16 Feb 2022

The Phoebe Problem

Messages. They’re all around us. In our technology- and logistics-saturated world, we’re constantly overwhelmed with messages. Every day, I get messages via email, text, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and TikTok. Then I go to work, where I field a few phone calls, go get the mail, and open the door for the UPS, FedEx, and Amazon drivers whom we see enough to know by name. And this is our world. We’re constantly receiving messages. In

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21 Jun 2016

Genesis 1 as a Model for Cultural Engagement

The debate about what to do with Genesis 1 is divisive. Many prominent Young Earth Creationists stake the entire truth value of the Gospel on whether or not the passage is describing a literal history, while those who identify as theistic evolutionists can be accused of playing “fast and loose” with the text. No matter what position one takes, understanding the background of this text is a pre-requisite to understanding its message. When Genesis 1

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01 Oct 2015

Gnostic Anthropology and Identity Politics

Within the general framework of contemporary identity politics – a term that I use here to refer to a synthesis between one’s personal attributes, or the intersections between said attributes, and one’s political preferences – an ancient theological debate may be resurfacing under different conceptual umbrellas. Recent scholarship has advanced an “intersectional” understanding of how race and gender interact to perpetuate discriminatory structures. Yet where the philosophy of such a movement is concerned, the two

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22 Jul 2015

Liturgy Versus Lecture PART 1: Could the Earliest Churches Have Seriously Been So Fancy and Formal?

Much of contemporary Christianity has developed a newly inflamed affection for what they believe to be a first century pattern of Christianity: abandoning all formal or structural ecclesiology for simple house churches, which is allegedly where Christianity was supposed to remain without the hierarchical clergy getting their ugly paws on it.  It is assumed that these congregations must have been similar to the informal evangelical low churches today that gather together in someone’s living room,

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