Readings of Paul influenced by the work of Karl Barth – or, at least, supposedly Barthian readings of Paul – have recently been taken up by a number of interpreters. One recurring characteristic of such self-proclaimed Barthian readings is to construe Paul’s gospel as radically, purely, and thoroughgoingly objective: completely undetermined, unaffected, and untouched by human processes or actions. In this interpretation, the objective character of the gospel hangs on the exclusion of subjective realities...
Ten years ago this month (September) I first became a Calvinist. I’ve never discussed here at The Two Cities how I became a Calvinist so I thought I’d use this anniversary of sorts as an opportunity to reflect on that. It all happened at the beginning of my Sophomore year at BIOLA University. During my first year of college I was undeclared without any clear passion for any particular subject of study. The only thing I was...
I want to say a few words about every theologian’s favorite acronym—TULIP. I don’t intend to say anything substantially new here. I also don’t mean to ostracize anyone who gets an allergic reaction when Calvinism is mentioned; if you think I’m one of those scary Calvinists who brews his own beer, has a big burly beard, and has multiple days worth of John Piper sermons on his iPod, well. . . that’s all true! But I...
I’m nearly halfway through the first college course I’ve ever taught at Lincoln Christian University (the Las Vegas extension). Since the course is on Galatians, which is what my PhD research at the University of St Andrews under Prof. N. T. Wright focuses on, I thought it might be a good idea to provide a few comments on the commentaries I find most helpful for those of our readers who are planning on working through...
Without knowing it, I grew up believing in a quasi-Wesleyan form of Arminianism. When I went to college, and was exposed to Calvinism for the first time, I was very hostile. I was undoubtedly the most obnoxious Arminian on campus my freshman year. Eventually I came to a point where I decided to be open-minded. That alone was a big step for me. So during my sophomore year of college I decided to study the...
What if I told you that you could saturate your mind with profound truths about the glory of God and the sufficiency and infallibility of the Bible through music? What if I told you that it was hip hop music? Would your embers of interest be further kindled if I told you that words and phrases like theopneustus (God-breathed), tota scriptura (all of scripture), and sola scriptura (scripture alone) could all be found in one...
Shortly before graduating from Biola University in the Spring of 2008, I took a job working as a part-time pastor at a new, predominantly Korean, inner city church plant in Los Angeles. A couple months into the job, I found myself in Buffalo, New York for our denominations’ annual conference. I still cannot forget a conversation that I had—along with two other colleagues—with a certain Army chaplain. Talk about a collision of Christian worldviews. Here...
Good thinking necessarily requires pulling various strands of thought into something of a poetic amalgamation. Though it is doubtful that my writing could be described as poetic (I’ll leave that to other authors on this blog), I would at least like to take a stab at the amalgamation part. For those new to the two-kingdoms theological grid, the discussion of natural law and the two-kingdoms may seem incongruent. What do these two stands of thought...
Over the past couple weeks I have attempted to lay a framework for the one-kingdom v. two-kingdom debate. I have done this by providing a brief sketch of crucial post reformation thinkers on the issue such as Abraham Kuyper and the later neo-Calvinists. Here we saw that while Kuyper was nowhere near an outright departure from earlier Reformed thinking, he did start to make some subtle changes to the two-kingdom framework that would later become...
Upon John Dunne’s request, I am going to write something relating Romans 13 and civil disobedience. This post does not represent my thinking on the matter but rather gives a historical perspective to the problem with hopes that a later post, reflecting my thoughts, will bring about thought provoking and engaging conversation. I will quickly give an overview of John Calvin’s resistance theory and how certain historical events forced his most loyal and fervent follows...
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