The Theology
[PLACEHOLDER — YOUR OPENING. One or two paragraphs stating plainly what this page is and what it's for. Provisional draft for tone: “This is where I state plainly what I believe about God, the cross, the Bible, and the world. Not what's fashionable. Not what the loudest voices in American evangelicalism insist on. What the church confessed for its first 1500 years, as best I understand it.”]
Begin here
If you're new to this, don't start with the positions. Start with the story. Read the Harrowing. It's a short imaginative walk through the cosmic worldview these commitments rest on. You'll feel the shape of it before you have to argue about the shape of it.
The core commitments
[PLACEHOLDER — LEAD-IN. Provisional: “Here is what I believe, stated plainly. Each one has longer work behind it elsewhere on this site. Where I know the dominant evangelical frame tells a different story, I say so.”]
The cross was a rescue, not a transaction
[YOUR VOICE. Provisional: “The older story is a rescue. The Father isn't pouring out wrath on the Son to satisfy His own justice — He's entering the consequences of our rebellion on our behalf and breaking the enemy's grip from the inside. Classical Christian doctrine, preserved in the East, recovered in the last century for Western readers. It changes how you read Easter.”]
Read further: The Harrowing · The Foundations study
The Bible's unseen realm is real
[YOUR VOICE. Provisional: “Angels, demons, principalities — Scripture talks about them matter-of-factly. The Watchers in Genesis 6. The divine council in Psalm 82. The rulers and authorities Paul keeps naming. These aren't metaphors. The cosmos has more in it than matter and energy, and a lot of what happens in the New Testament makes better sense once you take this seriously.”]
Read further: [TBD — topic hub on the divine council / unseen realm, once written]
Scripture means what it says, unless the text gives us reason to think otherwise
[YOUR VOICE. Provisional: “Start literal. Move to allegory or typology only when the text itself asks you to. Peter said Mark was his son — I take that to mean his actual son until the text tells me otherwise. The prodigal is a parable because Jesus says so; the resurrection is history because the writers of the Gospels insist on it.”]
Read further: The Markan Mystery (an applied example of this hermeneutic at work)
Sanctification is the long walk back
[YOUR VOICE. Provisional: “You were made to be a particular person. Sin stained the process before you were born. The Spirit, now that He has come, is walking you back toward who you were supposed to be. Past tense: justified. Present tense: being sanctified. Future tense: glorified. It's one work of God, seen from three points in time.”]
Read further: On the three tenses · The Foundations study
The first 1500 years are the inheritance we're recovering
[YOUR VOICE. Provisional: “The church confessed some things for a very long time before the Reformation, and longer still before American evangelicalism. The patristic fathers aren't infallible — but they aren't nothing, either. When a modern frame disagrees with a consensus the church held for a thousand years, I want to know why. Usually the older frame holds up under scrutiny.”]
Read further: The Apostles' Creed · [TBD — essay on why the patristic inheritance matters]
Where the dominant frame lost the script
[PLACEHOLDER — YOUR VOICE. Provisional framing: “I'm not writing this to be combative. I grew up in American evangelicalism and still love the people who taught me. But some of what they passed on isn't what the church always taught. That's worth knowing. Here are the places I think the script got rewritten — quietly, gradually, without most of us noticing.”]
Topic hubs for each of these are the next layer of the site. Expected: On Atonement, On the Unseen Realm, On the Markan Question, and others as they emerge.
The supporting work
Everything else on this site exists in service of the commitments above. Start wherever pulls you:
The Harrowing — a short imaginative walk through the cosmic worldview these commitments rest on. The recommended starting point.
The Foundations study — a six-week walk through Hebrews 6:1–3, examining the essentials of the faith the first-century church named as foundational. Built for new believers and anybody else who wants to lay a solid footing.
The writing — essays on specific questions: the Markan Mystery, the law and the New Life, the fruits of the Spirit, and more.
About — who's saying this.