Category: Blog

This is a blog post about everything, but mainly about everything in relation to God. I found a striking example of how the Christian confession of the distinction between the creator and the creature can be preached and applied. It’s Richard Baxter’s The Crucifying of the World by the Cross of Christ (1658), which began…

As a scholar of monasticism and a Benedictine oblate one of my favorite parts of the sixth-century Rule of Benedict is Chapter 49 – “On the Observance of Lent.” Benedict writes, “the life of a monk ought to have about it at all times the character of a Lenten observance… we therefore urge that during…

There are three kinds of people in the world: People who think everything can be broken down meaningfully into threes, and people who don’t. Plus some third kind of person, to make a total of three, which is my point. Please clap. Which brings us to the truly brilliant Richard Baxter (1615-1691), who definitely thought…

You’re probably aware that Biola’s Talbot School of Theology is starting an innovative new program, the M.A. Classical Theology. We are admitting students now, so if you are looking for a program that will take you to the heart of what theology is, take a look at it. This M.A. is made up of three…

In a sermon on Matt 3:17 (“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased”), Ralph Erskine (1685–1752) expounds the thesis that “God was in Christ.” The main thrust of the sermon is that there is a great difference between how God can be encountered in Christ as opposed to outside of Christ. “God…

Here is a great-books style argument for the unity of Genesis, from Robert Candlish’s 1868 book on Genesis. It turns on a comparison of Moses and Homer, but is mainly a matter of aesthetic perception of literary unity. Moses, as it seems to me, has fared very much as Homer has fared, at the hands…

Thomas Adams (1583–1653) was a famous preacher, and no wonder. His sermons are so full of ideas and fresh expressions that they fill the mind to bursting. What follows are just some notes I took on a few pages of one sermon. The sermon is “Semper Idem, or The Immutable Mercy of Jesus Christ,” and…

In the first couple of pages of Paul Blowers’ fine book Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety, he explains something important about his subject. Reading early Christian theologians on the subject of creation, we find them doing too many things all at once. Some readers will find…

Today’s the release date for Matthew Barrett’s book, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Baker). Here’s the Amazon link, but do yourself a favor and look at the book’s home page on Baker Publishing’s site. I’m not necessarily saying there’s a 40-page excerpt pdf available there or anything, but if it were there it would…

In theological anthropology, some of the best witnesses to the nature of true humanity are those traditions which were forced to refute, in doctrine and in practice, the motivated denial of their own humanity. When African-American Christians, for example, found their footing and secured the kind of academic tools they needed to carry out a…

I’ve been thinking about the doctrine of divine blessedness for several years, and in late February I got to gather my reflections on the subject for the 2019 Kistemaker Academic Lectures at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Here’s the slightly modified summary text about the four lectures: The gospel includes the announcement of “the glory…

My good friend Matthew Owen is a philosopher with a lively interest in theology. Some time ago he invited me to co-edit with him a theme issue of the journal Theologica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology. Matt and I have talked a lot over the years about issues in christology and trinitarian…