To continue in my reflections of John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus, here’s another related thought from him: A Jew did not become a Christian by coming to see God as a righteous judge and a gracious forgiving protector. The Jew believed that already, being a Jew. What it took for him or her, [...]

I have avoided this final reflection for a week or so now. I feel as though I have some final thoughts upon Caputo’s ideas in The Weakness of God but I haven’t felt that they were clear enough to put down on {the proverbial} paper. So here are my random thoughts on and quotes from [...]

{I continue my thoughts on John Caputo’s The Weakness of God which started here.} There is a certain tension for me reading Caputo’s work. I really like a lot of what he says and the certain moves he is trying to make; maybe I have more modernists tendencies than I’ve realized but there are certain [...]

I feel conflicted with my response to Caputo’s work in general and I don’t think his book The Weakness of God will be an exception to that. I find his thinking to be very fresh and enlightening. The things he has taken from Derrida and spun into the theological conversation are extremely interesting. But it [...]

There is a monster that hides in the shadows of the office or studio of every creative person. It is the voice that says, “it has already been done.” The voice of defeatism. It voices the fear of us all, giving word to the quiver of our souls, that we may actually have nothing new [...]

With the release of Brett McCracken’s Hipster Christianity, there has been a circle of buzz surrounding topic. There is a clever cliche filled survey you can take to rate your hipster-ness. Christianity Today had Brett McCracken write their cover story for their September issue of the magazine {HT here}. I haven’t read the book, but [...]

After completing N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God there is one question that is central, what exactly serves as the vindication of Jesus? He spends much ink in the second half of the book outlining what the eschatological/apocalyptic/messianic means in terms of 1st century Judaism and then how Jesus likely understood and redefined. Within [...]

It is no surprise when we read the story about the rich young ruler, Jesus tells him to sell all his possessions and follow him. We are so familiar with the story we don’t recognize the underlying narrative. Sometimes God asks us to give up what is good, even that which he has given us. [...]

One of the saddening things experienced listening to N.T. Wright lecture at Wheaton College was his poor response to the critique of not working more with the Christian tradition and other disciplines/scholars besides a narrow set of New Testament scholars. While he seemed amiable towards the other speakers at the conference (not to mention that [...]

In the middle of N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (JVG), he has a discussion about repentance, as it is in Jesus’ proclamation found in Mark 1.15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” The contemporary connotations abound rather negatively towards this word repent. It [...]