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One of the passages that I have probably spent the most time with is the prodigal son. Given its deep familiarity, I have long argued that whereas common readings have led to some problematic theologies. Those common readings tend to make the central character/subject the prodigal son, when I believe, when placed in proper contextContinue reading “Reading The Prodigal Son From the Older Sons Perspective”

“To whitewash our deeds simply by maintaining our innocence is to defy God, who hears the cry of the guiltless.” Notice how this phrasing does not suggest that the people he is speaking to are in fact guilty. Heschel goes on to point out that one of the most compelling things about the Jewish scripturesContinue reading “What is Sin: Learning to Ask the Right Questions of This World When We Walk Out Our Front Door”

“To grasp all that God is trying to tell us in Scripture, we need to undo the Christianese. Consider (the word) glory… Although we can be misled by our Christianese to think glory is purely about heavenly splendor (or power), glory in the Bible is bound up with reputation, regard, honor”Matthew Bates (Why the Gospel)Continue reading “A Question of Glory”

Considering Pauls letter to the Romans, N.T Wright writes in his book The New Testament In Its World, “Romans gives us a vision of what Paul thought he was trying to achieve by his apostolic labours. He was not an itinerant philosopher out to make a quick profit. Nor was he selling a kind ofContinue reading “The Story of Israel, The Story of Jesus: Reflections on a Promise”

In Gail R. O’Day’s article titled I Have Called You Friends, she writes about the subject of friendship. She notes two dimensions of friendship in antiquity that can help us make sense of Jesus’ understanding of friendship—“the gift of one’s life for one’s friends and theuse of frank and open speech, (both) informed the wayContinue reading “The Command of Friendship: The Way of Jesus”

“And when now in our enlightened age, where all anthropomorphic and anthropopathic conceptions of God are deemed inappropriate, it is none the less not considered inappropriate to think of God as a judge, like an ordinary magistrate or a superior military judge…” I have a nephew who has been in university getting his degree inContinue reading “God as Judge: Questions about Anthropomorphizing”

I believe that Romans is commonly misread and misapplied due to prior allegiances to the idea of law as “works that save” and grace as “imputed righteousness”, or unmerited favor/grace. This understanding of the law versus faith/grace paradigm also lends itself to particular understandings of other terminology and ideas inherent in the text, such asContinue reading “Law, Gospel, and Misreading Romans”

In N.T. Wrights book The New Testament in His World, he writes of the process of canonization stating that “the New Testament canon was shaped and developed, in the first three centuries, because the leaders of the early church were determined to keep alive, and present afresh, the news that in Jesus the one trueContinue reading “Canonization: Liturgy in Diveristy”

I was listening to an interview with author Cole Arthur Riley on her book This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us In it she says that “the truest stories are rarely the ones that get told”. By this she means the stories we tell about ourselves, about others, and about theContinue reading “The Stories We Tell and the Narratives That Shape Us: Embodied Theology”

I was listening to an interview with new testament scholar John Dominic Crossan (titled The Other Gospels) on how it is that we understand the nature of the four Gospels and their adoption as liturgy in the life of the early church given that they emerged in a world where there were many gospels inContinue reading “The Narrative Gospels and the Importance of Story”