Sitemap - 2024 - Tamed Cynic

Time Will Run Out. Why the Meantime?

The Company He Keeps

Changing My Mind

Politics: A game that is played in full and vigilant awareness of its relativity

Preach Christ, or Be Silent

The Mess is Ours

God's Control+Alt+Delete

"All Saints is not the remembrance of those who have gone; All Saints is the celebration of those who are here."

The Saints are Not Our Way to Christ; Christ is Our Way to Them

Politics Tempts Us to Play God; What Sets the Saints Apart is their Readiness to Let God be God

How to Die in Paradise

And finally . . . ‘The Best High-Protein Diet’

In Persona Verbi

“Conventional Christianity is the never-living faith of those who never lived it in the first place.”

"Only the Metaphysical Can Bless Us, Never the Historical"

“The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.”

"The Saints Are Those Who Know Their Sins"

“How to Vote like Jesus”

The "Necessity" of Resurrection

The Freedom of the Prisoner of God

Christian Politics

"Jesus Christ is Not a Standard by which I Can Judge Others."

"Here, where those whom I don’t like are sitting next to me among the faithful, this is precisely where the church is."

"Weak is the Man who Allows Himself to be Pushed into a Position from which He Judges Others"

What is Church?

The Eschatology of Individuals

The Incongruous Gift is Strongly Obliging

The Preacher's Undertaking

We Cannot Take His Word about the First Being Last and the Last First as His Last Word to Us

Selling All His Stuff Would Not Have Been the Last Law

Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty

“You”

L'Chaim in the Midst of Death

The Great Divine Minus Sign

The Two Kingdoms as Gospel Correlative

One Way Love

A Posture of Perfect Hatred

God is Never an Echo

What the Therefore is There For

He Intends It to be a Word that Impinges on Our Existence

The Little Word that Turns the Cosmos

"Perfect Love" is a Person

The Beauty of the Infinite

No Honest Reading of Scripture will Permit Us to Wash God’s Hands of the Consequences of his Partisanship

A Mass of Strange Delights

Preaching Gospel as Gospel

Predestination is Not Speculative; It is Spoken

Flipping Off the Powers

Jesus Left People No Time

God is the Presupposition of Both Himself and Humanity

The Month of Elul

Luther and the Gospel: The Gospel as Sacrament

Your Yes to God Demands Your No

Low Anthropology

Creation is Incarnation

Minus Six More

Why Did the World Not Burst Into Flame at the First Pentecost?

The Church: A Guide to the People of God

The Grace of the Gospel

Jesus is the Blaze that Did Not Burn Up the Bush Before Moses in the Desert

On Not Giving Politics the Last Word

This Dove has Claws

“Our expressed opinion is an essential pole of the process of God’s decision-making”

Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right

Jesus' Breath is the Arrow of Time

When Scripture Speaks of Saving Faith, It’s Faith from Someone

"The Facts are Far Outweighed by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ"

“He for Me and I for Him”

There is No Condemnation

The Object of Faith

"We Remain at a Plateau of Horror"

All Your Sins are Free

It is Better to Risk Preaching Too Much Gospel

"I" is Dead

"While Hungering God, They Perceive that They are Creatures"

The Spirit is the Tensive Point Between the Future and Present

In the End of All Things is Their Beginning

Quite Unmystically

He Chose the Malefactor's Cross as His Throne

On the Infernalists's Free Will Defense of Eternal Hell

There Is A Spirit Afoot Who Has No Self

Luther and the Gospel: What to Look for in the Gospels

47 versus 4

Hell Yes, I Believe in Hell

Hell for some would be Hell for all.

He Has Hazarded Himself

The Gospel is the Opposite of the Hippocratic Oath

All Means All

A Few Quotes on the Allness of Salvation

Luther and the Gospel: Two Kinds of Righteousness

Grasp This...It Will Lift You Up to Heaven

If You Know Hunger

The Ten Utterances

No Adventures in Barth Tonight

We're All Incompatible

Karl Barth for Dummies

Advice to Young Pastors

Jesus Christ is the Will of God

How Does Faith Make Us Righteous?

Singing Along with Barth

Justification By Unbelief Alone

The Gospel is a Promise whose Speaker is Good on his Word.

The Gospel Always Comes Before the Law

Radical Sanctification

No One is an Enemy of God: On Romans

Paul's Big But and the Life of Faith

Something has Happened that has Changed Everything for Everyone for Always

Deliberating War

Robert Jenson's Last Interview

As He Became Christ, So We Become Christians

“I Don’t Know if God is the Devil or the Devil is God.”

Luther and the Gospel

"The Lectionary is Designed to Protect the Church from Idiot Preachers"

The Impossible Possibility

Luther and the Gospel

Grace is in the Triune Name

The Sin of Scripture Reading

Preaching is Possible Only as a Summary of the Doctrine of the Trinity

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement

Whenever Christians Use a Construction like "Christianity and Politics" They Open the Door to Every Devil

The Gospel is Jesus Happening to Us

God is in the Yes Business

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit- Mother of us all

How to Read the Good Book Well

The Passion of the Truth

It All Starts with Grace

Therefore, I Despise My Words

Paul Zahl on the Generous Genius of Jürgen Moltmann

The Problem with Salvation as Process

Historical Faith vs. Lively Faith

The "I" that A.I. is Missing

On the Brink of Heresy

How to Spot a False Gospel

Stick to Handing Over the Goods

The First Gospel

Larva Dei

Remembering Jürgen Moltmann: Part Two

God's Search History

The Grace of the Gospel

Remembering Jürgen Moltmann

God's Two Hands are Different Hands

Deprive Them of Their Pathos

The Political Correlatives to Radical Grace

On Illiberalism and Litmus Tests

Q: Are God and his love not active outside the church?

Christians Must Be Christians Inside and Outside the Church

To Know the Ten Commandments is to Know the Entire Scriptures

From Drug Trafficker to Gospel Preacher

"Renunciation of violence can never be the calling of all"

The Moral Claim in the Triune Name

The War Against the Jewish Story

Woe to the Church Who Speaks of Jesus in the Past Tense

God is Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.

Q: How has God shown his love for us?

The God of Wild Places

The Arrow of Time is Jesus’s Breath

Enjoy Your Forgiveness

What Do Our Prayers Sound Like to God?

The Fire and the Cloud: A Biblical Christology

Our Sin is Behind Us Because Christ is Before Us

The Holy Spirit as the Transfiguring Power of the Future

"What you believe about Jesus is your politics"

The Womby Tomby God

My Guncle and Me

Q: What do we mean that God is love?

Preaching as Protest against the Apophatic Silencing of God’s People

Q: Doesn’t the doctrine of predestination raise questions about God’s goodness?

Adventures in Barth: The Barmen Declaration

Where was the Risen Jesus In Between His Easter Appearances?

From You to Us

What Students Read Before They Protest

Adverbs are Spiritual Quicksand

The Iowa Preachers Project

Oprah Isn't Bringing You a Casserole

Q: Does the One-Way Love of God Necessarily Entail Predestination? A: Sorry, yes

You May Be Right

Q: Does God Suffer? A: Yes.

"Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem because if it's only a Jewish problem, it has no solution"

We’re all Eunuchs

There is No God Without You

Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism

A Sheep Without Any Verbs

An Aural Army

There is Salvation in No One Else

Easter's Afterwards

Learning the Creed with Karl Barth

Scripture's Scarlet Thread

Is a Divine Jesus a Pretend Jew?

Christians Do Not Sin

The Resurrection is Not a Solution to the Problem of Death

An Odd Body Indeed

The Power of Words

At Once Justified and a Doubter

Easter Faith is All About the Adverb

Where Did the Risen Jesus's Body God?

God Shows Up Under the Sign of his Opposite

The Gospel According to Judas

What Was Jesus Doing When He Was Dead?

In Jesus's Death, the Judas in Judas Died

Good Friday Forever Settles God's Identity

Do Not Keep Me Near the Cross

Remembering the Future

The Tomb is Not Empty; It's Full

The Father's Faithfulness to his Faithful Son

The Binding of Jesus

There is a Certain People

Meeting One Another at a Shared Text

The Devil is Too Laughable to be Taken Seriously

The Zone of Interest

What is the Gospel Meant to Do to Its Hearers?

Fear and Shamelessness

He Came Preaching the Pardon of God

A New Beatitude

Create in Me

The Bible Does Miriam Bad

9.5 Theses on Preaching

The Mess is Hers

Seriously, God is Good

The Promise at the Parting of the Waters

Longing for Auschwitz

The Sacrament of Imprisonment

Squeamish about the Bible’s Blood Speak?

Unpacking the Bible Belt Baggage of "You Must be Born Again"

Father Abraham was an Immigrant

God’s Grace in Christ isn’t Cheap

Your Future is Christ’s to Give One Another

Starting with God

Learning the Creed with Karl Barth

What Would Jesus SAY?

There is No Reward for Your Virtue

The End of Civility: Christ and Prophetic Division

Why is Jesus So PO'd?

The Justification of God

The Return of the Big Lie: Anti-Semitism is Winning

Justification is the Reverse of Predestination

Puzzle Pieces

How Does Faith Make Us Righteous?

Listen Again to the Song at the Cross

Christ’s Sinnerhood

Tragically Engaged

Just This Offering

The Uncreated Light of God has been Seen

Be Reconciled

If the Devil Won the Test, the World Would Not Be

What If Jesus HAD Made Bread from Stones?

Lenten Study with Rabbi Joseph Edelheit

Death is Not Natural

Indiscrete Zeal

The Glory of God Versus the Adversary

Choosing Rebirth Over Revenge

The Way Down the Mount of Transfiguration is Almost Always a Descent into Moralism

"Until" is an Amazing Word

Inspired Stumbling Blocks

Learning the Creed with Karl Barth

Nine Exhortations for Preachers

Pray with Your Feet

The Scandal of the Scandal of Particularity

Live with Fleming Rutledge

God Gives a Feck

A Bird With Many Branches

Learning the Creed with Karl Barth

The Darth Vader of the Hebrew Bible

Handling Hashem with Care

Christology Sunday By Sunday

As If He Had Written Them

“The Unseen But Ever-Present God”

St. Augustine's Theology of Preaching

The Problem with a Living, Loquacious God

Deus Dixit

I Know Jesus is Risen Because I've Met Him

What is Worthy of Your Finitude?

"Fishers of Men" is Better Than "Fish for People"

The Season of Theophany

“Something Impossible for Unaided Humanity”

The Boy Who Lived

The Dangerous Lure of Hot Takes

The LORD Speaks by No Other Word But Jesus

Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration

Living the (Correct) Questions

Epiphany: The Season of Glory

Because of the Bicycles

God’s Balm from Gilead

Missing By Nine Miles

Top Theology Books 2023, Radio Sermon, & Fleming Rutledge Study

Our Lady of the Hostages

The Star was their Golden Calf

On the Incarnation