Bible

ICE agents shot and killed Renée Good, a US citizen and mother of three, on a Minneapolis street earlier this month. Video shows her steering away from the agent who killed her. DHS immediately labelled her a “domestic terrorist.” ICE continues to terrorize neighborhoods and abduct citizens and non-citizens alike. Meanwhile, the president launched a military strike on Venezuela without congressional approval. He’s threatening NATO allies with tariffs and won’t rule out military force to seize Greenland—explicitly because he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize. And the Epstein files he promised to release? Less than 1% have come out, with documents connecting him to Epstein mysteriously disappearing from government websites before public backlash forced their restoration. ...

A lament, for a violent world in need of peace. “Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer) ...

Tired of hearing Christians go nuclear over a verse in Revelation or a line from Genesis? Me too. We can do better. (Note: I’ve frequently failed at this myself, so consider this a reminder for me as much as for you.) Here’s how to have a theological argument without losing your cool — or your brother or sister in Christ. 1. The Problem: Why Most Theological Arguments Go Sideways Most bad theological arguments have the same ingredients: ...

“The Bible is clear…” “The Bible says…” “The Bible is for/against…” How often—especially within American evangelicalism—do these phrases become rhetorical battering rams for partisan talking points? Let’s be honest: the Bible is not a monolith. It is a library of ancient, inspired texts written across centuries, cultures, and genres. “What the Bible says” on any given topic often depends heavily on who’s reading, how they’re reading, and what they bring to the text. ...

You Can’t Follow Jesus and Hate Immigrants You can’t follow Jesus and hate immigrants. Of course, this does NOT settle every question of immigration policy! But, if you’re a follower of Jesus, consider your overall posture toward immigrants. If you call yourself a Christian, I want you to think about this seriously. What comes into your head and your heart when you think of immigrants and refugees? Fear? Anger? Disgust? ...

1 Peter 4:17 For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God? Isaiah 58:1–14 Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. ...

Help me out. I’m looking for the best, clearest, and most charitable explanations of the following three things: the biblical and theological reasons for caring about social justice and systemic racism, the unfair ways in which some have used accusations of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Cultural Marxism to sideline legitimate Christian concerns about social justice and systemic racism, and the legitimate Christian critiques of CRT and Marxism. Now, I know that there are plenty of resources out there that address each of the three items above! ...

I’m trying to parse out the relevance of Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s engagement with Scripture for making sense of the “Barth-Bonhoeffer relationship.” Specifically, I’m trying to, at the very least, add some biblical content and context to the ongoing debate over the relationship between Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s theological critiques of religion. As I put it in the “elevator pitch” for my dissertation proposal: Why does Bonhoeffer in prison, after adopting Barth’s theological critique of religion as idolatrous unbelief… ...

Perhaps it’s just the global COVID–19 pandemic, but I’ve been really discouraged about my dissertation lately. My normal reading/writing workflow has ground to a halt because (1) we are temporarily without childcare and (2) my wife, a Family Nurse Practitioner is still working full-time from the office. That leaves me home alone with our 1.5-year-old during the week and, while she is a wonderful child, she’s not really jazzed about dad sitting quietly in a corner getting some reading and writing done during the day. ...

In the ongoing debate about women’s ordination (in the Anglican realm and beyond), I keep hearing oversimplified claims from hierarchicalists (or “complementarians,” but that’s not the most helpful term in this debate) that they have the entirety of the Bible and Church tradition on their side. Therefore, we mutualists (or “egalitarians,” but that’s not the most helpful term in this debate), it is argued, have arrived at our positions for various reasons—perhaps capitulation to liberal cultural trends and hermeneutical methods—but not because we’ve read Scripture or studied the history of the Church very carefully. ...

I’m narrowing my focus to Genesis 1–3 and the Sermon on the Mount. Originally, my dissertation proposal cast a very wide net. I was going to have the following chapters: Introduction (5,000 words) Chapter 1: Creation and Fall (Genesis 1–3) (16,000 words) Chapter 2: The Prophets (16,000 words) Chapter 3: The Gospels (16,000 words) Chapter 4: The Epistle to the Romans (16,000 words) Chapter 5: Completing the Biblical Critique of Religion (16,000 words) Summary and Conclusion (5,000 words) However, after doing survey work, and spending most of the previous academic year working on Barth and Bonhoeffer’s reading of Genesis 1–3, I’ve decided to narrow my focus down to Genesis 1–3 and the Sermon on the Mount. ...

UPDATE: Here is the paper that I gave at the 2019 Karl Barth Graduate Student Colloquium at the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. INTRODUCTION: “GENTILES” = “WORLD” IS WORSE THAN “ISRAEL” = “CHURCH” On at least one level, Karl Barth’s Römerbrief reading of Romans 9–11 is supersessionist. In general, especially in the second edition, when Paul refers to “Israel” in Romans 9–11, Barth refers to the “Church.”1 He replaces Israel with the Church. That’s supersessionism, case closed. Right? Well, yes and no. It has become increasingly common to at least mitigate or nuance the charge of supersessionism against Barth’s reading of Romans 9–11. Various scholars have broadly argued that, yes, Barth’s handling of Romans 9–11 at least leaves the door open for at least a certain kind of supersessionism, but, no, he wasn’t being quite as careless with Israel as it might initially seem.2 By and large, I agree with these assessments. Barth should have said more about the actual people and history of Israel, but he wasn’t trying to merely displace Israel with the Church, as if the latter were superior and the former were forgotten. He was trying to bring Israel and the Church together in solidarity, in opposition to the arrogance of the Church. ...

I’m scheduled to give a paper on Karl Barth’s reading of Romans 9:30–10:21 in Der Römerbrief at the 2019 Barth Graduate Student Colloquium at Princeton in August. Now, of course, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to give a paper at the colloquium. However, in hindsight, I don’t know why I thought giving a paper on chapter 10 of Barth’s Römerbrief was a good idea! Granted, I don’t have to solve all of the exegetical issues (of which there are many) in Romans 9:30–10:21. I just have to make some sense of what Barth thought about the passage. ...

John Webster’s Idea Like so many others, I desperately wish that John Webster were still alive. After all, my dissertation topic owes much to his essay: “Reading the Bible: The Example of Barth and Bonhoeffer.” The essay (previously published as ‘“In the Shadow of Biblical Work:” Barth and Bonhoeffer on Reading the Bible,’and then published in Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics) begins: Two things at least are clear about the relationship of Barth and Bonhoeffer: that disentangling the history of their relation is of considerable importance for making sense of Bonhoeffer, if not of Barth; and that the disentangling is a rather delicate operation which involves some discriminating interpretation of the writings of two complex theologians. Much, for example, hangs on what we are to make of Bonhoeffer’s scattered remarks on Barth, revelation and non-religious interpretation in the prison writings, and of Barth’s puzzled response to them (87). ...

I got my dissertation proposal approved in the Spring of 2018. Working title: “Scriptural but Not Religious: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and a Biblical Critique of Religion.” Barth + Bonhoeffer + Bible + Religion. “Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Bible” is the gap/niche. But that would be too much to tackle comprehensively in a dissertation. So “religion” is designed to be the delimiter—specifically, Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s theological critiques of religion. Dissertation-wise, I didn’t make as much progress as I would’ve liked to during the 2018–19 school year. However, I became a father and I passed all my courses. So I’m counting that as a win. ...