In this episode we are joined by Dr. Fellipe do Vale, who is Department Chair & Assistant Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and he’s the author of Gender as Love: A Theological Account of Human Identity, Embodied Desire, and Our Social Worlds (published by Baker Academic). Over the course of our conversation, Dr. do Vale explains how his theological approach to gender studies aims to get...
This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at my local church here in Minneapolis—Mill City Church. We’ve been reading through and preaching through the New Testament this year as a church, which in hindsight feels really appropriate in 2020. In this sermon I tried to provide a concise overview of the main issue in Galatians (Should the Gentile males in Galatia be circumcised?) and how Paul addresses it (Nope!). Summarizing a single text...
The Ideology of Love in Film We have all seen it; a film wherein a lover pursues another for the duration of the movie, creating tension and perpetuating the feeling of an unattainable partner. This is necessary for the plot and for the ideology of love to function. If the lover’s partner is obtained in one climactic scene, as they are in many films, the political ramifications are tremendous. The longing is no longer there, the...
Recently a new phenomenon has hit the Christian scene becoming a staple of most radio stations and many Sunday morning worship services, Reckless Love. No, not the Finnish Guns and Roses cover band, the worship song by Cory Asbury. This song, despite its insanely huge popularity, has taken some criticism from many high profile Christian authorities. Most recently, John Piper offered some veiled criticism of the song, implying that, even though he didn’t know the...
Christmas and the days leading up to it, otherwise known as advent, have profound implications for our everyday experience. The incarnation infuses meaning into a humanity lost in a void of meaninglessness. It has certain clear ethical implications, as well as direction for reflections on place and vocation. Lastly, it musters up an incarnational ideology where ideological darkness–the darkness that obscures true and therapeutic ideology–finds itself under threat of extinguishment via the light that was...
Photo Credit: https://www.emmys.com/events/fyc/2017/the-handmaids-tale The Handmaid’s Tale, a popular Hulu drama series, just won eight Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. The series, which is based on the book by Margaret Atwood, follows the story of Offred, a handmaid, during a time where America falls under an extreme fundamentalist “Christian” totalitarian state of Gilead. In this dystopian society, women are enslaved and some are assigned roles of “handmaids,” where they are...
Thes past few weeks have sucked. By far, I cannot remember a more emotionally draining, politically charged season. I kept looking at the news to see what would happen next; I kept checking Facebook to see what my friends and acquaintances thought about the events that have been unfolding. My heart is so burdened by the amount of ignorance, hatred, and complete lack of empathetic love I have seen at Charlottesville and online. I am...
I recently got married to Stanley Ng last August 6, and it has truly been a whirlwind. Despite the stressful prep time before the wedding, I thoroughly enjoyed our wedding day. It was an amazing and joyous day, full of tears and much laughter. Celebrating such a momentous occasion with the people we love was wonderful, and knowing that we were making such a huge commitment in the presence of such a supportive community was amazing....
This year has been a bit crazy. American politics are more than ever divided between the right and the left. Terrorism abroad and at home have people in fear and often their neighbors have become a source of that fear. Racial tensions are a powder keg of emotion and pain. It seems that there are divergent viewpoints on almost everything. In the theological world, pastors and scholars are under careful scrutiny for everything they do...
“Probably not pastoral.” I scribbled this note in the margins of Book IX of Augustine’s On the Trinity. He was in the middle of some obscure-sounding argument that the Trinity makes sense of the biblical idea that “God is love.” Because the act of love, “involves three things… a person who loves, that which is loved, and love,” we can understand that the Father loves the Son with the love who is the Holy Spirit. These...
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