The image of God is a crucial dimension in the meta-narrative. Any doctrine of salvation that does not take into account the image of God will end up out of whack. Readers are simply unable to grasp the essential human problem and God’s solution...
In the opening scene of the narrative, God creates the heavens and the earth. The theological thrust of both creation narratives (Genesis 1 and 2), is the sovereignty of God, as Creator. There are clues in the text that highlight this. One of the...
Not long ago I encountered a well-intentioned brother sporting a bright orange T-shirt. On the center of the shirt was a graphic borrowed from the popular board game Monopoly. The graphic was a Monopoly Chance card that said in bold font, “Get Out...
Why did Jesus die? Is there really a short and simple answer to this question? Can the most important event in human history really be summed up in one quick line? Think about the various kinds of answers we can come up with. We could give...
The Crucial Pillars of the New Perspective Going back to the original question, what is the gospel according to Paul? N. T. Wright has made a career out of answering this question. In his research, Wright has identified several crucial pillars that...
(This post is an excerpt from my working manuscript provisionally titled Holiness in Fresh Perspective or Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom: Holiness in Fresh Perspective. All rights reserved) For too long we have read Scripture with nineteenth-century...
(This is an excerpt from my working manuscript, Holiness in Fresh Perspective). All Rights Reserved. The New Perspective highlights the corporate people of God as a central point of reference of Paul’s theology and thought. For Paul, God’s...
Scripture is clear on the fact that the fulfillment of God’s saving mission to the world will be manifest in the establishment of the New Creation. In that New Creation, heaven and earth are joined together (as binary and complementary parts) and...
There is a high level of irony at work in the moments of Christ’s death at Calvary. To fully understand the irony, we must grasp that it is the moment of Christ painful death on the cross that Jesus’s Messiahship comes to a head. This is the moment...
It seems counter-intuitive to think of the holy life as one of rest. Most often we associate spiritual discipline and long-suffering with the way of the holy life, and indeed, the holy life demands them. John Wesley once said, Vain hope! that a...