Category: Blog

For the last six years, students from the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola have taken a summer trip to Cambridge, England. The trip is a three-week academic course in the humanities that specializes in reading local authors and making the most of being in the rich cultural site that is Cambridge. “Great Books in a…

In one of the “working papers in Christian theology,” which are widely assumed to be indications of where he’s heading with a forthcoming systematic theology, John Webster argues that the doctrine of creation should occupy a more determinative place in dogmatics. The essay is “Non ex aequo: God’s Relation to Creatures.” (already printed in a Paul…

Adam Johnson’s new book Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed is now available. John Webster says it shows “acute theological judgement,” and Kevin Vanhoozer calls it “a theological treasure trove.” So please move it to the top of your reading list. Johnson’s strategy in handling the doctrine of the atonement is to go big with it,…

“The primary condition of knowledge for reading the Psalms is the ability to see as whose mouthpiece we are to regard the Psalmist as speaking, and who it is that he addresses.” So says Hilary of Poitiers at the beginning of his fourth-century Psalms commentary. And while Hilary is interested in identifying human authors and speakers,…

Steve Holmes recently reviewed the book One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, edited by Bruce Ware and John Starke (Crossway, 2015). In Holmes’ review, entitled Reflections on a new defense of ‘complementarianism,’ he interacts especially with the historical arguments of several of the chapters in the book,…

This will be weak, even for a blog post, but I wanted to jot down three questions that are lingering in my mind after about six months of reading and teaching the pastoral epistles. I find all three questions mildly unsettling, but not for the historical-critical reasons that are supposed to unsettle evangelicals. I take…

Here are a few more selections from the interesting little one-volume theology, Outlines of Christian Doctrine by H.C.G. Moule. When he begins discussing atonement, Moule quotes, without naming, some earlier thinker: It has been well said that Creation, relatively to God, is little, ‘a very little thing,’ but that Sin is not. Sin –shall we…

A prayer for the 2015 graduates of the Torrey Honors Institute, from the commencement service last week: Father, we rejoice with these students in the hard work they have done in Torrey, and we present them to you as exhibits of good work. Furthermore, this good work they have done is also their good works,…

Why have theologians in the classic tradition of trinitarian doctrine found it easy to confess that the external actions of the Trinity are undivided? One reason is that they started from a clear confession that the internal actions of the Trinity were not undivided. Or, to put it less double-negatively, the internal actions of the…

John Webster has been writing about the doctrine of creation recently, here an essay and there an essay. Much of this work will be gathered in God Without Measure, vol. 1, which should appear in hardcover early this summer and will be well worth the arm and leg it will cost. We count on Webster to…