Merry Christmas, everyone! Here is the introduction to the chapter on incarnation in my 2008 book Faith Lacking Understanding. The excerpt invites Christians to rediscover the magic and mystery of incarnation by way of a celebrated children’s story. In her delightful children’s classic The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Barbara Robinson tells the story of how the […]
incarnation
Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Review
Dale Tuggy and Christopher M. Date, Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Debate. Essential Christian Debates. Apollo, PA: Areopagus, 2020. As the old joke goes, after the Sunday school teacher asks, “Okay children, who left the cap off the glue?” the answer comes back in unison: “Jesus!” You get it, right? Jesus is always the […]
God Became Meat: A Devotional Reflection
I recently wrote a few devotionals for a forthcoming publication and I thought I would publish them at my blog as well. Here is the first. John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Every December, Christians around the world gather to watch the annual Christmas pageant. But for many of us, […]
Did Jesus know absolutely everything?
Don’t ever say I shy away from the hard questions. Here’s a slide from my upcoming lecture on fifth century Christology:
Human value revisited: Could divine attachment contribute to human value?
In “Human value and the atonement: A Reply to Andy Bannister” I provided a critique of Bannister’s claim that human value is “determined by what God was willing to pay for you in the life of Jesus Christ, his Son.” I noted that my fifth and final objection was decisive: “Bannister’s theory seems to have […]
11. The 59-Second Apologist: Is the incarnation a contradiction?
John 1:14 declares that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” But how can it be that the eternal, infinite divine Word became a temporal, finite human being? In this episode of the 59-Second Apologist we seek to bring some illumination to this perennial theological question. For further discussion of the account provided here, see chapter four of […]
8. A conversation on the Incarnate God with theologian Oliver Crisp
In May, 2013 I attended the Logos Conference at Notre Dame University. While there, I had an opportunity to sit down with my personal friend Oliver Crisp, Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. I got to know Oliver fourteen years ago when we were both doing PhDs at King’s College, London. Since […]
Reformed Rap comes of Age: Shai Linne on The Hypostatic Union
I am not a big fan of rap, hip hop, or any combination thereof. But I’ve long respected the work of Shai Linne. This brother backs more theology into a four minute rap song than most evangelical pastors fit into a four week sermon series. His latest single, called “The Hypostatic Union,” includes clever and theologically loaded lyrics […]
God’s suffering: Meditations on Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel escaped the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and then wrote a bestselling, critically acclaimed book describing his harrowing experiences (Night). So you might think he knows something about God and suffering. For this reason I paid close attention when Wiesel turned to address the problem of suffering in his 1995 book All Rivers Run to […]
A breathtakingly larger canvas: The Cross in cosmic perspective
In my last article I pointed out that the New Testament (Paul specifically) seems to view the atonement as having truly cosmic implications. Thomas Torrance describes the cross as a “world altar” and says it “has cosmic significance in that it claims and suborns the world for its redeeming purpose.” (Atonement: The Person and Work […]
The Nebular Incarnation Thought Experiment: Truly out of this world
Multiple Incarnations A couple weeks ago I discussed, albeit somewhat briefly, the concept of multiple incarnations according to which God the Son (or another person of the Trinity) would incarnate in multiple persons rather than just Jesus of Nazareth. The idea was taken by John Hick to apply to multiple incarnations on earth, but the way […]
Should you call out Gouranga? One-time Christian philosopher Michael Sudduth thinks so
A couple weeks ago I was checking in to “Trinities” (a great blog run by several very smart philosophers with good senses of humor) when I read an article by Dale Tuggy commenting on the conversion of Christian philosopher Michael Sudduth to … Hinduism, specifically Vaishnava Vedanta. What?!! I took Frank Beckwith’s conversion to Catholicism […]
The fallible Jesus?
The question of the knowledge (and ignorance) of Jess exploded back onto the blog this week when Andy Derksen commented the following in my article “How many wrong beliefs did Jesus have?” unless Jesus was in fact wrong about his very identity and mission(!) … whatever he actually *taught* as recorded in the gospels–including statements that have […]
Can Jesus make a better Caesar salad than my wife?
An earlier version of this article was posted at The Christian Post in 2009. Yesterday I was at the dinner table with my wife and daughter eating a tasty meal. As I crunched the crispy romaine lettuce dressed with croutons, parmesan cheese, lemon juice and the rest, I exclaimed to my daughter, “Nobody can make […]
