Essay / Theology

"Behold Your God!" LABTS Men's Conference Saturday

This Saturday there’s a great conference for men in Los Angeles. It’s organized by the Los Angeles Bible Training School, which I believe is the best Bible Institute in Los Angeles. The conference theme is “Behold Your God!” because all the teaching will be about

Essay / Theology

LATC 2014: Advancing Trinitarian Theology

The first annual Los Angeles Theology Conference was a big success, and now we are moving forward with plans for future LATC meetings. Here are our topics for the next four years: 2014: Trinity 2015: Atonement 2016: Pneumatology 2017: Dogmatics I’ll announce more details about

Essay / Theology

Welcome to the Los Angeles Theology Conference

Here is the welcome note published in the conference program for today’s theology conference: Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Los Angeles Theology Conference, an annual gathering devoted to the discussion of major doctrines of systematic theology. Thank you for joining us in this first year, when

Essay / Theology

Form: How a Marriage is Like a Poem (Wendell Berry)

In his 1982 essay “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms,” Wendell Berry used poetry and marriage as images of each other. It was hard to tell whether the essay was mainly about poetry or mainly about marriage, because the two were mutually illuminating.

Essay / Theology

Justification by Faith in Matthew (with an Assist from Hilary)

I recently described how I read the Gospel of Matthew looking for an understanding of salvation: by keeping Paul in the back of my mind, but not letting him get in the front of my mind. I wasn’t claiming to be original, just describing and

Essay / Theology

Salvation in Matthew (with an Assist from Paul)

The Gospel of Matthew is a book about salvation. The author sets up the topic very clearly in the first chapter, in the section that provides the two names of Jesus. The angel says to Joseph (Matt 1:21) that Mary “will bear a son, and

Essay / Theology

Books Books Books at LATC Next Week

Next Thursday and Friday, Biola University will host the first annual  Los Angeles Theology Conference. There’s some bookish goodness going on at this event: All of the plenary lectures and a few of the parallel papers from the conference will be published within the year by

Essay / Theology

Nathan Chapman Kouns, Author of Arius the Libyan

Arius the Libyan: An Idyll of the Early Church (NY: Appleton, 1884) was a work of historical fiction that portrayed Arius as the real hero of the fourth century. To portray Arius as the good guy requires a complete re-imagining of what Christianity is all

Essay / Theology

Intellectual Appetite: Studious or Curious?

 Paul J. Griffith’s 2009 book Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar is a fascinating work. I’ve been reading it a little bit at a time over the past few months. When you’re reading a book that’s all about analyzing the desire to read and know things,

Essay / Theology

From Nomos to Oikonomos

The vocabulary of Ephesians is is rich in “house” and “building” words. Most of them show up in a good English translation, but there are several more in the original Greek. At some points, Paul seems almost to be punning on “house” words, or Greek

Essay / Theology

Arius the Libyan: Heretic as Hero

In 1884 the Appleton publishing company in New York released an anonymous novel with the title Arius the Libyan.  Its titular main character is the fourth-century arch-heretic Arius, who is cast as a moral example, a spiritual giant, and a tireless fighter for the simple

Essay / Theology

Stewards of the Mysteries (Ordination Sermon)

(A sermon preached Sunday, Dec 30, 2012, at Tulare Evangelical Free Church, Tulare, California) We are gathered today to ordain Dr. Jason Sexton to Christian ministry. What language shall we borrow to describe this Christian ministry? We could use the word pastor, of course, meaning