From Sinai to Chile to Zion: Why Visual Aids Do and Do Not Help Us See Christ in the Bible

I am not a big fan of visual aids.  So, when I preach or teach, I do not use powerpoint and rarely use other forms of multimedia to explicate the biblical text.  There is much to debate here, but as a personal conviction, I aim at–i.e. pray for and work at– letting the Word of God speak in and [...]

Book Review: The Kingdom of God

Bright, John. The Kingdom of God: The Biblical Concept and Its Meaning For the Church.  Nashville: Abingdon,1953.
If you like Graeme Goldsworthy, you will like John Bright; and if you come to John Bright’s book, The Kingdom of God, already familiar with Goldsworthy’s According to Plan, you will recognize some similar elements.  Bright unites the entire Bible along the lines [...]

Will the real Jesus please stand up?!

Today Kevin DeYoung summarized his message from this year’s Next Conference. In his message on the “Life of Christ” he includes a thought-provoking and sadly revealing list of Jesus makeovers found throughout the bulging corridors of American evangelicalism.  Some of the false Jesuses on his list include Republican Jesus, Democrat Jesus, Therapist Jesus, Starbucks Jesus, Open-Minded Jesus, Touchdown Jesus… Hippie [...]

The Trinity in Biblical Theological Perspective (2)

The Trinity in Biblical Theological Reflection: New Testament Appropriations of Old Testament Evidence 
Three NT passages that are often used to support the doctrine of the Trinity are Matthew 28:19; John 1:1-8; and 1 Corinthians 8:1-6.  They show the New Testament revelation of the Trinity–one God, three persons.  However, as will be evidenced below these [...]

The Trinity in Biblical Theological Perspective: A Mystery without mysterion

(This is an excerpt from a recent paper I wrote, “The Trinity in the Old Testament: A Present But Elusive Mystery.” It suggests that the development of the Trinity in the Bible follows a mystery-revelation pattern.)
Mystery without mysterion
In his essay entitled “Mystery and Fulfillment” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 2, D. A. Carson includes [...]

King David: The High Point of Old Testament Typology

For the last few weeks I have been considering the subject of typology and Christology in the OT, asking the question: Is there a progressive and increasing nature to the conception of typology in the Old Testament?  Looking particularly at personal types of Christ in the OT (i.e. Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, etc…), I believe that [...]

Bauckham’s Jesus and The God of Israel (pt. 2): Other Studies in NT Christology

Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Chapters 2-8
Chapter 2 was first published in Out of Egypt, volume 5 in the Scripture and Hermeneutics series, and addresses the “problems of monotheism” in recent interpretation. Bauckham spends over twenty [...]

Worship Tests Truth :: Doctrine Determines Doxology

In Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the God of Israel (2008), the British NT scholar quotes John MacIntrye to make his final appeal that the worship of Jesus in the early church signifies a first-century consensus that Jesus was God, and that the notion of Jewish monotheism included Jesus.  Though Bauckham’s presentation deals with the history of [...]

Colossians 1:24: Suffering for the Sake of the Body (pt. 2)

My Final Answer:
The “lack” that Paul’s sufferings are filling up is the representative absence of Christ’s redemptive sufferings. Let me expound: What Christ did on the cross was a singular event in space and time, yet it was for all time and for all people. The distance between the singular event and the fullness of [...]

The Bible in 3-D: Miles Van Pelt’s Biblical Theology

“From morning till evening [Paul] expounded to them, testifying of the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets (Acts 28:23).
In the last week, responsibilities at work have entailed a great amount of computer-related number crunching and data entry/processing. This is the kind [...]