Category: Theology
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Some Books Just Aren’t Long Enough
Some books just aren’t long enough. I wasn’t more than a hundred pages into The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien when I began to dread the ending—not because it was so far away, but because it was going to come all too soon. It is a thing of beauty when that imposing doorstop…
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Gospel of Confession
Confession of sin is vital in the Christian life. It plays a powerful role in our coming to terms with ourselves and our sin, and in our attempts to reconcile ourselves with those we have wronged: ourselves, our neighbors and our God. But confession, it turns out, is far more than repentantly making our sin…
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Jesus as YHWH
A few years ago I ran across this chart that arranges Old Testament passages about God in juxtaposition to New Testament passages that use the same terminology about Christ. Check it out: It’s from a booklet called Questions for Jehovah’s Witnesses (Who Love the Truth), by William and Joan Cetnar. The radial design is eye-catching but…
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Conversation on Theology & California
Here’s a one-hour video about theology and California, or, more specifically, Theology and California, the book of essays that Jason Sexton and I edited (Ashgate, 2014). You can view it at Open Biola (which includes several video and audio options), or stream the embedded version here below. Jason and I were joined by Bob Covolo, author…
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“These Things Presuppose the Eternity of the Son of God.” -Bengel
A little treat from 18th century Lutheran scholar J.A. Bengel’s commentary on Ephesians, or rather from the Ephesians section of his wonderful Gnomon of the New Testament. Commenting on Ephesians 1:4, “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless,” Bengel says the following: These things presuppose…
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Stick to Your Proper Business
An (unsigned) editorial by R. A. Torrey in the September 1916 edition of Biola’s King’s Business shares a story about a busy pastor learning a lesson about time management. Seven resignations in one day is pretty inspirational (though in retrospect the better part of wisdom would have been knowing how to say no in the…
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Fittest Type of All Disciples: Bartholomew / Nathanael
A Bible study group at my church had a great idea for a series of lessons: studying each of the disciples. Even though I’d love to learn more about John or Peter, I asked them to let me teach one of the more obscure disciples, because I’ve got access to lots of books and I enjoy a…
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LATC16: The Voice of God in the Text of Scripture
We’ve just wrapped up the third annual Los Angeles Theology Conference. I’ll post video of the plenary talks in a few weeks, and before the year’s out, look for the book, Locating Atonement: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics, to be available from Zondervan. Next year the conference will return to Fuller Theological Seminary, and we will…
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If You Had Been There
Once upon a time –not quite “in the beginning,” but not too long after– a snake had a question. He sauntered up and posed it quite politely, and if you’d been there you’d have agreed that both his posture and his manners were impeccable. He found the Mother of All Mankind minding her own beeswax…
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“All the Prophets Proclaimed These Days”
In Acts 3, near the end of his sermon in Solomon’s Portico, Peter says that “all the prophets, as many as have spoken, from Samuel and those after him, also predicted these days” in which God would bring salvation in Christ. Old Testament scholar R. E. Clements once pointed out that this New Testament text…
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“Do Not Endeavour to Shuffle Away or Evade Those Strong Words” (Wesley)
So John Wesley was sighted last week in an “I heart Pelagius” T-shirt, and Christian Buzzfeed has the .gif. But even if you’ve already taken the clickbait, I can ‘splain. You won’t believe what happened next. In a recent blog post, Lee Gatiss quoted a snippet from John Wesley, a few words which certainly seem to…
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When He Became a Child, the Affection Came
Francis Spufford wrote not long ago of “why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense.” The great paradoxes of the faith–incarnation and crucifixion–would seem to resist any attempt to “make sense” of them. But, if one best enters these mysteries bowed low in humility and wide-eyed in wonder, one might yet discern something…