Category: Evangelical Calvinist

It’s unfortunate that, on a binary, either you are a “conservative” and thus believe that God relates to humanity as Law prior to Love; or that you are a “progressive,” and thus that God only relates to humanity as Love (which entails, that God stands with the other, so-called, in a purely affirming way—in this instance I’m thinking of so-called Gay Christianity and LGBTQ in general). And yet it is possible, and I believe, required, to think God as triune Love, and yet a God of holiness who contradicts all of our righteousnesses; whether that be left, right, or in…

There has been a resurgence, among Protestants, either towards affirming the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas (i.e., Christian-Catholic theology synthesized with Aristotelian categories) or rejecting it.[1] But even those, in the broader Reformed world who ostensibly reject it, still affirm it; insofar, that they operate with the philosophical-theological categories provided for by said Thomistic synthesis. I have, for decades now, been calling this Thomistic-Aristotelian mode of Reformed theology out. And yet, that machine will never really bust. It has tentacles reaching into the far reaches of the Christian world at this point. In the West, in particular, it has publishing…

This is no secret: I read lots of what would be considered “academic theology.” The thing is, I don’t read it to be an academic, per se. The thought occurs to me that there are many out there who read and do theology for purely academic reasons. But you don’t have to. You can read academic theology simply to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ; to be active in the sanctification process, as the Holy Spirit blows and kindles the fire of Christ’s love upon our new hearts of ‘flesh.’ It is true, some might mistake you…

Dr. David Congdon has written a new book. Published by Cambridge University Press (2024), it is titled: Who Is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture. I have some history with ole’ Congdon, particularly from back in the good old days of the blogosphere. Anyway, his new book might sound provocative; but I don’t think it does, really. Congdon, these days, rejects the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ; the bodily return of Jesus Christ; a conscious afterlife (eschatological life), so on and so forth. With these identifiable positions, what in God’s green earth qualifies someone like Congdon to…

What is dialectical theology? Barth is often referred to as a dialectical theologian; especially the earlier Barth. Some want to implicitly criticize Barth by asserting that because Barth was a dialectical theologian, he, eo ipso was a Hegelianizing theologian (i.e., putting Hegel’s dialectic to work for his theologizing). And yet, Barth is much more original than that. He was clearly a modern theologian, as is anyone who currently does theology in the 21st century. Even so, his methodology was to allow Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ to regulate his deployment of any other mechanisms he might have…

Perceptions don’t dictate the truth, per se. The truth is the truth without contingence upon our relative perceptions. Perceptions might dictate a variety of things in society writ large, but never the truth, per se. Perceptions are really and only self-projections of our dispositions and their forming pressures, as those have developed in our personal circumstances and experiences in the world. Nevertheless, we aren’t slavishly trapped within our perceptions, per se. But our only hope is to come to participate in the extra life of God; and begin to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. This way…

What a true theologian looks like; God’s theologian for the world. The theologian’s posture doing the will of the Father. Vasily Perov circa 1878 Athanasian Reformed

The “lesser of two evils”–on a slippery slope–reduces to utter chaos and travail. At some point on that slope, the Christian in particular, must step off before oblivion hits. At some point the realization must hit that within the current framework–whatever that is at the time–there must be a “redline,” which indicates that the most prudent thing to do is to jump off the slippery slope onto the solid ground of Christ’s kingdom. Canaan kept devolving, devolving, devolving, and on the logic of the “lesser of two evils” Christians would continue on with compromising, compromising, compromising, to the point that…

For some reason there are many Christians, through the centuries even, who want to make an attempt at reading Holy Scripture without reading it from its God-given context in Jesus Christ. That is to say, there are Christians who want to read the Bible from a christologically contextless frame wherein the Bible becomes a wax-nose given shape by their wits and capacity to marshal the latest reading strategies of the day. But the Bible isn’t a book like that. It isn’t open to naturalist or immanentist frames of reference. It has its whole and its parts altogether, in regard to…

Being a confessional Christian is the way. Some might read this and think I am referring to being ‘Reformed.’ But that would be mistaken; the Reformed might think they have a corner on this language, but they don’t. What I mean when I say ‘confessional’ is being a Christian in the Christian existence who lives and breathes and does theology based on the confession that Jesus is Lord. Doing theology based on the premise that God has spoken (‘Deus dixit’), and only after that fact, that reality can a genuinely Christian theology obtain. Being confessional is to live life in…