Essay / Theology

Introducing Junius on the Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

Franciscus Junius (1545-1602) was an important theologian in the Protestant Orthodox tradition. He is most famous for his influential Treatise on True Theology, with its profound approach to theological method. Junius taught widely across all the major doctrines of Christian…

Essay / Theology

"To Him Belongs the Consummation of Things"

by Fred Sanders on

Petrus van Mastricht's Theoretical-Practical Theology (volume 2, chapter 27) has an excellent treatment of the Holy Spirit. I just want to unpack a little something he says in the introductory paragraph, before he gets to the main body of the…

Essay / Theology

Polanus: Reformed Scholastic Piety and Commentary

by Fred Sanders on

Having worked through Amandus Polanus' axiomata on the Trinity, Ryan Hurd and I invited a guest, Dr. Ryan McGraw, to talk with us about his own encounters with the writings of Polanus. This conversation covers a few topic: First, we…

Essay / Theology

Ephesians (Classical Theology Course)

by Fred Sanders on

Talbot School of Theology's Master of Arts in Classical Theology is mostly composed of three kinds of courses: Commonplaces (major doctrines); Master Practitioners (significant theologians); and Sacred Page (books of Scripture). Since the entire MA is designed to treat Scripture…

Essay / Art

Shraga Weil's Ram in the Thicket

by Fred Sanders on

Shraga Weil (1918-2009) was an Israeli painter who also did a lot of printmaking throughout his artistic career. I know he made prints because late in 2020 I came across one of them in an antique store at a deep…

Essay / Theology

Christmas Trinity

by Fred Sanders on

Here's something I wrote for Christmas 2020. I composed it to work best as a Twitter thread, and I'm not sure if it works as well as a blog post. But I wanted to make it available here at a…

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

"The Holy Spirit Teaches us to Die Faithfully."

by Fred Sanders on

Dr. Ephraim Radner delivered a memorable paper at the 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference last January. Those of us in the audience were struck by the depth and honesty of what he shared that day about how the modern world…

Essay / Theology

Adding Eternal Generation

by Fred Sanders on

The publication of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, Second Edition presents an opportunity to consider the difference the doctrine of eternal generation can make in trinitarian theology. The opportunity arises from the fact that Grudem denied eternal generation in the first…

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

Christomorphic Pneumatology

by Fred Sanders on

Dr. Lucy Peppiatt was one of the plenary speakers at the 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference, and published her paper as a chapter in the resulting book, The Third Person of the Trinity (just out this month from Zondervan Academic).…

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

The Presence(s) of the Holy Spirit

by Fred Sanders on

Dr. Daniel L. Hill wrote the chapter ""Holy Pedagogue, Perfecting Guide: The Holy Spirit's Presence in Creation" in the book I recently co-edited with Oliver Crisp, The Third Person of the Trinity: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Zondervan Academic, Dec. 2020).…

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

"The Problem of Thirdness"

by Fred Sanders on

At least one chapter in The Third Person of the Trinity directly addresses how odd it is to call the Holy Spirit "third," what we might mean by doing so, and in what sense doing so might signal a theological…

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

Unity, Spirit, and Church

by Fred Sanders on

I've been asking the authors of chapters from our recent book The Third Person of the Trinity (Zondervan Academic, Dec. 2020) to explain a little bit about what's in each of their chapters. By the time the book appears in…