Essay / Literature

The Flowering Crown

This post was featured on Biola’s Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts’ Lent Project on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016.  The crown of the thorns is a symbol of cruelty and oppression—but a poetic one. The rightful king of creation enters his realm, only

Essay / Literature

The Chamber of Victory: Harry Potter and the Atonement, Part II

The Chamber of Secrets picks up where The Sorcerer’s Stone left off, continuing its provocative and creative exploration of salvation. There are angry demands for punishment (144; and the dismissal thereof (330)), an “heir” which will purge the school of unclean Mudblood filth (151, 224),

Essay / Education

“Learning, by Means of Important Texts, to Read” (Barth ’48)

A note here on how Karl Barth viewed his teaching in the late 1940s in Basle. Barth was deep into writing Church Dogmatics III, and as usual he was developing the voluminous text of the Dogmatics out of the four hours of lectures he was

Essay / Theology

René Girard 1923-2015

René Girard passed away November 4, 2015, to the great loss of the broader theological community. Though championed by theologians seeking alternatives to traditional views of the atonement, there is much for the evangelical community to appreciate and appropriate in this thought, particularly when it comes

Essay / Literature

An Interview with Adam Johnson on the Atonement

Adam Johnson has made it his mission to think through the atonement, to look at it from as many angles as possible, to explore and expound the glories of God’s work in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ to reconcile to himself all things.

Essay / Education

Sanctified by Grace: A Theology of Christian Life

I was surprised when they opened class in prayer. I had flown out to LA to interview for a job at Biola University, and the public display of piety took me off guard a bit. It shouldn’t have. Prayer and theological study belong together. Some

Essay / Literature

An Introduction to Karl Barth

I am an unabashed fan of Karl Barth. I often tell my students that for my money, he is the best theologian in the history of the church. Yes, I am aware that this statement communicates more about me than about him (discussions about who

Essay / Theology

Hyponymic Trinitarianism in the New Testament

You don’t expect to find a lot of trinitarian theology in texts on linguistics –at least I don’t. But there it is, nestled in (or nestle-alanded in, amiright) at the end of Stanley Porter’s new collection of essays, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies

Essay / Theology

An Interview with Unitas Fidei

Why did Jesus have to die on the cross for the redemption of the world? And which theory best explains Christ’s work on the cross: the Christus Victor Theory, the Satisfaction Theory, or the Exemplarist Theory? Dr. Adam Johnson addresses these questions and more in

Essay / Theology

Men After God’s Heart: Men’s Bible Conference 2016

Southern California friends, check this out: The Los Angeles Bible Training School is holding a conference for men on Jan 30 in Inglewood. I routinely call LABTS the best Bible Institute in Los Angeles, though I say that without meaning any disrespect to the numerous

Essay / Theology

LATC 2017: The Big Dogmatics

Breaking: The topic of the 2017 Los Angeles Theology Conference is Dogmatics, and the confirmed lineup of plenary speakers is as follows: Michael Allen Henri Blocher Katherine Sonderegger Scott Swain Kevin Vanhoozer John Webster The conference will be January 12-13 at Biola University. Save the

Essay / Theology

The Apprehensibility of the Incomprehensible God

In his classic book On the Study of Words, Richard Chenevix Trench describes some of the advantages that come from the English language’s wealth of synonyms and near-synonyms. As one of his examples, he notes the difference between the words ‘apprehend’ and ‘comprehend.’ And his