Category: Theology: Discussion of Systematic Truths

What is Biblicism?

If you’re that mythical “ordinary” evangelical Christian, biblicism isn’t the sort of word you hear much in normal conversation. So if I were to guess how most of the evangelicals I grew up with would react naïvely to the concept of biblicism, I would guess that their initial reactions to the term would have positive connotations. On further reflection, I would point out that people are either going to react to the Bible or –ism parts of biblicism. As we react to the Bible part, we might guess that biblicism is a positive thing; as we react to the -ism part, we might guess it is negative.

For some reason, I believe this term has made a significant resurgence in evangelical discourse over about the past five years. I believe properly discussing the definition of that term would be helpful. To that end, what I propose is that biblicism should not really be definitely described, because different people use the term in different ways, but rather the term should be viewed as referring to a spectrum of attitudes and instincts, not a methodology or ideology per se, but rather as an informal aggregation of phenomena.

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Why Can We Say That the Church Is Our Mother?

or, Who Is the Seed of the Woman?

The third century North African church father Cyprian, who served as bishop of Carthage (in modern day Tunisia), made major theological contributions to topics like church unity, the doctrine of apostolic succession, and the sin of schism. One of his most famous quotes is the line “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.” While I believe that that this sentiment has been well preserved in some traditions, for example the Roman Catholic tradition, I think on the other hand that it sounds completely foreign if not heretical to American evangelical sensibilities. Perhaps this would be for no reason other than that most of us couldn’t think of a place in the Bible that explicitly says this. Can this proposition be sustained biblically? I argue, yes, it indeed can be.

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Where is God’s Simplicity in the Bible?

The simplicity of God is probably not a perfection you heard about much growing up in Sunday School. Discussions of God’s simplicity can quickly get rather abstract and technical. Indeed, whereas most attributes of God mentioned in Sunday School are usually apparently positive, simplicity might seem to be suggesting something negative about God–how could God not be complex? Isn’t complexity in some way better than simplicity? Isn’t the real world messy and complicated?

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Transcendence, Immanence, Theodicy, and Satire

Theologians in speaking of God can speak of his transcendence and his immanence. The idea that God is transcendent refers to his otherness, his removal from creation; it refers to ideas like a creator-creature distinction or God as outside the universe. God’s immanence on the other hand refers to his nearness, his participation in some sense of all things in creation. The Bible famously portrays God using both these sorts of paradigms, even at the very beginning. Creation as described in Genesis 1 has the tone of transcendence–God speaks and creation comes into being. Creation as described in Genesis 2 has the tone of immanence–God plants a garden and sculpts man from the dust. Many theological errors can spring from a lack of balance between these two ideas.

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God’s Self-Revelation to Moses

This post is intended to correct an error. That error is the interpretation of Exodus 34:6–7, a passage which a recent blog post used as evidence that the Bible “instructs us to worship [God] in the fullness of his attributes—not merely through the prism of one or two favorites.” What is extremely strange about this claim is that Exodus 34:6–7 says no such thing; in fact, it presents God in what could essentially be described as “the prism of one or two key perfections.”

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The Body of Christ, Election, and Disability

As an employee of Joni and Friends and a Sunday School teacher for my church’s disability ministry, I’m regularly around Christian disability ministry and people affected by disability. One of the most encouraging things about disability ministry is that the people I’m around who believe in disability ministry believe in the importance of the church. In particular, we cling to the truth that the church is the body of Christ, and as the analogy Paul lays out in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 shows, the body of Christ is composed of members–each needed by the others. Or in other words, the church needs people with disabilities!

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The Trinity, Personhood, and Identity

What is a person? Could you actually give a definition of “person?” Is this just a simple idea that I’m about to make complicated for you with some philosophical follow up questions, or is there something more? The dictionary may define a person as something like “a human being as regarded as an individual.” But if you think about it, this doesn’t tell you much about the nature of personhood, and as a result this definition leaves you unable to explain basic truths that Christians believe.

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Some Thoughts on the Definition of Biblical Theology

In recent years biblical theology has become increasingly popular in Christian circles. That is not to say that “the truths of the Bible” or “biblical doctrines” were unpopular and are now becoming popular, or that there has been any particular revival in the church, but rather that a certain way of doing theology is becoming more popular in pulpits, in the Christian blogosphere, and in the academy. Perhaps because of its recent growth into the limelight, many people seem confused about the definition of biblical theology, and this confusion muddies theological discussion. The cause of this is a tendency to define biblical theology in terms of its results and findings instead of its methods.

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Of Countable Infinities and Limited Atonement

For some reason many people struggle to understand and accept the traditional doctrine of limited atonement.  Today I would like to show that people struggle with limited atonement because they have not studied mathematics.  Why they fail to accept it is beyond my powers of psychoanalysis (or rather, lack thereof).  So let’s instead focus on the mathematical illustration. Continue reading “Of Countable Infinities and Limited Atonement” →

7 Attributes of God: A Facebook Challenge

I’ve noticed there is a challenge going around on Facebook.  If you like the post of someone who is doing the challenge, you are challenged to post a statement of the following form once a day for a week:

“God is [attribute].”

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