Outside the Mainstream

Ronnel D. Chua

  • 3. Two Public Ministries, Two Operating Styles

    The way Jesus moves through the world changes dramatically depending on which Gospel you happen to be reading. In the Synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he’s constantly surrounded by crowds, teaching publicly, confronting authorities, moving in the open through Galilee… Continue reading

    3. Two Public Ministries, Two Operating Styles

  • 2. Two Lineages, Two Messianic Claims

    The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke have frustrated harmonizers even more than the birth narratives managed to. Both claim to trace Jesus’s lineage through David, but they diverge sharply in the generations between David and Joseph. Traditional apologetics… Continue reading

    2. Two Lineages, Two Messianic Claims

  • 1. Two Births, Two Beginnings

    (This follows from the article Two Jesuses.) The contradictions start at the very beginning, with two birth narratives that resist harmonization no matter how many centuries of apologetics have been thrown at them. Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts aren’t variant versions… Continue reading

    1. Two Births, Two Beginnings

  • What “Son of God” Actually Meant

    The Political Reality Behind a Theological Phrase Read the phrase Son of God today and your mind probably goes straight to theology, the second person of the Trinity, Christ’s unique relationship to the Father, centuries of councils working out what… Continue reading

    What “Son of God” Actually Meant

  • The Hermeneutic of Inversion

    Every tradition that survives under pressure learns to speak in code. I mean that as a description of how ancient writers actually worked, not as a figure of speech, because when the truth they needed to preserve could get them… Continue reading

    The Hermeneutic of Inversion

  • Two Jesuses

    Here’s the claim at the center of my book, stated as directly as I know how to state it. The Jesus who died on the cross and the Jesus whose wisdom teachings became the core of early Christianity were two… Continue reading

    Two Jesuses

  • The Serpent and the Savior

    Why Does God Confirm What the Serpent Said? Here’s a verse that nobody quite knows what to do with. Genesis 3, the serpent makes a promise: eat from the tree and you’ll become like God, knowing good and evil. Eve… Continue reading

    The Serpent and the Savior

  • The Gospel of Jesus the Christ

    The word gospel did not begin in a church. It began on a coin. When Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, needed a word to describe the announcement of his reign, the word the Roman world reached for was… Continue reading

    The Gospel of Jesus the Christ

  • Dinagat is the New Jerusalem

    The First House of God Picture a hill outside the old walls of Jerusalem, low enough that you could walk past it and never think twice. Mount Moriah doesn’t announce itself. Genesis says Abraham climbed that slope with Isaac beside… Continue reading

    Dinagat is the New Jerusalem

  • A Prophecy That Failed Its Own Test

    Deuteronomy sets out a direct test for telling a true prophet from a false one. “If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that… Continue reading

    A Prophecy That Failed Its Own Test