Theology

> “Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad!” So exclaimed the governor Festus on hearing Saint Paul speak. Until recently, this statement made sense to me. Studying t...

_(—This essay is a draft, undergoing feedback and revision.—)_ In 1802, William Paley famously set out the "Watchmaker Analogy", a teleological argument, or *argument from design* for the existence ...

In my previous essay, [The Resurrection is Technological][1], I explored Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15, that the resurrection is about God’s intention for humanity to reign over the cosmos. Ac...

In 1600, during Giordano Bruno's heresy trial, the inquisitors asked a question: *Did he believe Jesus' miracles were performed by magic?* It's hard for us to understand the significance of this ques...

At the Royal Wedding yesterday, there was a brief moment when everyone in attendance, including the royal couple, sang together. They were singing a melody shared by [Be Thou My Vision][0], one of the...

Perhaps no biblical story has captivated people’s imaginations like the Tower of Babel. In this story, a group of people get together to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven—from which they inten...

*This is part of a series on a [Minimum Viable Theology](http://micahredding.com/blog/series/minimum-viable-theology). The idea is to see if we can construct a minimal theological starter kit, using o...

500 years ago TODAY, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a German church, kick-starting the Protestant Reformation, and changing the course of history. 500 years later, the religious world ...

*[Published at the Huffington Post](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/59e40d37e4b09e31db975a6c)* Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a German church, kicking off ...

Here’s how salvation works in Christianity. In Christianity, love is what saves. When Jesus is asked [how to inherit eternal life](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10:25-28&version=N...

Ira Glass, in an interview on creativity, described *[the thing that no one ever tells beginners](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE)*. It’s simply this: When you start pursuing something n...

I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about scripture and doctrine. And yet, as I’ve expressed in many different ways, I believe that [love is the answer](http://micahredding.com/blog/christianit...

I love the movie Moana. And, particularly, I love [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVzDrqOmYiY)—both because it’s a great song, and because it perfectly encapsulates a deep truth about read...

I’ve heard it over and over again, when people are considering some new capabilities or technological power: > “This is just a repeat of the Serpent’s lie, *You shall be like God!*” The reference is...

I’ve recently been rediscovering how truly audacious [the biblical vision for humanity](http://micahredding.com/blog/partnership-with-god) is. According to even a cursory reading of the scriptures, hu...

I am a Christian, and part of what that means is that I am an heir of an incredibly dense and comprehensive cultural tradition. I would call it a *maximal* cultural tradition, as it has produced art, ...

Christianity is the assertion that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Of course, when we talk about *love*, all kinds of ideas come to mind, from romance to hippies to powerful feeling...

This Fall I taught a Bible class at my local church, along with Kyle Creamer, Nate Underwood, Emily Stutzman Jones (Lipscomb’s [Director of Sustainability](https://www.lipscomb.edu/sustainability)), R...

In the ancient world, leprosy was incredibly *unclean*—if you had it, you were not simply unhealthy, you were cast out of society. For you to touch anyone was to risk contaminating them. You had to li...

I have often thought about the way we define ‘death’. When is someone actually dead? At one point in time, we defined death as the point when someone’s heart stopped beating. Now, we define death a...

*This is part of a series on a [Minimum Viable Theology](http://micahredding.com/blog/series/minimum-viable-theology). The idea is to see if we can construct a minimal theological starter kit, using o...

For quite a while now, I’ve been suffering through something I might call *abstraction angst*. It’s hard to describe to those who haven’t experienced it, but you might get a little of the flavor if yo...

If you, like me, grew up in a “Bible-believing church”, one thing that might have been discussed is the question of what role women could play in church services. You might have been told, for example...

A few months ago, I gave a talk entitled “The Infinite Resurrection” at the annual conference of the [Mormon Transhumanist Association](http://transfigurism.org/). The MTA are always great hosts, and ...

The other day, I explored the story of Genesis, and its perplexing account of the corruption of mankind through [the knowledge of good and evil](http://micahredding.com/blog/the-tree-of-the-knowledge-...

Curiously, Genesis attributes the downfall of humanity to something identified only as *The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil*. This mysterious tree is the one thing in all of creation forbidden ...

The biblical story is rich and complex—and full of metaphor, symbolism, and beauty. But given its length and complexity, it’s easy to throw up our hands at the prospect of understanding it all. This ...

There’s a verse in Romans that says something like this: “All things work together for good”. I had a teacher who didn’t like that verse. He thought it was saying that all things are already good—we ...

If you’ve spent any time in the tech world, you’re probably familiar with the term “Minimum Viable Product”. The idea is that when you’re building something, it’s better to start with the most basic v...

My first article for The Huffington Post went up this week: [The Faith of the Martian](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-redding/the-faith-of-the-martian_b_9128666.html) I have a bad habit of sta...

In his book, [The Beginning of Infinity](http://amzn.to/1W6ETZN), David Deutsch argues that there are moments when something switches from being of only limited and local use, to having infinite reach...

Some of you may know that I was raised in the Churches of Christ, a small religious group that emerged from the American Restoration Movement of the early 1800s. At the time of the Restoration Moveme...

It seems to me that there are three main ways you can look at the world. **The first is _monism_**, and it holds that everything is one. God and the world and heaven and earth and you and me are all ...

Recently, I became aware that the Fourth Avenue Church of Christ hired a female preaching intern. I did not become aware of this through any direct connection with the congregation, but through a seri...

The hardest thing to believe in the New Testament isn’t that a guy rose from the dead. For the disciples, the hardest thing to believe was that they were going to come to possess the Roman Empire, and...

I’m a Christian. That means that I think that a certain set of [memes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) — memes which started in first-century Israel, and very quickly spread out into the rest of th...

Many people who use the word “orthodoxy” as a weapon, think of it as an insistence on picking the one correct answer out of many possible. I think this misses the point pretty badly. Orthodoxy isn’t t...

A few months ago I went to see the Lego Movie with my friends. It provoked a lot of thoughts. I started thinking about how we approach the raw materials of the world around us, how we think about cre...

Lately, a lot of people have been talking about embodiment. From theologians and philosophers, to environmentalists and activists, there is a lot of concern with how we think of ourselves, and our rel...

Two of the most significant articles I’ve read recently address the question of why millennials are leaving the church. First, there was this piece by Rachel Evans: [Why millennials are leaving the c...

There is a lot of negativity these days about the state of the world. There’s always been a lot of negativity, so I guess that’s not surprising. What is surprising is how this negativity persists desp...

On May 21, 2011, I was sitting in a steel-roofed building as a powerful storm pounded down outside. This is the day that Harold Camping had said the world would end. After decades of bible study, he...

The Problem of Evil is the apparent contradiction between the idea that God is infinitely loving, and the fact that he created us in a world with such intense suffering. It’s a serious problem for Ch...

The Problem of Evil contrasts three ideas: 1. Evil, suffering, and pain exist. 2. We believe that God is all powerful. 3. We believe that God is completely benevolent. For our purposes, let’s define...

As Christmas has approached, I’ve been reminded that traditional Christmas songs have embodied some of the most hopeful messages for humanity ever written. This makes sense — their subject matter dra...

I am a theist. For most people, that probably collapses into the fact that I'm a Christian. But they are separate things, and I embrace each of them for different reasons. I embrace Christianity b...

A few years ago I began to realize that the New Testament authors anticipated the second coming within their own lifetimes. This led me to a lot of study and research, and ultimately to the reluctant ...

Life is a series of pains. We don’t get to choose a pain-free life, but over time, we do get to choose to live with more interesting pains, like the pain of problem-solving, or creation, or love. Thi...

This is a response to Hank Pellissier’s essay on the [cruelty of God](http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20120501). My friend Lincoln has already written a [response](http://lincoln.metacan...

For several years now, I've argued that everything in the bible was completely fulfilled and finished almost two thousand years ago. I think I might have been wrong. My reason for the conclusion was...

In 1000 BC, in a world of slaves and warlords, where life was often *nasty, brutish, and short*, it would have been hard to imagine that humanity could ever be anything else. There was no evidence, n...

For a while, I've been trying to puzzle out the chronology of 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, and finding it incredibly difficult. But here's a little bit of what I've noticed. Hebrews 2:5-9 talks about ever...

It is very common to hear Christians define "sin" as "missing the mark". Sin then becomes a word for any kind of imperfection or flaw, for basic human fallibility itself. And it becomes very easy to ...

Once I heard someone declare that God was like an umbrella, always standing between you and all the trouble raining down. My first thought was, *then he's a pretty crappy umbrella*. What's the use o...

*This is the fourth in a series of essays on [Christianity as Anthropology](http://micahredding.com/blog/series/christianity-anthropology). Read the previous entries [here](http://micahredding.com/blo...

For the past two weeks, I've been exploring the [nature and rise of human evil](http://micahredding.com/blog/series/christianity-anthropology). We're about to move into the New Testament, but before w...

*This is the second post in a series on [Christianity as Anthropology](http://micahredding.com/blog/series/christianity-anthropology). In this, I'm sketching out in quick narrative form a synthesis of...

Most of my currently forming understanding of Christianity sees it as a confrontation with the political, systemic, and psychological forces that shaped humanity from the beginning. My understanding i...

Some comments on a [recent post](http://micahredding.com/blog/2012/02/29/morality-rational-and-how-we-shape-meaning-void) brought up the question of why humans are moral. Is it because there is a God,...

Let's talk about Adam and Eve and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Many people believe this story is about the first humans *becoming* mortal. God had warned Adam and Eve that in taking th...

I grew up arguing about the bible. Son of a preacher-man, raised in one of the most biblically-obsessed religious groups in America, I like to think that I know how to argue it well. But the toughes...

Sorry things are a little slow lately. I've been working on some big thoughts, trying to fit them together and make them dance. But in the meantime, let me share a few thoughts about good and evil. ...

I'm writing this for my atheist friends who see no reason or justification for believing in God - not to convince them, but to give them a window into my own thought processes, and an alternative to m...

In [Insurrection](http://peterrollins.net/?page_id=3440), Peter Rollins critiques the *[Deus Ex Machina](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina)*. This is the god that, in ancient Greek plays, ...

At the beginning of the 20th century, prominent religious leaders got together and formed a list of five fundamentals - the items of belief that they thought were non-negotiable elements of Christian ...

[This video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY) has been making the rounds, stirring up a lot of attention and commentary, and causing at least a few people to drop the f-word into some Chris...

Lately I've been reading [Peter Rollins](http://peterrollins.net/), and in doing so, have become very suspicious of anything that might provide a false sense of security. Like every being or creatur...

Some atheist friends of mine are [having a discussion](http://lucidlogic.blogspot.com/2012/01/homosexual-being-christians.html) about this verse in Leviticus: > If a man lies with a male as with a wo...

In [Insurrection](http://peterrollins.net/?page_id=3440), Peter Rollins critiques the way in which various religious movements attempt to experience God. One approach is the one taken by [Chick Trac...

One response I've often gotten to my beliefs is the assertion that without churches and institutions, Christianity would cease to be passed on to future generations, and cease to spread through societ...

It's very common to hear religious people talk about living in a "broken world". I may have even heard someone use that as an excuse a time or two. Certainly there are bad things in the world. People...

I'm currently reading [Peter Rollins'](http://peterrollins.net/) brilliant and incisive book "Insurrection". One of the primary ideas is that on the cross, Jesus lost everything *including God himself...

I think Christianity is hard. That's kind of a rough thing to say, and instantly brings up all kinds of objections. But it seems to be fairly clear in the gospels that Jesus doesn't expect people to...

Christianity is a platform, and platforms are measured by their generativity. For a long time, Christianity has been seen as a sort of closed box, a looped off container holding certain ideas togeth...

1 Corinthians 11 is one of the most interesting statements about female equality in the scriptures. Certainly, it's not the most clear. Nor is it the most profound - and yet, because it exposes the fa...

The relationship between science and religion has been discussed and debated for a long time now, with very little apparent progress in many quarters. I love science. I admire the genius of the scien...

Belief in God amounts to a perception that the universe is bending towards *good*. Good is winning out, complexity is increasing, beauty is spreading. If you accept that, then the lines of our future ...

The first chapter of the gospel of John famously connects Jesus to *the Word*. I've always understood that to refer to the spoken word of God, the same word that said "Let there be light", and spoke t...

Most people frame religion as primarily an ethical phenomenon, concerned with how people behave and conduct society. I think that's incorrect. It fails to account for prevailing interest in deities an...

I used to think that maybe we could find new words, and re-express Christianity in different language. Right now, I think that idea is probably futile. Christianity without the language of fall, rede...

There's a lot of confusion about the meaning of Jesus' death. I don't mean that the average person doesn't get what the theologians are telling them - I mean that the upshot of most of the discussion ...

This morning I started thinking about a Jewish law which prohibits prostitutes from putting money into the temple treasury. I've always had a problem with this idea - after all, why should you avoid d...

It is the middle of the 1st century, near downtown Corinth, just after dark on a Saturday evening. People are strolling towards the Miller's house. The Millers are a lower-level wealthy family, so th...

These are two things I wrote on Twitter earlier today. Thought I would archive them here as well. I'm a conservative in this respect: I think the scriptures give us an inside look at a moment in hist...

There are many things I do not understand about the New Testament, and the mentality behind what the New Testament authors wrote. But I think I understand this. In Jesus, God was declaring the sins ...

In 325 AD, Christianity sold its soul to Constantine and the Roman Empire. The most peaceful movement in world history beat their plows into swords, and their pruning hooks into knives. And so began t...

As I've hinted in my previous posts (1, 2), I think God means that there is progress and growth for infinity, that our efforts and actions reverberate down through eternity, and that there are always ...

In my previous post, I outlined what I think reality must be like in order for human hope to persist. Now I want to examine how that looked in the first century. The New Testament scriptures begin w...

Biblically speaking, Jesus' triumph, his victory over the forces mounted against him, and the completion of his own internal struggle, was on the cross. Dying, he conquered. His crucifixion was his ex...

Awhile ago, I watched a movie about the author of "Conversations with God". The author and main character, Neal Donald Walsh, claims to have heard from God over an extended period of time. In these co...

I want to make it clear that when I talk about "God", I don't know exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, I don't want to overstate things here. I don't want you to hear something I'm not saying. "I...

People throughout the scriptures receive a call - a mission that infuses their life with purpose, and compels them through danger, sacrifice, and doubt to reach the ends to which they have been driven...

There are a variety of views on homosexuality, and that's the truth. To be rough and general, three of these perspectives are: 1) Being gay is an abomination2) I don't necessarily think that homosexu...

There is a lot of confusion about what exactly Jesus teaches us to be. Many people on TV would suggest that Jesus came to teach us how to be happy. There is a lot of validity to that thought, but some...

Science fiction has been defined as story in which the environment is a character. I just watched Avatar the other day, and it fits the definition both technically, and in a deeper sense. The movie A...

In the first century, Jesus of Nazareth walked into history and left an impact that reverberated throughout the world. No one before had left such a mark. In the wake of his short, amazing life, an su...

Think about this.Jesus went around forgiving people, and claiming the authority to forgive sins. Further, he freely offered this forgiveness, without requiring anything of the people who sought him.Bu...

I'm not going to use this post to critique literal readings of the Bible. Instead, I want to paraphrase The Princess Bride, and point out: "I don't think that word means what you think it means".A lon...

I've just finished writing up an article about why I believe the Second Coming has already happened. It's relatively short, far from comprehensive, and is only an attempt to look at the basics. Essent...

If our task is discover the story which makes sense of all the Bible's complexity, we need an idea of where to start. The Bible is complex, and understanding the big picture is hard. And as a result, ...

Logic There is only one domain of human knowledge that trades in absolute certainty, and that is Propositional Logic. For that very reason, a lot of our traditions have approached the Bible as if it...

This is from my personal adventure blog. It deals with an alternate approach to how Christianity plays in public today. I call that approach embedded Christianity.This weekend I was asked for the tho...

This weekend I was asked for the thousandth time if my band is a "Christian band". It's a tricky question - with many ramifications on either side. If I say, "Yes, we are a Christian band", then I p...

When I was growing up, the church I was part of was offended by Christian music. According to the argument, worship only occurred in the church, without the use of instruments. Therefore, any music th...

Ever since I started thinking about the second coming of Jesus, this dumb title has been stuck in my head. So I'm running with it. I believe that the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesu...

CONCLUSION That's my viewpoint. I've established that Hades and Sheol and Tartarus were places for the dead to wait for judgment. I've established that Hades is only temporary, and so the Rich man's...

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE The lens through which I would naturally view the bible, and the lens through which the original audience viewed the bible, are very different. We have statements like "Mel...

WEEPING AND GNASHING, or WHO TURNED THE LIGHTS OUT? Matthew 8:11-12 (also Mt 22:13; Mt 25:30; see Mt 13:42,50; Mt 24:51 and Luke 13:28) 11 "I say to you that many will come from east and west, and re...

GEHENNA Gehenna is the greek word for the Valley of Hinnom, a burning rubbish pit outside of Jerusalem. It was used to burn up trash and refuse. Jesus uses the metaphor of Gehenna to talk about the h...

The Scriptures Let's take a quick but complete look at the scriptures that people use to prove hell. Since translations sometimes like to blur the distinctions between the words the original writers ...

There is no hell. Period. The bible never once mentions it. It's simply not there. Instead, we have clear indications of what DOES exist, and it's not at all like hell. Now, by "hell", I mean the id...

I first watched I'm Not There at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville. It's a film based on the many lives of Bob Dylan, who is played by six different characters, including Kate Blanchett. It's not your...

God does not belong to anyone.The merchants of God try to sell him, putting "half price!" and "deep discount!" stickers on him, wrapping ribbons and bows around his little box.But he is not theirs to ...

I like proofs.I find beauty in elegant mathematical facts, strung together to establish surprising truths with rock-hard precision.But as I've gotten older, I've reluctantly realized that bible study ...

I read an article the other day which was intent on drawing the battle lines across our culture.It stated that there were two views of Jesus in common circulation: the view that Jesus is God, and the ...

In response to my post on The Problem of Evil, some atheists over at Way of The Mind have been discussing the issue. The relevant argument they've been making is that my reasoning means that there are...

"Bob isn't the man he used to be.""You aren't the same person I fell inlove with.""What happened to that little girl I used to hold on my knee?"Every day, we become a different person than we were the...

It's been a few days since I published my answer to The Problem of Evil, and I've gotten some interesting responses. I didn't realize when I set out to write it how much it would affect me. Thanks to ...

If the multiverse, with the collection of all possible histories, really does exist, what does that mean for the Problem of Evil? Why does that solve it, or tell us anything about it?At first glance, ...

In the previous post, I've tried to establish that the given answers to the Problem of Evil are not only incorrect, but they almost always lead us towards dangerous philosophies that directly oppose t...

Continuing the thoughts processes brought to the forefront by my recent read of "The Physics of Christianity", I would like to look at how to solve the Problem of Evil with modern physics.The Problem ...

Pedro, over at Way of The Mind (an atheist blog) gave a very insightful post about "awe". His perspective is that religion could have seized upon the advance of science to display an even more immense...

I was considering today how much God has changed the world.Consider the fact that today we have a significant minority of people who feel that capital punishment is WRONG, and feel strongly about it. ...

In John 1, we are told, God tells how he used Jesus to create the world. But, why does Genesis not mention this? That is what I always wondered, until just recently. You see, John 1 doesn't actually ...

People talk about God having a plan for your life. I think differently. If God planned everyone's life in advance, why should we bother to live it? Even more, if God planned everyone's life in advance...

I was doing a little browsing and stumbled onto some weird facts that, to me anyway, were rather shocking.1) The Nephilim. In Genesis 6, these are the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters...

Revelation is a very complex book. Most of it is written in symbols only familiar to those steeped in the Jewish religion. And the number of bizarre interpretations of it available make the book very ...

In 1Corinthians 10, Paul compared the post-Exodus Israelites to the first century Christians. His point was to warn of the danger of falling away, and to warn that falling away was a present reality, ...

A guy named Sig talks about why we don't need hierarchies in companies, and a friend of his challenged him with a few objections...* Hierarchies are the natural, programmed organizational model hard-...

The New Testament says, "the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ..." When Jesus came, the law was no longer needed. It was fulfilled. Many Christians today believe that Christianity is a set ...