A quick blurb from Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom (Wipf and Stock, expected 2014). When we lose the complex backdrop of God’s World Renewal Plan when reading the New Testament and interpreting God’s salvation into our...
In the historical books we read the details of the tragedy of Israel. There are certainly moments of victory, but most of the developments and pivots in Israel’s story are, sadly, defeats. The book of judges depicts a tribal confederation that all...
(from Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom; Wipf & Stock, expected 2014) Another intriguing dynamic we find in the meta-narrative of Scripture is that it becomes apparent that God, as a part of his design, has created...
The Bible is a difficult book. It’s just plain hard to read and even more so, understand. Along with this, there’s some tuff stuff in the Bible. Lots of death, murder, violence, empires rising and falling, epic battles, stories of heroes and their...
I had a professor once who always talked about “belly-button theology”. To be honest, I wrote it off at first because it seemed to make childish very serious matters of theology. Thinking and talking about God (‘theology’) should not include belly...
The book of Genesis is a book of origins. In fact, the title itself, “Genesis”, is the Greek word meaning “origins”. The Hebrew title of the book of Genesis is “bereshith” (ברשית) which means “in the beginning”. We find in Genesis the origins for...
This is a short excerpt from Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom. Wipf and Stock, 2014. All rights reserved. Consider Romans 1:1–4 for a moment. This is Paul’s salutation to the churches in Rome. In this salutation, Paul does...
The book of Genesis is a book of origins. In fact, the titled itself, “Genesis” is the Greek word meaning “origins”. The Hebrew title of the book of Genesis is “bereshith” (ברשית) which means “in the beginning” (although there’s still quite a bit of...
The people of Israel, while defeated and sent to exile, maintained hope for restoration. The catalyst for hope came through both the prophets (the exilic and post-exilic Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Obadiah, and...
Jesus redefines what power is. All over the New Testament Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. In our modern context, we interpret this to be the Bible’s way to attesting to the divinity of Jesus. This case certainly can be made, but there is...