Category: Blog
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Christmas Playlist 2014: Monophonic
So much Christmas music is an overproduced mess. This year for our annual Christmas mix we decided to cleanse the palate by finding a set of songs at the other end of the production spectrum. We’ve got buzzing, droning, hissing and popping. We’ve got yowling backup singers that ought to be on a different layer…
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What God Called Abraham (Lesson 2: Genesis 12)
Father Abraham had many sons, eventually. But for most of his life all he had was his wife Sarah, and his loyal servant Eleazar, and a word of mouth promise from God. For the Lord said to Abram, “Go out, away from the familiarity of your country, and far away from the network of your…
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Beginnings and Creations in the Magician’s Nephew
In October 2014, five of the faculty of the Torrey Honors Institute had a public discussion of C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew as part of Biola’s annual University Day. There was a lovely audience there, but we barely let them get a word in. Did I mention there were five of us? We were too busy…
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All the Wrong Questions (Lesson 1: Genesis 3)
In the beginning, there were two trees in the midst of the garden of Eden. There was the tree of life, and there was the tree of knowledge. They stood right there beside each other, and they obviously belonged together somehow; the LORD God put them there as a blessing in a world of blessings.…
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Interrupted Preaching
Though I wouldn’t want to change its name, the Book of Acts is really a Book of Words, and a Book of Speeches to be more precise. The reason, as G.H.R. Horsley has pointed out, is that “the Preaching is itself the subject of Acts,” that is, Luke was not just telling the story of…
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Ezekiel, “Uncommon and Eccentric?”
Scottish pastor/theologian Patrick Fairbairn (1805 – 1874) wrote an interesting discursive commentary on Ezekiel called Ezekiel and the Book of his Prophecy: An Exposition (4th ed, 1876) that I’ve peeked into a bit recently. Fairbairn’s comments on the prophet’s own personality are interesting. When I was first getting to know the Bible, I had the impression that…
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“The Lord Christ Was An Expositor”
The puritan William Greenhill (1591–1671) wrote An Exposition of the Prophet Ezekiel, an abundant commentary that runs to five volumes. As he was winding up to throw out the first pitch, he got excited thinking about the whole idea of writing an Exposition. So he started by writing about the nature of exposition, and what he…
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“Something to Do With Something Else”
Before the camera shut off, the police officer who had put the lethal choke hold on Eric Garner looked directly into the lens and explained, “this wasn’t about the fight. This had something to do with something else.” It seems he meant to obfuscate, but being an officer of the law, he spoke truer than…
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Saved by Word and Spirit: Bloesch on Salvation
Here’s a link to an article I recently published on the doctrine of salvation in the theology of Donald Bloesch: Saved by Word and Spirit: The Shape of Soteriology in Donald Bloesch’s Christian Foundations, in Midwestern Journal of Theology, Spring 2014 (13.1), 81-96. Bloesch’s system of theology, Christian Foundations, doesn’t actually have a separate volume on salvation: the…
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A Real Advent
There are two versions of this essay by Greg Peters. You may be looking for this one. According to St. Benedict of Nursia the Christian life should be a continuous Lent. And according to Sts. Wal-Mart, Target, and Starbucks the fall should be a continuous Christmas. Holiday decorations have gone up earlier this year in…
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Boersma Writes Back
On this Thanksgiving Day, we are grateful for a response from Hans Boersma to the three previous days’ blog posts (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3). Let me first express my deep appreciation to Matt and Greg for taking the initiative to engage with my books on sacramental ontology and on nouvelle théologie. I am…
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Weaving a Platonic Tapestry (Boersma pt. 3)
Part 3 of Greg Peters and Matt Jenson’s discussion of Hans Boersma’s recent project on the Nouvelle Théologie. Peters: As a sacramentalist in the Anglican tradition who finds more affinity with the (Neo-)Platonic heritage than the Aristotelian heritage, there is much in Boersma (and the NT) that excites me. Throughout much of the text I found…