Category: Blog

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 we take up the central doctrine of christology. A theology conference…

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 recommending the kind of Bible reading that I think is…

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 you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save…

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 Zondervan, in a volume bearing the same title as the…

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 about, and that’s what Arius the Libyan attempted. Read my…

 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, you think twice about gobbling down chapter after chapter. So…

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 words made from the oik-  root. For example, a key…

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 gospel of the primitive church versus the sinister schemes of…

(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 shepherd. That is a very biblical image, drawing our attention…

Theology students of all sorts, and especially those of you within driving range of southern California, it’s time to register for the first annual Los Angeles Theology Conference (Jan 17 & 18). It’s two days on the doctrine of christology from some of the top scholars in the field: Crisp, Hunsinger, Leithart, Sonderegger, Torrance. And…

The new issue of Biola Magazine has a sidebar article about the upcoming Los Angeles Theology Conference. In our conversation, the interviewer (Amber Amaya) picked up on the theme of the incongruity of combining “Los Angeles” and “theology.” She quotes me as saying that “everyone has been really positive and very polite, but there’s kind…