I thought it would be an interesting exercise to share all of my theologically oriented Tweets from this month; so that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll start with 03/01, and go till today. I’m not going to put the time or date stamps on each of them, but I will place them in quotes. I will string them together one after the other, only using quote marks to signify a new Tweet. Here we go, starting with March 1^st.

“It’s not just that sin is irrational; more significantly, it’s that it is irrelational.” “If all one had is theological Twitter to come to a conception of God, you’d almost get the impression that God-talk is a game in a popularity contest; and that God is just a piece of the game waiting to be deployed by the game-masters.” “Sin is ultimately an absence of relationship and participation in God’s Holy and Triune life.” “I like Alter’s translation of “precept upon precept, line upon line” in Isaiah 28.9-10: “To whom will they teach knowledge and to whom will they convey lessons?—to the milk-weaned, babes pulled from the breast? For it is *filth-pilth, filth-pilth, vomit-momit, vomit-momit* …” ““Grass dries up, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” Is 40:8 Alter’s translation” “I like reading Holy Scripture with the recognition that no one is smarter or more insightful than its reality. The Bible has an autonomy in this sense, that no other book has.” ““The mystery of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ consists in the fact that the eternal Word of God chose, sanctified and assumed human nature and existence into oneness with Himself, in order thus, as very God and very man, to become the Word of reconciliation spoken by God to man. The sign of this mystery revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the miracle of His birth, that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” Karl Barth CD I/2 §15, 123” ““If dogmatics cannot regard itself and cause itself to be regarded as fundamentally Christology, it has assuredly succumbed to some alien sway and is already on the verge of losing its character as church dogmatics.” Barth CD I/2 §15, 124” “Sometimes I think the reason I like Barth so much, is because he reminds me of a modern-day Luther.” “Being vulgar and unchained doesn’t make you human (except maybe in a profane world alone); instead, the attributes of humanity are really traits like meekness, gentleness, and innocence like a dove. Traits that characterized the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world.” “One time I applied to be a high school bible teacher. I taught two sections, one for freshman (logic); and the other for seniors (whatever I wanted). The freshman class went great. The senior class laughed at me. I chose to teach on relativism and used Oprah as an example. At least I got beat out by a PhD. I almost had the job, I think.” “A succinct statement on an/enhypostasis: “it has never subsisted in itself and on the basis of its own subsistence outside the person of the Son of God, but at the very moment in which it was created, it immediately began to exist in the person of the Son of God, in which it was taken up; as a result it is not even to be thought that the human nature of Christ subsisted for a single moment before it was assumed by the Word.” Amandus Polanus cited by Barth CD I/2 §15, 154” “I think Barth operates in the ‘spirit’ of Luther and the ‘letter’ of the Reformed.” “Social media, in the main, seems to represent a self-feeding reality. Think about that.” “We’re Christians, not Magicians. We don’t believe in magic, but in the God who holds all things together by the Word of His power.” “And Jesus looked out on a lot of sinners, and thought, “I will go and give my life for them, that they might have life in me,” therein changing the world from the inside/up.” “We ought never forget that God’s Grace means He moved towards us first that we might move towards Him; not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit saith the LORD.” “God’s Kingdom in Christ is an inverted triangle. What the world and much of the church considers valuable God considers rubbish. The point is on the “bottom” not the “top” in God’s Kingdom.” “It will always be about the Gospel; it will never not be. In Heaven, it is about the Gospel; in the air, it is about the Gospel; and on this earth, it is about the Gospel. Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life; no person comes to the Father, not ever, without Him.” “I think of good theology simply as discipleship. Theology is the answer to the “okay, now what?” after someone comes to Christ. Revival happens, and then Re-formation begins.” “Abortion is driven by an inner-impulse of nihilism and self-destruction; of the sort that shapes and inculcates the broader societas within which such manifest destiny can not only be imagined, but lived out. Abortion is driven by an inner-impulse of nihilism and self-destruction; of the sort that shapes and inculcates the broader societas within which such manifest destiny can not only be imagined, but lived out.” “On my quest to plow through the whole CD, I just finished book 3 of the study edition. Amazing theology, of the sort that is Christ concentrated.” “To resist societal conditioning forces, we 1) have to know what they are, and 2) have the power to actually resist. God’s Self-revelation in Christ supplies this ‘other-worldly’ way.” “Blessed be the man who trusts in the LORD, and the LORD becomes his trust. Jeremiah 17:7” “The size of your Twitter audience doesn’t determine the significance of your voice; the One you’re witness to does.” “When the Gospel is flattened to a political utilitarianism, as if among other position-systems, it makes it much easier for people to reject. If the Gospel, instead, is understood as God in Christ invading the world with His cosmic irrupting Grace—grace from the strange but beautiful world of His inner life—then it makes it more difficult to reject; at least on the usual terms that it often and naively is.” “Genetic fallacies abound” “If Christ be not risen, then our faith is meaningless. But He is risen!” “I’ve read technical theological books everyday for almost 25yrs; all in an attempt to know Jesus better. I’ve read the Bible longer than that. Barely scratching the surface.” “I grew up Baptist, we didn’t ever put ashes on our foreheads until recently” “I’m credobaptist cause that’s what the Bible teaches.” “I’ve been unwilling to give up on Barth’s theology because I have found zero theologians of his ilk who focus on Jesus Christ so principially and thoroughly in their theologizing. It is his intensive Christocentrism that elevates things for me. He is sui generis.” “At the end of the day it isn’t about digging in my heels, but about going with an expanding knowledge of Jesus Christ; whether or not that always keeps in slavish step with the tradition or not. This is not Socinian, but driven by a desire to know Christ and Him crucified.” “Let’s put it like this: If I didn’t have depth theology to turn to as a Christian, I wouldn’t be a Christian. I need more than the *Daily Bread* or *Kitchen Soup for the Christian Soul* to be enthralled with the living God. There is altitude to knowing this God.” “I don’t think most evangelicals realize that there is a whole other theological universe just waiting for them. I mostly blame the pastors, and the sub-culture that has fostered this type of culture wherein such pastors are developed.” “Beauty actually is Christ deep.” “If Heaven and the coming eschaton are pervaded by the face of Christ, all the way through, then what use do I have for discursive and abstract theologies that only attempt to work their way up to Him from other places. Why not start and end with Christ; the Alpha and Omega?” “My prooftext for the mode of theologizing I follow: “John 5.39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” A theology that is going to be genuinely Word based, one that is principially grounded in Holy Scripture, will follow the intentional contours of that *Canon*. If so, we end up with a theology that Jesus would have recognized as Scriptural; as one about Him all the way down. This is what the Spirit has come to comfort us with; that it is all about Jesus.” “In the eschaton I plan on doing exactly what I’m doing now; getting to know Jesus better. Only it will be glorified knowledge rather than simply sanctified.” “My cancer was as dire as Trebek’s. All things are possible with God; there is nothing too difficult for Him.” “I’m not sure if folks realized this, but Barth was actually a Baptist. Here’s one prooftext: “This is the place of Christology. It faces the mystery. It does not stand within the mystery. It can and must adore with Mary and point with the *Baptist*.” CD I/2 §15” “What is God’s glory, or His power/sovereignty? We often throw these words around without definition or proper qualifications.” “It seems as if the culture is in moral freefall; and its speed only increases exponentially as it gets closer to the ground of God’s holiness and judgment. Indeed, an aspect of the freefall *is* God’s judgment according to Romans 1.” “I think social media is helping to contribute to the culture of “the love of many will grow cold.” “I’m not dispy, but was for years! This is a caricature of their position. Ironically, Christian Zionism is mostly made up of dispensationalists, and not because they are looking forward to God slaughtering them. The tweet is uninformed and click bait.” “Sometimes I tire of reading some of the things I do, over and again (thematically); except for the Bible. The Bible is more interesting than any other book I’ve read. I think its because I know its the place I encounter God in Christ afresh and anew; with authority.” “I’ll be at this tomorrow. See you there if I do. The Northwest Region | The Evangelical Theological Society” “I was at the Northwest Regional ETS meeting today, and attended a paper being read on Luther and Divine Impassibility. During the Q&A, when I asked a question, the presenter said: “yeah, I’m aware of your writings.” It actually caught me off guard a bit (in a good way).” “I’ve realized it’s much easier for me to articulate my thoughts in print than it is in word.” “Being involved with academic theology can take many forms, from various motivations.” “Biblical interpretation is not regulated by church tradition, but by Christ. If not, it no longer becomes possible for God’s Word to contravene ours.” “At a certain point you just have to recognize that classical classical theist proponents will just always be that. It’s not that classical theism is heretical, but that it is static; seemingly impervious to any sort of constructive engagement.” “Theology can become a place where you get lost, if you’re not careful.” “If you haven’t read both volumes you really need to!” “I know theological knowledge has all kinds of eternal depth to it, but if it doesn’t start with “Jesus is the Answer, What’s the Question,” then you’ll only get as deep as the abstractive human mind will allow.” “Wow, all I shared on FB was that “credobaptism is what the Bible teaches,” and people lost their minds on that. Forgot how contentious that is. I offer a qualified conception of credobaptism.” “Thankfully Jesus is not contingent upon social media.” “One thing that bothers me online is when people—typically because of their biological age—presume to be a pastor over me. I don’t do that.” “It’s sort of nice to know that you can just unplug from social media, and live in the real world now and again. Almost as if God is present beyond the ethernet of virtual.” “I’d say most of theological Twitter that I’m aware of, is populated by millennials. We need some more GenXrs.” “Just came across this. KJV does a good job explaining TFT’s kataphysics. Kevin Vanhoozer, T. F. Torrance’s Kataphysical Poetics:” “Without holiness we will not see God. Unrepentant sin can stand in the way of us being able to know God in deeper ways. Thus love of God ought to drive us to holiness, with the hope of being able to see God with clearer eyes of faith.” “Gender is not a social construct—maybe talking about gender is—gender is something that God looked at, originally, and said: “this is very good.” “We truly are a depraved people. Kyrie elesion.” “Sort of strange: I do academic theology, not because I aspire to be an academic, but because I aspire to know Jesus more deeply.” “My wife sells doterra essential oils. We have been using them for two years, and they have been beneficial to our health. Babylon Bee made fun again of them yesterday. I stood up for them. And received a viral, mean, vicious attack from hundreds. Sickening! Makes me reconsider what in the world is actually going on out there. Crazy when you think probably most readers of Babylon Bee are so called conservative evangelical Christians. Ruthless, sick culture in so many ways!” “Nihilism is anti-Christ. If you take a good long look at the world, that’s what is operative at almost every level these days. It’s the philosophy of self-destruction, and self mutilation; with the goal of a solipsistic self-actualization in the midst of the chaos.” “The cross tells us what we don’t want to hear. It tells us our hearts are just as wicked as the wickedness things we can imagine, and even more. People don’t want to hear that, but that’s the truth of the Gospel.” “Barth’s understanding of the darkness of sin is based only in the illumination given by the depth of what it took to vanquish it from this world scene and the hearts of men and women, boys and girls.” “It’s pretty interesting: people seem to think because they’re “good people” they aren’t as guilty before God as terrorists; in their heart. This is a delusion that leads “good people” to hell. Hell, not just eschatologically, but hell presently as they live in the absence of God.” “When most of the world realizes the whole thing is “in Christ,” according to Scripture, unfortunately, it will be too late.” “It’s amazing things people will say on social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, when in face to face contact they wouldn’t dare to say what they say. It is this sort of “virtual” space that can create ideas that aren’t actually real, but artivirtual.” “The Father isn’t the Father without the Son, nor is the Son the Son without the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit without the Father and the Son, nor is the Father the Father or the Son the Son without the Holy Spirit.” “For the outside world religion[s] all seem imperceptible and hard to see anything distinguishable; as if it’s all a matter of people believing in basically the same sort of mythology with different names and symbols. They fail to recognize they have their own religion[s].” “Just like metaphysics needed to be evangelized, so does Twitter.” “If you can’t seem to get into systematic or dogmatic theology reading so much, at least read the Bible over and again; its reality will never let you down.” “I often think about God by the perspective provided for by the cosmos, and the nether reaches of deep space. The depth and width of God, all encompassed for us in the face of Christ, is utterly overwhelming and worship-forming.” “What if we just wrote tweets for God, as if directly for His audience? I wonder what they’d look and sound like.” “Twitter and other like platforms shouldn’t be confused for God’s approval. “Likes” and “Favorites” should not come to stand in for God’s approval of you. His approval is purely based upon His love and grace for you in Jesus Christ.” “Writing social media posts—while a nice way to outlet thoughts—should not be done for purposes of gaining followers or showing others how brilliant you may or may not be. We live before God coram Deo, not men or women. Here, we can offer ourselves for others.” “If you ever thought classism wasn’t a thing in the Christian world, think again.” “Theological information overload on the interweb is a thing.” “As a Christian you never stand alone; did you know that? Even if you feel alone, even if you feel like an insignificant nothing in a world of somethings, this just isn’t the case. We have the very value and reality of God standing in and behind us; all around us, with every step we take. We have resource available to us, in Christ, that we rarely press into. But as we walk with the eyes of faith, the eyes of Christ, we can come to live a life within the realization that in our weakness God in Christ is strong for us. Not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit saith the LORD. This is the ‘wisdom of the Cross.’” “If there is anything *systemic* in our culture today, it is systemic cognitive dissonance. But this is the sort of culture so called metaphysical rebels construct for themselves. There is an order in the new creation, and as such living out of its order entails a life of anxiety.” “Social cliques don’t stay together in the eschaton. The wheat and the chaff are finally divided.” “When you listen to most “Bible teaching,” via preaching, it rarely represents actual engagement with the text and context of the passage ostensibly being taught.” “What I’ve found is that reality is never quite as sensational as we often are led to think by the “reality-makers.” That is, unless we are talking about God; then it is more sensational than we can even begin to imagine.”

Oh, my goodness! Laugh Out Loud, and here I didn’t think I Tweeted that much. This gets us current to today’s date: 03/21/2019. I guess if nothing else what I just established is that I am a genuine theological-Tweeter.

As I read through these though, what stood out to me was the Christological character that attended most of them; that encourages me. I Tweet like everyone else, at random times, whenever a thought or two hits me that I’d like to unload for the rest of the world to see. At the end of the day, theological “onlining,” for my purposes, serves as a place to offload ‘some’ of the theological thoughts that percolate through my head each day. Crazily, to me, what I just shared only represents the tip of the iceberg, in regard to what I am actually thinking about; i.e. what in fact prompts what I end up Tweeting or Facebooking.

My goal is to live a life that bears witness to Jesus Christ; not just on social media, but, indeed, on social media as an overflow of my in-persona lived life. Reflecting on God in Jesus Christ is a never-ending reality that can only be sourced by God who is extra nos; sourced by a reality who is truly outside and distinct, but for us in Christ. It is in this Holy encounter that happens afresh and anew each moment of each day wherein genuine Life is found and given. It is something that as the Prophet Jeremiah stated ‘even when I tried to contain it I couldn’t because it was like fire burning in my bones.’ This is how I feel about my encounter with the living God. It is not something I can or want to contain. I want to share what I am experiencing and thinking and being confronted with, vis-à-vis God, as much as I can; and with whomever wants to listen and fellowship around that witness. Soli Deo Gloria

When I started blogging back in 2005, Phil Johnson did too; the Phil Johnson of what became the Pyromaniacs. For all intents and purposes I was genuinely a troll at his blog, but that was when most people on blogs were trolls; that was the time before trolls even knew there was such a thing. My intentions were anything but being trollish. I used to challenge them, and their readers, to at least admit that they had a theological superstructure informing the way they read the Bible and arrive at their exegetical conclusions. I used to inform that that Thomism and classical theism was their informing theology; and I did this ad infinitum. After many years I finally quit engaging with them at all, but that took me some time to get to. In the mean time Phil Johnson retired his Pyromaniacs blog, and it has been such for the last six years plus. I’ve also moved on during that time, writing most of my blog posts with the intention of, at the very least, offering some positive thought on some theological loci that I am covering through my various theological readings. Anyway, Phil just came out of retirement; he believes, in the fullness of time, that the evangelical world, inclusive of The Gospel Coalition, is sliding headlong into progressive immoralism of all sorts (in some ways I don’t disagree with him in a general sense—although I do disagree with him in regard to TGC).

Since Phil has made a come-back, and given my history with his blog, out of nostalgia, I started making some comments on his first real post; surprisingly I found myself defending TGC. Apparently Phil believes that I’m just attempting to use his blog as a grand-standing event for myself, and so wrote the following comment to me (this is the most pertinent part that I wanted to highlight):

(This final thought applies to you in particular because of my long track record with your style of commenting. But it’s not for you alone; this is for all the propagandists on the evangelical fringe who seem think my return to blogging was a signal for them to come swarming out out [sic] from under the dumpster, or wherever):

The comments on my blog are as open as possible in order to provide a forum for conservative evangelicals to discuss whatever topic is raised in the post. Theological renegades who want to use my blog-comments as a soapbox in order to advance their own neo-orthodox agenda (or any other post-evangelical schema) will find themselves unceremoniously blocked from commenting further. Last warning.[1]

For the more soft-skinned this might make their feelings get hurt; for me, it gave me warm-fuzzies. It reminded me of the good old Pyromaniacs troll days, and brought back some fun memories. But it also reminded me why I’m glad those are just memories, and ones that I’ve moved beyond.

In regard to Phil’s view of me: He thinks I’m a propagandist; go look at his blog and tell me who fits that better. He thinks I’m ‘evangelical-fringe’; most conservative evangelicals I know who know about the Pyromaniacs think they’re not for serious (I’m being nice). He thinks I’m neo-orthodox; Barth wasn’t, I’m not. He seems to think I’m post-evangelical; only if MacArthur represents evangelicalism. He thinks I’m a theological-renegade; the Pharisees thought Jesus was one too. He thinks I came ‘swarming out from under the dumpster’; the Apostle Paul said he ‘is considered the scum of the earth.’

I mean I feel in pretty good company.

[1] Source.

I’m going to start a second blog, not a rare thing for me to try 😉 . This will be my primary and ongoing theological blog, but I have an itch to start another themed blog that is focused on New Testament studies (which is really what my Masters degree is in, as far as major focus). So this is other blog is entitled Jesus Confession, and can be found by clicking on ‘Jesus Confession’ or by clicking here: http://jesusconfession.blogspot.com

I think different blogs take on different themes, and my writing done under The Evangelical Calvinist name has taken on a certain theme and mode of discourse; the mode is primarily theological and Christian Dogmatic in orientation; and so this is why I am going to start another blog which will have a completely different (but ultimately related) theme of consideration. I will be focusing, at first anyway, on the writings of Richard Bauckham, N.T. Wright, Craig Keener, and various other New Testament and Biblical scholars. I have an adept interest in what has become known as Jesus Studies as well as Paul Studies; and I also continue to have an interest in the Greek New Testament, which I minored in undergrad, and majored in grad school (my Masters program). And so what I will be writing about at my New Testament blog will also get into Greek New Testament stuff in particular; I will also be discussing hermeneutical theory (which will overlap with theological concerns, since I follow a theological exegetical practice, a “Christ conditioned” one), amongst other things.

Anyway, carry on; if this new blog sounds interesting to you (besides my blog here), then check that one out too.