To Think God as Love

Jesus’ sexuality is a Yes to sexuality, to marriage, even though he never married, and to sexual intercourse and intimacy, even though he never engaged in these activities, and even though he was born of a virgin. How so? It is a Yes by first being a No. Let me explain. I think many of [...]

I appreciate all those who’ve responded – here and on Facebook – to my question: Why was the Christ born as a male – and not female, or intersexed, or asexual – and what, if anything, does this have to say to us about God and/or about ourselves? Now, I’m going to offer a few [...]

Christian scripture and tradition claims that Jesus was sinless (e.g., Heb 4.17). It also claims that Jesus participated to the fullest possible extent in human experience. What does it mean, then, to speak of Jesus’ sinlessness? We know that sin is not only a personal reality; it is cosmic and social, as well. Therefore, in [...]

What does it mean that God has come to us in and as a 1st century circumcised Jewish male? What, if anything, does the fact that Jesus is male – and not female – tell us about God, about ourselves? I have thoughts of course, but I want to hear your answers first.

‘The totality of [Christ's exousia] therefore sets itself forth in terms of a threefold totality: the totality of the teaching, the totality of space, the totality of time. Their totalization consists in “gathering all things (ta panta) under a single head, in Christ, all things in the heavens and on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). This recapitulation [...]

τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ the one [God] loves Jesus is the object of God’s love. And precisely as the object of the Father’s love through the Spirit, Jesus is the subject of our salvation, the one who saves us, by the Spirit, on the Father’s behalf. Jesus gives as he receives, and because his gift is exactly [...]

1. We must not narrow the understanding of ‘judgment’ to the moment of Jesus’ suffering death, or use it as a synonym for ‘punishment’. As with Jesus, God’s judgment is, first and foremost, God’s decision for us, and then, in its particular applications, God’s decisions against whatever would unmake us. This is to say that God’s wrath is an [...]

Following Rahner, et. al., Moltmann refuses the distinction between the economical and the immanent Trinity. That is, he won’t allow us to divorce God’s ‘private life’ from God’s ‘public life’. God is who God is in creating and in saving. Further, Moltmann repudiates any claim that the Father and Spirit remained hidden beyond the world [...]

In conclusion, what does all this mean for us who are trying to think and to live Christianly? Given that he is right, what is Bonhoeffer’s contribution to Christian ethical thought? In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer gives us a way to locate the self, and, thus, a way to ground morality and to make sense of [...]

A quick word about being-in-Christ, which is Bonhoeffer’s answer to the problem of conscience. Already in Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer sees that the Christian “achieves his or her essential nature only when God does not encounter the person as You, but enters into the person as I. 1 Obviously, we are to think of Galatians 2.19-20. And we are [...]

Any talk about spiritual warfare must begin with talk about Jesus. In him, we discover the enemy whom we’re fighting and God’s tactics for defeating that enemy. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Lk 4.16-21). In this claim, Jesus evokes a traditional way of speaking about Israel’s religious/political leaders -  judges, prophets, and [...]

The History of God In the beginning, there was the Word. And then, the Word-made-flesh. After that, there was the dying of the Word-made-flesh. And the being dead. In the end, there was – and ever is – the Word-made-new-flesh. This is our hope and salvation: the history of God.

“[Jesus] as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience to the Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness of the world.

“Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for him, the less he has merited it.

“What the dogmatic doctrine of the two natures termed ‘Christ’s divinity’ really means is Jesus as ‘only begotten Son’ in his exlusiveness and uniqueness. What is called ‘Christ’s humanity’ really has to do with Jesus as ‘the first-born among many brethren’. For the one person of Jesus Christ is not a matter of two metaphysically [...]