My Books

The Bible is foundational for Christian theology. But our knowledge of God's character, purpose, and work also sheds light on the Bible's character and purpose in God's grand work of salvation. This project gives an account of the Bible that's informed by the convictions of Christian faith, so that the Bible's insights inform us about itself as well as everything else. Useful especially for people struggling with how to understand holy scripture in the face of contemporary biblical historical and ideological criticism.

"The rule of prayer is the rule of belief." These 'before-after' treatments of each petition of the Lord's Prayer demonstrate how praying as Jesus taught us transfigures us, our relationships, and our perceptions. They also put discipleship in fruitful conversation with disciplines such as theology, economics, history, political science, sociology, psychology, literature. Useful for people curious about what these often isolated aspects of people's lives have to do with each other in light of God's Kingdom.

What if we read Deuteronomy in light of the new covenant? This project gives a Christian interpretation of every passage in Deuteronomy, patterned after how the New Testament writers and readers after them approached Israel's scriptures, to see how this pivotal book of the Old Testament informs our knowledge of God in Jesus Christ (faith), the future God is making through him (hope), and our life celebrating and anticipating it (love).

Jesus is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. But he is also the end of all that is old and transient, and the beginning of all that is new and everlasting. This book explores how that's true of creation, the human race, Israel, the nations, individual lives—and even God himself in a way. This project investigates and demonstrates how revolutionary Jesus Christ is for everything, not merely (!) our righteousness before God.

People of faith can be perplexed and jolted by the theory of evolution and its indispensability in the field of biology, and evolutionists can be equally perplexed and dismissive of the claims that believers make about the universe's relationship with a Creator. In this brief and accessible book, a professional biologist, pastor, and theologian take up questions about evolution's compatibility with Christian faith and the challenges each can pose to the other. Spoiler: all three of us affirm both the evolutionary origins of species and the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible. This book is written especially for the families, friends, and pastors of students encountering either evolution or faith for the first time, and for those students themselves.

(Carl Braaten and Robert Jensen, eds.) The 2003 Princeton Proposal is a landmark statement on the present situation and future possibilities of modern ecumenism. Drafted by sixteen theologians and ecumenists (I was one) from various church traditions, who met over a period of three years in Princeton, New Jersey, this document seeks to steer contemporary efforts at church unity away from social and political agendas, which are themselves divisive, and back to the chief goal of the modern ecumenical movement — the visible unity of Christians worldwide, of all those who are reconciled “in one body through the cross.”