Category Archives: Christology

Lent Reflections: The Servant of Gethsemane

Posted on March 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Last week my friend Joshua Toepper (www.trinitarianmission.com) and I spent the day hiking, praying, and listening to God at the Abbey of Gethsemane. The following video is a reflection from one of the statues in the woods:

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Posted in Christianity, Christology, Church Calendar, Isaiah, Jesus Christ, Lent

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Fissiparous Fundamentalism

Posted on March 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Specimen A: (The Ambiguity Guy) A promo video filmed for Rob Bell’s latest book, Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

Specimen B: The Response (The Fundamentalist Folks) to the Promo (not the book since it is not yet released):

- “Farewell Rob Bell” (referring to Bell now being ‘outside’ Christian fellowship) – John Piper

-  Jason Taylor after calling Bell an Universalist, ”Farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.”

Specimen C:  Fis-sip-a-rous, meaning, “Tending to break up into parts or break away from a main body; factious.”

Specimen D: Fundamentalism, meaning, “A strict adherence to specific set of theological doctrines typically in reaction against the theology of Modernism.”

Specimen E: Jesus’ Prayer:

John 17: 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.  17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.  18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.  19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

20 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,  21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,  23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

25 “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.  26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Conclusions?

Comments?

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Posted in Atonement, Christianity, Christology, Jesus Christ, John, Theology

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The Epiphany of Suffering

Posted on February 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

During this past week suffering and death have been ever before me: From a philosophy class I am taking on Suffering, Tragedy and the Christian Faith, to a Time article written by Rob Bell concerning him getting his call to be a pastor in the midst of severe headaches, to a guest lecturer in Chapel talking about growing up in the persecuted Church of Columbia, to filling out ACPE (Association of Clinical Pastoral Education) applications about my views of spiritual care and suffering, and last night hearing a friend’s testimony about God’s presence with him in the midst of his young wife’s death. These events bring me to today:  the Lord’s Day, Sunday, the First day, and the eschatological eighth day… and then I’m reminded of the “reason for the season”, Epiphany – Christ being revealed as God in the Gospels… in the midst of suffering.

Before the Passion of Lent and the Resurrection of Easter comes the Epiphany of the B.C. proclamation in Isaiah 53, “Surely he has borne our infirmities   and carried our diseases;  yet we accounted him stricken,  struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions,  crushed for our iniquities;  upon him was the punishment that made us whole,  and by his bruises we are healed.”

The picture  and the Isaiah 53 passage above are an attempt to articulate the reality of suffering, tragedy, sin and death in light of the reality of Jesus as LORD. It attempts to show that the cross is not only a historical event, but it is also a reality of God’s cruciform love for the world. I remember Robert Mulholland saying in class, “The Cross is not just something Jesus DID, it is a revelation of  WHO God is.” During the season of Epiphany we see Jesus transfigured before us as God: Healing diseases, exorcising demons, and raising the dead. We follow the reality of Jesus as God in Epiphany into the reality of Christ’s cruciform love revealed in the Passion of Lent.

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Posted in Christianity, Christology, Church Calendar, Epiphany, Incarnation, Isaiah, The Cross

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Luther, Christ, and Anfechtung …

Posted on September 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

I recently came across a German word used by Martin Luther, Anfechtung. Like most philological treasures, this word has no English equivalent. An Anfechtung may be,

“a trial sent by God to test man, or an assault by the Devil to destroy man. It is all the doubt, turmoil, pang, tremor, panic, despair, desolation, and desperation which invade the spirit of man.”

Just read the book of Job sometime. Luther’s biography is spotted with these episodes throughout his life. One of which happened during his first time serving mass. The early Luther went as far as to blaspheme God, because of these Anfechtung fits. Why would he love a God who is so wrathful?

It wasn’t until his doctoral studies that he came across Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why hast though forsaken me?” The very words Christ cried on the cross matched Luther’s fits of forsakenness. Luther began to see his suffering in the light of the suffering of Christ, the Man of Sorrows. Luther believed he deserved to experience Anfechtung because of his sin, impurity, and unbelief; however, why was the blameless, pure, and sinless one caused to endure the same thing episode? Luther concluded that it is precisely because Christ has ‘taken upon himself the iniquity of us all’ that he suffered in such a way on the cross.

When I number my sins, count my sorrows, and list my laments in times of Anfechtung, I can be sure that there is one who sees me completely, knows sorrow entirely, and yet, still loves endlessly… Despite Anfechtung, Christ is revealed as  Immanuel – God with us.

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Posted in Christology, Martin Luther

The Seven Spirits of Revelation

Posted on December 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

Click on the link below to view this blog due to usage of Greek fonts:

NT 666 – Seven Spirits of Revelation Project

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Posted in Christology, Exegesis, Pneumatology, Revelation, Theology

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Jesus Revealed as the Son – An Exegetical Analysis of Hebrews 2:5-9

Posted on December 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

Click the link below to read this blog (due to the Greek font).

NT 641 -Interpretive Assignment 1

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Posted in Christology, Exegesis, Hebrews

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