“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:13-14, KJV) (Phil. 3:13-14, KJV) This blog has always been about sharing “constructive … Read More
My 2021 Favorites
Happy New Year, dear friends! Besides a favorite pic of my grandkids above and one of our church plant below, here are my favorite quotes from 2021 on… How We Treat People: “The Bible calls on us to develop a theological imagination within which we see the world as a community and not a collection of hostilities.” -Esau McCaulley “Condemnation, … Read More
Uncertainty and God’s Will
I’ll never forget the time our youth pastor’s wife came up to me after the Sunday morning service and said, “Pastor Greg, can you help us? We don’t know what the h*ll we’re doing!” She was referring to the profound uncertainly she and her husband both felt over what God wanted them to do vocationally and where he wanted them … Read More
Malachi’s Vision of Hope: Remember, Return, and Rest
“On the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children … Read More
Is God Male?
Most children’s catechisms answer the question, “Who is God?” with some version of the statement, “He is a spirit and has no body as we do.” A study guide commenting on the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s version of this question explains, “When we say that God is a Spirit we make clear the fact that He is distinct from all things … Read More
Arianism Remixed? On the Eternal Subordination of the Son (ESS)
Ever been canceled? Several years ago, around the time that I wrote this piece, part of the back story was associated with an email I got from a friend who didn’t like the fact that I was leaving his Christian subculture to join another: “I must inform you that your decision to affiliate with… is one which I firmly believe … Read More
What I Learned from Esau McCaulley
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows, there we hung our lyres… O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us. Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” Psalm 137:1-2,8-9, ESV What are we to … Read More
Why I Believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Part 3 of 3
“Faith, in fact, is what gives fullness to our reasoning… Though every thinking being longs for God… it is powerless… to grasp him… it discovers God through the beauty and order of things seen, using sight as a guide to what transcends sight.” Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390) One of the things I pride myself in is I can still beat … Read More
Why I Believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Part 2 of 3
“Assessing… [the historical worth of the gospels] can be done, if at all, only by the kind of painstaking historical work which I and others have attempted… I simply record it as my conviction that the four canonical gospels, broadly speaking, present a portrait of Jesus of Nazareth which is firmly grounded in real history.” N.T. Wright in Simply Christian: … Read More
Why I Believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Part 1 of 3
When I was a sophomore at Lancaster Bible College, I had the privilege of taking a philosophy class from the school’s most gifted and popular professor at the time. For reasons I won’t go into here, I’ll just call him Bob. Bob had a gift for making difficult subjects like epistemology (the study of how we know stuff) clear and … Read More