Disqualified pastors and riotous children
Contrary to modern opinion, a pastor with unbelieving or debauched children is prima facie disqualified from ministry.
How God requires Christians to vote
Voting is an act of representative rulership. As such, it fundamentally represents Christ, and is subject to his clear laws. Christians therefore do not have the option of voting for anyone other than a man after God’s own heart.
Sign the Cornerstone Challenge Statement on the primacy of Christ’s rule
A foundational document of the newly-launched Repent NZ, outlining the biblical teaching on the primacy of Christ over every domain, and its implications for the relationship between Church and State.
My submission to parliament against the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2)
Posted verbatim for the encouragement and instruction of other Kiwi Christians.
The scandal of lawless and rebellious Christians
Why are so many Christians today pretending submission to God while they openly defy his authority? Why are they encouraging hatred of neighbor and approving of rebellion, while condemning other believers seeking, with fear and trembling, to submit?
It’s Good To Be A Man
In partnership with Michael Foster, I have launched a new website dedicated to developing a positive doctrine of masculinity.
But what about businesswomen?!
Women in business are not usurping the father-rule that God made men to carry; they are exercising authority in matters of production. However, it is important to remember that God designed this to happen within the context of the household, not the emaciated quasi-household that is the modern corporation.
But what about Deborah?!
Deborah is widely regarded as a feminist icon; the only woman to rule God’s people well. But close attention to the text reveals that her rulership was a shame to Israel, rather than a glory.
5 clear reasons Christians should oppose female heads of state
Once the cultural blinders are removed, the evidence of Scripture against women ruling society is difficult to ignore. There are clear teleological, a fortiori, exegetical, inductive, and missional reasons for Christians to regard the rule of women, in the words of John Knox, as monstruous.
Are women made in the image of God?
Both Genesis 1:26–28 and 5:1–2 are plain in ascribing the image of God to mankind in the plural: male and female. Men alone cannot order the world in a way that fully represents God, and women alone cannot either. Only together can they completely carry his rule into creation by both subduing and filling.
The fruits of (Radical) Two Kingdoms theology
What happens when you spend a generation insisting that God’s law is not part of God’s gospel, and that God’s gospel has nothing to do with politics—but then you still want to talk about righteousness and justice in society? You give up Moses in favor of Marx.
Works-righteousness: a square contractual peg in a round covenantal hole
In antiquity, the key distinction between contract and covenant was one of performance versus loyalty. This was widely understood and accepted; so how plausible is it that first century Judaism treated God’s covenant as a contract requiring performance, rather than as what it claimed to be—a covenant requiring personal fidelity?
Was Jesus an alpha male? Part 2: command
To properly understand intersexual dynamics, we need to ground them in human nature—which is fundamentally the image of God. This image consists in two related elements which are both encompassed by the term command.
How to improve God’s Big Picture
Vaughan Roberts’ God’s Big Picture is a video series worth watching. It rightly emphasizes kingdom as the backbone of the gospel narrative, but suffers from some typically Western blind spots that water down that narrative in unfortunate ways.
Does God need the divine council?
Many people object that since God doesn’t need anyone to help him rule in the heavenly places, therefore there is no divine council. This objection is puzzling, since it is easily repurposed to “prove” that there are also no earthly rulers either.
What is the kingdom of God? Introduction: a tale of two kingdoms
Why do the gospels represent the good news as being about the “kingdom of God”? What is this kingdom, and how does it relate to us today? In this series I trace the surprising biblical narrative of kingdom, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, starting by showing that John 3:16 is actually about God transforming man’s ruined kingdom into his own eternal one.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 10: the urgency of preaching Jesus as king of the western world
The results of the evangelical gospel are things like easy-believism, an inability to easily squash the lordship salvation controversy, moralistic therapeutic deism—and ultimately cultural relativism due to the privatization of religion. The New Testament’s cosmological gospel confronts these errors.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 9: the Great Commission as a directive to conquer
The evangelical moralistic gospel hopes less, demands less, and achieves less than the all-encompassing ambitions of the New Testament’s cosmological one. If Jesus really is ruling until he puts all his enemies under his feet, then he is creating a new nation out of all the old ones through the Great Commission—and this happens geometrically until there is nothing left for us to do.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 8: the gospel as a message of triumph
Whereas the apostles front-load the gospel with Jesus’ resurrection for worldwide kingship, evangelicals front-load it with his death for sin. Thus, whereas the New Testament’s gospel is a message about all-encompassing cosmic restoration through Jesus’ resurrection and enthronement, today’s gospel is a message about individual moral restoration through Jesus’ death and atonement.
The gospel is inherently political
The fact that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world does not imply that it is not on this world.
Is lack of healing a failing of the church to exercise authority for their king?
In response to a reader’s question, I suggest a moderate path between taking kingdom theology to humanistic extremes that presume upon God’s authority, and swinging so far the other way that we refuse to represent his authority at all.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 7: where we are now, and what we can look forward to
God’s end-game is a human kingdom that is not just restored, but glorified, with believers taking their place as new sons of God, ruling with Jesus forever.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 6: how God is retaking Adam’s kingdom from Satan
God used the collapse of his kingdom Israel, and the death of his king Jesus on a cross, to overcome sin and make the human nature itself sacred space. He thereby disarmed Satan’s claim over humanity by crowning a perfect human king in his place—and started inexorably transforming Adam’s ruined kingdom into Jesus’ restored one by dwelling in human hearts instead of in a land.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 5: when God began retaking Adam’s kingdom from Satan
Before we can understand how God is retaking Adam’s kingdom, we must first establish when he began to do it. Daniel 7 was fulfilled after Pentecost when Jesus went into heaven on a cloud and received kingship to place his enemies under his feet.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 4: a tale of two seeds
The fallout of the curse was a bitter war between the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman, within the one kingdom God had established. This culminated at Babel, where Yahweh disinherited mankind and divided them among the sons of God—taking Israel as his kingdom and giving the rest to Satan.
If Adam thought Satan was a good guy, was his transgression justified?
A response to Steve Hays, in which I challenge the assumption to begin with, and then doubt the conclusion for two other reasons anyway.
Why think the rulers of 1 Corinthians 2:8 are gods?
In which I outline two significant reasons based on the language used, and what Paul is actually talking about.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 3: what happened in Eden
Adam was created as the first human member of the divine council. The serpent was a shining, serpentine being who didn’t like Adam being given dominion of the earth instead of someone higher up…like him.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 2: the divine council
Israel, like all ancient Near Eastern peoples, conceived of the world as being governed by a cosmic bureaucracy—a bureaucracy the Bible calls the divine council. Prophets were brought into this council when they were commissioned.
What is the kingdom of God? Part 1: representation and rulership
The kingdom of God and the kingdom of man started out as the same thing, and Adam’s representation of God is mimicked in the physical world’s representation of spiritual realities.
Abortion as sacrament: why religious language is still used in a secular culture
A brief analysis of abortion in terms of Satan’s attack on the image and kingdom of God.
Is Psalm 82 metaphorical?
TL;DR: no.
A showcase of Christian hatred and secular tolerance
A continuation of an exchange on homosexuality, reposted from Facebook.
How pro-gay atheists “argue”
An illustration of what to expect from “freethinkers” if you dare to buck political correctness.
Was Jesus a guru? (Part 2)
Is there not some hubris in thinking that, when reading a translation of a text, you have picked up on something which two millennia’s worth of its most adept students failed to notice in the original languages?