I’m a husband, a dad, an IT manager, a PhD candidate, a Content Creator, and a slowly-becoming church planter, but what I care about most is answering this question: what does it look like to take the gospel of Jesus seriously enough that the rest of your life rearranges around it?
What I’m doing
A PhD on the interaction of Christology and the Resurrection. I’m in the New Testament program at Dallas Theological Seminary. The historical puzzle I’m chasing is why the earliest Christians worshipped Jesus as God within an astonishingly short window after the crucifixion. My argument is that you need two things to explain it, and neither works without the other. A resurrection on its own only vindicates whatever the person was claiming when they died — a risen prophet is just a prophet who happens to be alive again. So the content of the belief — that Jesus is divine — has to come from Jesus’s own teaching before the cross. The resurrection is then what gives that teaching its full weight: God Himself ratifying the claim. Pull either piece out and the earliest disciples’ very high, very early Christology stops making historical sense. I am reading Hurtado, Habermas, Licona, Bauckham, Loke, and the strongest skeptical responses to all of them, and I try to keep my own assessment honest.
Teaching Greek. I’m a graduate teaching assistant for the introductory Greek courses at DTS. My professor gives me opportunities to teach Greek in both English-speaking and Chinese-speaking classes. Mounce conventions, parsing drills, translation exercises, the good stuff. There is no better way to find out whether you actually know something than to try to teach it to someone who doesn’t.
The Wise Fool Podcast. Two channels, one mission. @CalebBrake is the English channel. The person I care about most is what I call the wrestler — the Christian or skeptic who isn’t satisfied with pat answers and wants the strongest case made on merit. 白乐勇 — 新约研究所 is the Chinese channel — same scholarship, different audience. China needs more accessible theology and Biblical Studies content, and I want to be a small part of getting it there.
A few other things, briefly. I manage the IT Helpdesk for the seminary as my day job. I speak Chinese (semi) fluently depending on the day. I know Ancient Greek and Hebrew well enough to use in theological studies (but not near as well as Chinese). I run a small marketing agency with my friend that helps small businesses grow.
Where it’s going
At some point in the future, Lord willing, I’d like to plant a church. Tim Keller has been a role model for me, so I want my church-plant to be similarly shaped: generous to skeptics, gospel-centered, intellectually serious, rooted in scripture. The PhD, the teaching, the YouTube channels, the businesses — all of it is just exploration and preparation for this goal. I’m convinced the people most likely to carry the gospel into the next generation are the ones who fought their way into faith, not the ones who accepted it just because it was their culture, and I’d like to be helpful on their journey to get there.
What this site is for
This is the home for my long-form work — sermons, articles, essays, video archives, and the occasional thing that doesn’t fit anywhere else. If you’re a wrestler like me, welcome. If you already follow me on YouTube, thanks for being here too. If you’re new and don’t know where to start, the book summaries are probably the most useful place. The shorter and louder version of all this is on YouTube. The longer and quieter version is here.
— Caleb