Essay / Art

The Life of Jesus in Paintings at the Getty

The Getty Center in Los Angeles is not really the best place to go if you want to see Christian art. Except for the remarkable collection of illuminated manuscripts, the Getty’s collection just isn’t built around the themes and images of the Christian visual tradition

Essay / Theology

Enamel Trinitarianism

The church of St. Servatius in Siegburg, Germany has a treasure room full of medieval art and relics. Among the artifacts is a portable altar crafted around the year 1160 by the workshop of Eilbertus of Cologne. Eilbertus was a master craftsman of Romanesque metalwork

Essay / Theology

The Trinity: Yes, A Doctrine About God

  Today was Trinity Sunday, as observed by churches who follow the western liturgical calendar. There wasn’t always a Trinity Sunday, and even when (well into the middle ages) it was proposed, some popes argued against it on the grounds that (a) feast days are

Essay / Theology

Deep Things Roundup

It’s been a couple of months since I posted anything about my book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, but the book continues to make the rounds and find new readers. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from recent

Essay / Theology

William Burkitt: Observe and Learn Hence

William Burkitt was born this day (July 25) in 1650. Burkitt was a graduate of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and an Anglican minister. He was the author of the celebrated Expository Notes on the New Testament, published in two volumes about 1700. Later luminaries such as

Essay / Theology

Trinitarian Salvation according to Francis Schaeffer

In 1951, Francis Schaeffer had an encounter with the Trinity that revolutionized his life. I wrote about that discovery in a previous post. It sparked the phase of his ministry that we all remember him for, and put him in touch with a sense of

Essay / Literature

The Architecture of George Herbert’s Poetry

Introduction George Herbert was born on April 3, 1593, one of ten children. Though his father died when he was only three years old, Herbert’s mother, Magdalen, took responsibility for the education of her children. Moreover, she was decently well-connected, in that she ran a

Essay / Theology

Jesus Was Also Baptized

Luke 3:21: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying…” Picture the scene: There was a big crowd at the river, and people were getting dunked in the water by John, who was so good at

Essay / Theology

The Prepared Throne

There is a powerful and fascinating piece of iconography in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, inside one of the domed cupolas. It’s a ceiling mosaic featuring this image:   It’s a dove on a book on ornate drapery on a pillow on a throne. This throne

Essay / Blog

T&T Clark Companion to the Atonement

This week, I submitted the manuscript for the T&T Clark Companion to the Atonement, an edited work with 18 major chapters and 85 shorter essays from scholars around the world, exploring the doctrine of the atonement from a variety of angles. The various essays explore

Essay / Theology

The Whole Trinity Worked the Incarnation of the Son

“The external works of the Trinity are undivided,” says a classic principle of trinitarian theology. Whatever God does outside of the divine essence, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do as the one divine causal agent. This is great news for monotheism, because if three

Essay / Theology

“The Trinity and Our Moral Life”

I don’ think I’m giving away any surprise endings if I share a couple of key paragraphs from a 1963 book, Ceslaus Spicq’s The Trinity and our Moral Life According to St. Paul. After an introductory chapter on “the necessity of a revealed morality,” Spicq