What if...
We stopped trying to avoid the bad?

The Old Testament Roots of Paul’s Prayer Instructions in Philippians 4:6–7

A speculative essay

What are the odds of this?
In fifth-century Greece, four of the most consequential minds in Western philosophy, natural science, and mathematics appeared in direct generational succession and in the same region, Athens. Plato the student of Socrates. Aristotle the student of Plato. Alexander the student of Aristotle.

Zeros and Ones

Covenantal Self-Binding and Eternal Relational Order

Author’s note

In this paper, and my book The Subjective God, I am not reframing holiness, I am recovering holiness; restoring holiness to its covenantal and participatory meaning within the biblical narrative. This is crucial for the church because, in Revelation 4 and 5 we see our God in heaven moving through the definition of “holy” to the definition of “worthy” by the sacrificial service of the Lamb that was slain. Why is He worthy? “for you were slain…” (Revelation 5:9).
We see Christ making the church also “worthy” in 2 Thessalonians 1:11 from her starting position of holy; dedicated to a single purpose, even at enormous cost.

Christ’s Eternal Husband Role and the Father’s Primacy in the Eschaton

The biblical narrative culminates in a beautiful and timeless charm of a fairy tale: “and they all lived happily ever after.” This is not a storybook ending delusion—it’s the eschatological reality of God’s redemptive plan, where Christ, Revelation's Bridegroom, becomes the Eternal Husband, and the Father reigns supreme as “all in all.”

 The Divine Council teaser
What is the Divine Council?

 The Divine Council is a Biblical concept!
In the first of the series Alan discusses some of the key DC moments in scripture:

I Think, Therefore Thou Art

A Relational Overthrow of the Cartesian Subject: Non-Cartesian Cartography in the Mesotopia

Reclaiming a Foundational Word from the Root Up

Modern discussions of gender often begin with identity, expression, or social role. These thoughts begin elsewhere—at generation. My claim is simple but far-reaching: gender is not a social effect layered onto biology; it is a causal biological reality grounded in the unavoidable binary structure of human reproduction, and this reality underlies not only culture and language, but the very logic by which we think.

A Dialogue Between Scientific and Relational Empiricism.

God Most High labored in unison with His Word, such was the labor that the Spirit between them hovered over the chaos waters and brooded over the existential void.

Abstract

The question “Can God die?” evokes a theological paradox akin to the philosophical conundrum of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, while “Can God learn anything?” challenges divine omniscience. In Christian theology, these paradoxes are resolved in Jesus Christ, who, as fully divine and fully human, confronts death—the seemingly immovable object—with His omnipotent divine nature, the unstoppable force, and experiences obedience and suffering in His human nature.

“I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, like caution. A man does not prove his greatness by being at one extreme, but by touching both extremes and filling all the space between.” —Blaise Pascal, Pensées

A Rebuttal to Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension in the Akedah

Abstract:

Søren Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, introduces the concept of the “teleological suspension of the ethical,” positing that Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22 represents a paradoxical act of faith that suspends universal ethical norms in favor of a divine command. Kierkegaard argues that the ethical, as the universal, is superseded by the individual’s absolute relation to God, which he calls the “absurd” (Kierkegaard, 1843/2006, p. 54).

Abstract

This paper contends that faith, particularly within the framework of the "mesotopia," operates as a phenomenology of the possible, fundamentally reached by the necessary.