author simply missed the mark, or if you are only confused because you suffer from the postmodern condition which DeLillo adroitly analyzes. ...

Hey internet: I was recently given the chance to preach at my church, St. Peter’s Anglican, on the Second Sunday of Lent. The sermon audio is now online. If you’ve got 23 minutes to spare, give it a listen! First, here are the passages: Psalm 121 Genesis 12:1-4 Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 John 3:1-17 Then, make sure to ignore my two seconds of speech from 16:35-16:37 in the audio, I departed from my notes — which ended at “Nicodemus then fades from the narrative,” (which he does in the passage at hand) — and said that Nicodemus apparently never gets it and never shows up again. As I was quickly reminded after the service, he does appear twice more in John’s Gospel. Oops! Next time I’ll stick to my notes and not make any extemporaneous comments about minor characters without thinking through the context first. ...

If you’re interested, I’m presenting my Regional ETS paper today at 5:00pm at Beeson Divinity School, room S009. “Reconciliation and the Lack Thereof: Atonement, Ecclesiology, and the Unity of God” If you’re able to attend the presentation, that’s great! If not, you can: Read the full essay on my blog Download the complete thesis PDF Atonement theology and the unity of the Church are two areas I’m very passionate about and intend to devote further study to in the future. I’d love to hear any questions, comments, or suggestions you might have! ...

Well, judging by my blog stats for the past 48 hours — as compared with the past few months — I’d get many more views on this post if it concerned the chaos at Cedarville University! However, my schedule and blood pressure won’t allow me to devote any more time to my shameful alma mater at the moment. I’ve got a presentation at the 2014 Southeast Regional Meeting of ETS tomorrow (see my previous post, and come to my presentation at 5:00pm in room S009!), and even though Beeson Divinity School’s Spring Break is right around the corner, I’ve still got a fair share of reading to get done. ...

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. ...

Over the break between semesters at Beeson Divinity School, I’m reviewing Bruce Waltke’s The Dance Between God and Humanity: Reading the Bible Today as the People of God and Philip Goodwin’s Translating the English Bible: From Relevance to Deconstruction for Liverpool Hope University’s Theological Book Review. I’ve just finished the latter, and hope to write my review in the next day or two. However, I’d like to share the following quotes on Deconstructive Literalism and The Perfect Translation, because I find the concepts intriguing as a student of Eugene Nida’s dynamic or functional equivalence (when it comes to both NT Greek and modern Spanish), and a newcomer to relevance theory, which Goodwin uses to provide a way forward in the shadow of the KJV tradition. More on that later. In the meantime: ...

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. ...

“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) ...

Introduction: The Holy Trinity One God. Three persons. The Holy Trinity. The orthodox paradox of this Christian confession confounds many, due to its apparent contradictions, abstractions, and absence from Scripture. From Arius to Augustine and beyond, trinitarian debates have raged even among those who agree that God exists, that the Bible is true, and that it is therefore worthwhile to consider what the Bible says because it reveals the existent God. ...

(Here’s my paper on Psalm 2, submitted to Dr. M. Sydney Park in partial fulfillment of my Biblical Interpretation course here at Beeson Divinity School. Although I don’t consider this the best thing I’ve ever written, I’d love for you to check this piece out and let me know what you think, because no matter the limitations of the assignment, there’s always room for improvement. Plus, I didn’t have space to talk about all the issues whirring around in my head while writing this paper, and your constructive feedback might very well help me take my next intellectual steps. Click the title below for the .pdf version.) ...