Here’s a little book I picked up a few years ago and have found helpful: The Soul of the Apostolate by the Trappist abbot Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935). I’m reading it as an evangelical Protestant and commending its virtues from that point of view, but in

I noted recently that Michael Horton worked out an elaborate systematic theology before turning to give sustained attention to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I further noted that the relative lack of elaboration of pneumatology in his earlier works did not undermine them, while

What happens when an accomplished and prolific theologian, who has not previously given extensive attention to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, produces a substantive book on that doctrine? This was the situation when Michael Horton published Rediscovering the Holy Spirit. In short, what happens

Michael Horton’s Rediscovering the Holy Spirit is a carefully-wrought work which re-organizes much of the material we expect to find in a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In it, Horton connects some things that are too often bifurcated while distinguishing some things that are too

  For the spring semester of 2019, I’ll be one of the resident fellows at the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago. The Henry Center is undertaking a multi-year project about creation, and this year’s theme

The final paragraph of Augustine’s On True Religion is a tight triple knot, a threefold cord triply cinched to make an amazing rhetorical conclusion about the unity of the Trinity and the threefoldness of salvation. On True Religion is among Augustine’s early works; one of

Here is the first online public announcement of the theme and the speakers for the eighth annual Los Angeles Theology Conference on January 16-17, 2020. We will be taking up the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, with a special focus on the role of pneumatology

Christianity came to Africa early. By the year 170, when we’ve got definite documentary evidence of it, it’s already well established. Furthermore, as Dr. David Wilhite argues, “the early African Christians were Africans.” It doesn’t exactly sound controversial, but you’d be surprised. As Wilhite shares in the

For years we’ve read Tertullian’s classic second-century Apology in the Torrey Honors Institute, and I’ve always appreciated this feisty church father’s sarcasm and rhetorical power. Even when he’s arguing from the position of the underdog, Tertullian is not somebody you’d want to be cross-examined by. But

In October 2018 I got to make my first visit to the remarkable Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas. I was there to give a lecture on my favorite subject, the Trinity. Specifically, the lecture is an overview of how to read the Bible to

If you read a lot of early Christian theology, you’re probably reading a lot of texts from Africa. But chances are that you’re reading them without registering anything African about them. Think of patristic texts by authors of African provenance: Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria,

I’m a revivalist and I can’t really help it — I was born again one, and I’ll probably die one. I am always looking for renewed signs of life in the church, am always ready to pray for a movement of God’s Spirit among believers,