Category: Blog
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Deficit Spirituality
When I learned how to drive a car, my dad made sure to start me out on the most primitive contraption that was street legal. It had a manual transmission, of course, and manual everything else as well: door locks, windows, seat adjustments, and all. You dimmed the headlights by stomping a switch on the…
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Tenth Annual G. Campbell Morgan Theology Conference
Here is a chance to survey the entire scope of Christian doctrine: a brief enough summary to show the whole thing at a glance, but with enough detail to see the various parts and how they relate to each other. We’ve put the entire 2011 G. Campbell Morgan Theology Conference online at Biola’s YouTube channel.…
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Royal Duty: The King Behind the Speech
St. Joseph, spouse of the Virgin Mary and Foster-Father of Christ, has always fascinated me. He comes on the scene, plays his role, and then is never mentioned again in the gospel narratives. He is a man who is called to do one task, difficult, for sure, but one that does not win him any…
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Meet the Theologians: Basil the Great
This is a comic strip I did in 1998 introducing Basil of Caesarea, one of the Cappadocian Fathers.
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Pope Formosus, Dead and Sort of Buried
Pope Formosus (born around 816, died April 4, 896), only served for 5 years in the office of Pope, and they were troubled years. Formosus inherited an unstable political situation, and took the wrong side in the dispute between warring kings in a disintegrating Christendom. In 894, he asked King Arnulf of the Franks to…
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Elizabeth Johnson's Quest Controversy
Last week a controversial book of theology was condemned by well-established critics who cautioned the public that the book did not present Christian doctrine in an accurate, biblical, or traditional way. As news of the book’s official condemnation spread, book sales spiked. This has nothing to do with Rob Bell or Love Wins; that’s old…
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Word Balloons for Psalm 52
A quick doodle that I made during class to chart who’s talking, and to whom, in Psalm 52: “Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man?” The diagram could be cleaned up, of course, and could be improved by arranging the word balloons so that the eye naturally picks up verse 1 at the…
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Needy and Rational: Existential Reasons for Belief in God
Once you’ve encountered solid evidence for belief in God, it’s hard to settle for anything less. That is, if you think you have reasons for affirming that the Christian God is real, and that believing in him means having actual knowledge about reality, it’s hard to listen to people who say things like “I believe…
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Being Hopeful
It is tempting to think that we have it hard. That our lives are particularly difficult. That is, the sense that life is not always fair and that no matter what we do things just do not seem to get any better. As well, in this season of Lent, for those who have entered into…
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Shel Silverstein's Annunciation Day Poem?
Here is the Shel Silverstein poem entitled “Merry…” No one’s hangin’ stockin’s up, No one’s bakin’ pie, No one’s lookin’ up to see A new star in the sky. No one’s talkin’ brotherhood, No one’s givin’ gifts, And no one loves a Christmas tree On March the twenty-fifth. I mention it today just because it’s…
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Most Popular Kindle Highlights from Deep Things of God
I’m planning to be up to speed with the Kindle just about the time it’s being phased out in favor of the next big thing. Call it my new media strategy. But I certainly see the benefits of e-books, and am looking forward to a trans-Atlantic flight this summer without 30 pounds of books in…
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Bach as Theologian
I couldn’t let the 326th birthday of the great Kappelmeister go by without some short reflection on my favorite choral piece, the great St. Matthew Passion. As a devout Lutheran, Bach heavily meditated on the passion of Christ, influenced heavily by Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. For Luther, Christ as the “suffering servant” is…