This is not a blog. Blogs are updated regularly, and the contents are written for the sake of other people besides the author. Neither of those apply here.

Instead, this is an selection from the notes that I write to myself in the course of my scholarly work, my explorations in geekery, and life in general. Only a few of my notes get posted here. I post these particular items online because I suspect others might get something out of them, but in many cases these notes may only make sense to me. I promise you nothing.

You are free to share links to anything you find useful. Give proper attribution and a link to the original if you copy or use anything here. If you want to contact me to discuss anything you find here, that’d be lovely.

About Jon Stovell

I’m married to Dr. Beth Stovell, the father of two fantastic kids, and a follower of Jesus with a long-haul commitment to the Vineyard Churches of Canada.

I’m also a theologian. This means I spend a lot of my time thinking about questions like “Who is God?”, “What are God’s ultimate plans for us and our world?”, etc. This involves reading lots of dusty old tomes, crisp new tomes, and PDFs of articles published in arcane academic journals—and then writing more of them! As fun as that is (no, really!), the point of theology is to help provide insight to the church so that we can all grow in wisdom and maturity as followers of Jesus. Good theology facilitates and encourages our participation in the outworking of God’s plans for this world. It spurs us on to pursue him as he calls us into richer, fuller, and more joyous (but by no means easier) life. As a theologian, then, my role is a supporting one for the church as a whole and the people who form it. It is my job to work through questions like, “Given that both infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism seem to be partially correct and partially incorrect, can a careful parsing of the relationship between Christ’s incarnation and his kenosis provide a resolution to the apparent paradox? And if so, what are the Christological, eschatological, and soteriological ramifications?”, and then share what I learn in the process with the rest of the people of God in a way that will be life-giving and encouraging (and hopefully not so polysyllabic).

I could wax on about how I am also a geek,¹ a Goth,² and in possession of a very odd sense of humour. But who would really want to read all that?