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An Exegetical Proposal for Understanding Ephesians 2:20 and 3:5

October 1, 2025 2 Comments

Ephesians 2:19-20 ESV
[19] So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, [20] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,

Earlier, I wrote on some matters arising from the way we have often described the fivefold ministry gifts. A central argument of that piece is that the Bible’s uses of these terms – apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher – are not as rigid as many modern church sermons suggest. On the contrary, these gifts seemed to be mutable roles God empowered believers to perform. In this piece, my focus is slightly different, although it remains on the ministry gifts.

As I have written in a few blog entries, Paul, our chief source on the ministry gifts, connects Jesus’ giving of the gifts to the conquest of Bashan and Hades, long-term foes of Yahweh, through his death, resurrection, and ascension. It was in that context that Paul says ministry gifts were given:

Ephesians 4:11-14 NRSV
[11] The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, [12] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, [13] until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. [14] We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.

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On the Gender of God: Is God Male?

July 22, 2025 1 Comment

Presumably, some people, including irreligious ones, would answer the question in the negative: God is not male. In that case, that form of the question may not be the most helpful. What if we modify the question slightly and ask instead: Are men more like God than women are? I suspect that this formulation might yield more fruitful results. The matter before us subtly influences other beliefs; some are harmful and dangerous.

I first became aware of this matter in an undergraduate Hebrew Bible Writings class. The ethnically Jewish, non-religious professor made a comment that set off the rabbit hole: “The name ‘Yahweh’ in Hebrew is as grammatically masculine as “Richard” is in America.” I had not listened closely enough to realize that grammatical and biological genders are separate. My mind immediately went down a long rabbit hole. It seemed to me that whatever it meant to say God was masculine could not exactly mean how we ordinarily use the term for humans. The reason seemed simple: God is a spirit. To be a spirit is to be unembodied. I had to admit, on the other hand, that God is consistently called a Father and Jesus was a male human for 33 years. I managed to get out of the hole by pushing the issue aside so I could focus on the lecture. Now is the time to carefully unpack this crucial matter.

Language Matters: What Does it Mean to be Male?

Many of us today use the terms “male/man” and “female/woman” synonymously – and this is more or less the practice I’ll uphold in this entry. However, it is beneficial to be aware of and learn from advancements in Psychology and Gender Studies. In the ancient world and many parts of our world today, biology is assumed to determine one’s gender. In the Greco-Roman world, for instance, women were thought to be irrational, unsuitable for ruling, needing male guidance, and emotional. Amy Peeler notes that because women were generally smaller in body, they were also thought to be smaller in mind and spirit (90). In other words, to be female meant manifesting the attributes above. The problem begins when we observe that not all women fit into that box, and some men check some of the boxes. This observation motivated some scholars to separate biology from sociology and sex from gender. Biology determines sex, but social factors determine gender. This move raises an obvious question: what does being male (or female) mean?

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Surprising Quran-Bible Agreement: God as Father

July 17, 2025 1 Comment

Much of the Quran is devoted to a single idea: Islamic monotheism. While Christianity and Judaism also affirm the doctrine of monotheism, Islam is different. The Quran spells out this idea in clear terms in Surah 6. There are no deities besides Allah alone that govern the entire cosmic order. Hence, Allah sovereignly determines who he guides on the right path and who he leads into error (6:39, 125). Also, if Allah afflicts a person, no one else can remedy it (6:17). For every prophet Allah appointed, he also appointed human and spirit enemies for the prophet (6:112). These ideas convey that Allah alone governs the universe as He sees fit. Indeed, verse 102 explicitly puts it like this:

Surah Al-Anaam, Verse 102:
ذَٰلِكُمُ اللَّهُ رَبُّكُمْ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ خَالِقُ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ فَاعْبُدُوهُ وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ وَكِيلٌ

That is Allah, your Lord, there is no god but He; the Creator of all things, therefore serve Him, and He has charge of all things.

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The Gospel and the “Sons of God” of Genesis 6

April 26, 2025 1 Comment

The Easter Story Retold: How It All Started

According to the Christian calendar, the Holy Week commemorates the most important week ever in the cosmos’ billion years of existence. It is the week of Easter or, to be more inclusive, the week leading to Resurrection Sunday. The idea that one week can identifiably be more significant than all others may offend a thinking mind at first. After all, we have repeatedly heard the argument that our earth is only a speck in the big picture of things. It is an argument asserting that size matters. Ordinarily, I would agree with the argument, but there are exceptions. People do not usually conclude, for instance, that the butt is more important than the brain due to size. Similarly, a speck of uranium may be considered more important than the mountain of trash standing over it.

For generations, churchgoers have been taught to believe that a Messiah became necessary because of Adam and Eve’s sin, but that is an incomplete story that accounts for only one-third of the data. To be sure, the story arc resulting in the Messiah’s coming began with Adam and Eve, but there is more. Let us begin from the beginning.

So, how did we get here? As far as we can tell, an uncreated creative mind wanted to get to work. Evidently, it was not his first attempt at creating. He had already created a myriad of essentially immaterial beings “eons” prior to the “moment” he decided on another project. Undoubtedly, there were innumerably infinite ways the project could have taken shape. But just as he had to narrow down the options with his other creative projects, he must do the same here. God decided to make a class of beings constructed of molecules for unrevealed reasons – a terrifyingly complicated undertaking.

How do you build a being from molecules? Easy — you start with, well, molecules! The problem is that molecules did not exist yet. So, the ultimate project must wait as God began by creating the Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Sulphur, and other isotopes needed to make the molecules from which his end product would be constructed. But how long would the construction project have to wait? It is not very long – only about 30 million years, which apparently equals about a few days in God’s reference scale. Once the material universe was in place with its arrays of stars coming into and out of existence and all the requisite atoms were available, God could initiate the building of functional molecules.

It soon became clear that God did not want wild humans. Hence, though he had caused vegetation to spring up everywhere on the blue globe, he yet proceeded to carve out a garden for the creature he was about to construct. The human was going to be cultured. After arrangements for human flourishing were in place, God finally built his project after waiting a few million years, a dating that excludes moments “before” the cosmos came to be. The human God created was neither male nor female. It was a genderless composite. In time, it became apparent that the human would not optimally flourish in its composite state. It must be split equally into two complementary forms. Hence, God formed the woman from a rib of the human he had made. It is interesting to note that the Hebrew term for “rib” is a construction term often used to describe a side of a temple. Here, then, is how we finally got the gendered male and female humans. She was in no way inferior to the man. Yes, she was a suitable “help” for the man, but “help” often describes how God is a “help” to humans. If “help” suggests any asymmetry, it is probably in the other direction.

I wish they lived happily ever after, but there would not be a worthwhile story if they did. Some of God’s earlier creations were not down with God’s new hairy creatures. It is not immediately clear if it is the hair or something else, but those older immaterial beings were ticked. Soon enough, they figured out how to mess up God’s project. They would corrupt the young creatures before they have exercised their spiritual muscles unto maturity. Obviously, this implies that the hairy creatures were not incorruptible. If they became corrupted, it was because they could be corrupted. They were not perfect, only good. Very good, actually. Sinister forces succeeded and corrupted the humans.

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Atonement Requires More than the Death of Jesus

April 21, 2025 1 Comment

I understand that this can become a charged issue for many Christians and that various Christian traditions over the ages have taught that Jesus’s death by itself was sufficient for atonement. Indeed, I believed similarly until I came across a scholarly work by David Moffitt. When we interact with various biblical data points, we will see that the Bible says something different about our topic. The belief that Jesus’ death was all needed for atonement has much biblical data for it. Here are a few:

John 1:29 ESV
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

The idea here is that of the sacrificial lamb in Jewish temple rituals. Of course, John would further clarify that this lamb was slain in Revelation 5:6. Together, the verses imply that the slaying of the Lamb equals the taking away of sins.

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The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus is NOT the Gospel Per Se

March 29, 2025 1 Comment

What’s the Gospel?

The Gospel of Jesus is like the proverbial elephant in the room. Àjànàkú sì kọjáa mo rí ǹkan fìrí. Generations of severing the gospel from Jesus’s Jewish roots have generated much misunderstanding among believers today. We need to reappraise the elephant for what it is. So, what exactly is the euangelion, the Gospel?

Part of the challenge for us is that we are often completely removed from the first-century world that had a profound influence on the New Testament. New Testament authors did not invent the term “gospel.” Indeed, every adult in the Roman Empire was familiar with a gospel long before Jesus was born. The term “Gospel” was often associated with Roman rule and the ascension of a new emperor. It was a gospel maintained with brutal force that crushed opposition triumphantly. In fact, ironically, it was for reasons of upholding the imperial gospel, the Pax Romana, that Jesus was crucified. The crucifixion of Jesus was not a unique event. Rome impaled thousands more before and after.

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On John 3:5: Understanding Being Born of Water and Spirit

December 27, 2024 2 Comments

The Synoptics and John

The Gospel of John is different. It is so different that it is often not considered along with the other three canonical Gospels. In scholarly circles, the term “Synoptic Gospels” excludes John, but not without good reasons. John is believed to be the last written Gospel account. Given the evidence of material dependence among the other Gospels, we may assume that John had access to the other Gospels. Yet, John did not produce a similar work as the authors of the other Gospels. Indeed, John did not seem to care as much about chronology as he did about theology. Hence, he would often move pieces of stories around as he saw fit for his purposes. For instance, whereas the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) focus on Jesus’ ministry near Galilee with one recorded trip to Jerusalem towards the end of his earthly ministry, John records Jesus’ multiple trips to Jerusalem. Indeed, the Synoptic Gospels have Jesus clearing the Jerusalem temple towards the end of his ministry, while John brings the event forward in telling Jesus’ story. Besides, John omits many of the parables, instances of exorcism, and even the famous Sermon on the Mount while including unique materials like the resurrection of Lazarus in his account. So, if the authors of the Synoptics were interested in historical writings, John was interested in theological writing instead.

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On 1 Peter 3:1-6: Navigating Ancient Norms with Christ-Centered Wisdom

December 10, 2024 5 Comments

Background

We previously discussed the Household Code passages found in Colossians and Ephesians. These passages outline how Greco-Roman Christian households were expected to behave in a manner that honors Christ. We argued that these texts do not prescribe a uniform way for all Christian homes throughout history to operate. If they did, it might imply that every Christian household must own slaves. Instead, these passages illustrate Paul’s efforts to engage with a Gentile issue that even Jesus did not confront in his Jewish context.

The Greco-Roman family consisted of a husband and father who held legally granted absolute power over everyone who lived under his roof – a wife, children, and slaves. How he handled his home was tied to his public reputation and dignity. Women typically were married off by age 15, generally to much older men. Usually, love had very little to do with the marriage. Indeed, the Greco-Roman man was not required to love his wife. Paul found himself in this cultural context, and the options were few. He could have demonized the practice, as the European missionaries to sub-Sahara Africa did, and required the Christians to do marriages the “Christian way,” whatever that might have meant. But that move would be somewhat naive, impractical, and even foolish. First, cultural norms do not change overnight; expecting otherwise is embracing inevitable failure. Second, Christians were a minority, accounting for less than 10 % of the Roman empire at the time, and were despised for their culture-inverting beliefs and claims. An Emperor would later actively persecute them. So, Paul seemed to have taken a “slowly but surely” path to winning the Greco-Roman family structure for Jesus. He sowed the seeds and trusted God to enable germination.

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Paul and Women (Series Part 1): Genesis 2 and the Equality of Women

December 7, 2024 7 Comments

The Undifferentiated Adam

No other literature has shaped our world quite like Genesis 2 and 3. These two chapters have generated extensive analysis, and people approach them from diverse perspectives. Some assert that the story underpins the idea of women’s ontological inferiority, arguing that “God made the woman for the man.” In contrast, many readers draw entirely different conclusions from the same text. In this piece, I will demonstrate why I believe Genesis 2 does not teach the inferiority or subordination of women.

These chapters tell the famous story of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first human parents in the narrative world of Genesis. It will benefit readers to keep a few things in mind as we proceed. The word adam is borrowed from the Hebrew language. In the passages we will explore, adam has multiple roles. Sometimes, it refers to the male human in the passage. Other times, it refers to the couple, the man and the woman. It also can refer to the undifferentiated, genderless human – the being from whom Eve was formed. In this entry, I shall use the pronoun “it” to describe the adam, except where gender is implied. The other thing to watch out for is this passage’s narrator’s use of wordplay, significantly contributing to the message. Two instances of paronomasia would prove critical to understanding the narrative. Let’s begin where the actions start in Genesis 2:

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Abraham and the Aqedah in the “Hall of Faith” (Series Part 4, Finale)

November 29, 2024 1 Comment

One of the clear, overarching lessons in the Bible is that there are no true heroes among humans. The best of humanity is merely human at best. Yet, the Bible demonstrates that some individuals can display admirable qualities, even in a fallen state. Alongside these examples, we also encounter characters who are hopelessly self-absorbed. Later writers tend to praise earlier Scriptural figures but often do so selectively, focusing on specific attributes while neglecting the fullness of their characters. These figures become literary constructs where certain aspects of their lives are highlighted, but the reader must remember the whole story and context.

My examination of the Aqedah would be incomplete without delving into the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11. This chapter underscores individuals who exemplified faith in God’s promises, contributing to the unfolding of God’s plans for humanity. These figures should not be elevated to the status of ideal humans to model our lives after in every respect; nevertheless, they serve as examples of faithfulness to God’s promises. Let’s first consider some straightforward examples: