I call my blogging home Faith Improvised because it represents what I do as a student of the New Testament. I observe a body of texts that improvise upon the faith of Israel in light of the reality of Jesus Christ.
It also captures how I regard being Christian. The way of Jesus as depicted in the New Testament is both radically new and in complete continuity with the way of the God of Israel and his aims to claim a people for the redemption of the world. In the same way, Christian faithfulness is always shaped by its many pasts and is always reconfiguring and adjusting in order to meet and redeem new situations.
Faith Improvised is a space for me to think out loud and in community about pretty much anything and everything, but mainly about books I’m reading, movies, sports, biblical studies, and politics.
I teach New Testament here:
I earned my Ph.D. from here:
My hometown:
My tragic life-long sports devotion:
My favorite TV show for which I block out life and demand silence:
If I could only play one golf course for the rest of my life, it’d be here:
The movies I watch over and over and through which I envision life and relationships:
June 9th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Welcome, brother.
June 9th, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Just when I thought the Internet could not get any better!
June 10th, 2011 at 10:48 am
Welcome to the blogosphere!
June 17th, 2011 at 10:56 am
I look forward to reading this . . . when I’m not sending someecards or playing facebook Texas Hold’em
July 25th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
[...] intrigued as well. Here is a description that is posted in the “About” section on his blog: The way of Jesus as depicted in the New Testament is both radically new and in complete [...]
August 6th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
wanted you to know I very much appreciate your blog and ministry to the church. blessings, -Brian
August 25th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
I just finished reading the “The Drama of Ephesians.” Great book. I’m starting a new series on Ephesians here at our church in Fort Worth and there are a number of things from your book that will make this reading/preaching of Ephesians fresh and important for us. Thanks.
–Jamey
PS–After I finished the “transforming the imagination” chapter, I probably had more words highlighted than not. Loved it. Words like expansive and possibilities and undiscovered continents come to mind.
Way to go.
September 20th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Hi Tim! Nice to see your blog here. I didn’t know you were at GRTS and had left Cedarville. Blessings on you, your family, and your ministry.
Phillip
July 18th, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Who is the artist in the painting in the Faithfulness of Jesus Christ blob .
July 19th, 2012 at 6:17 am
Caravaggio.
April 1st, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Tim,
I read your Evangelicals and the Bible, parts 1 – 3, with great interest. Can you give me 2 or 3 examples of things you have said in class that have raised the “That’s sounds unbiblical” eyebrows from evangelicals? I have heard this sort of thing when it comes to discussing social reform from the Scriptures.
Thank you.
ECR
April 1st, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Hey Eric,
I heard it on a range of issues there aren’t in the standard set of things that evangelicals hear about. The prophetic critiques of Israel’s self-promoting and acquisitive ways of life, the role of the powers and authorities in Paul’s theology, the fact that Jesus’ death deals with God’s cosmic enemies in the NT every bit as much as it deals with personal sin(s), that Jesus wasn’t omniscient during his time on earth and developed through the ‘normal’ stages of human development — all these and more, topics that shake up and alter a received theology.
Sometimes it’s an appreciative tone, but filled with wonder that they haven’t heard such things before. Sometimes it’s disappointing and disconcerting.
tg