Category: Theology

Once upon a time, Karl Rahner wrote a phrase that launched a thousand theological ships: “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa.” Those ten words (nine in German, where “vice versa” is just “umgekehrt”) provoked thousands of pages of discussion in the great rush of publishing which was the twentieth-century revival of…

Here are some words and phrases I won’t use anymore, because they have entered into a dangerous zone of usage: They have an original meaning which has been partially supplanted by a new meaning: Belie Comprise Plethora Fulsome Presently Beg the question I love words, and I love to use them correctly. When I’m working…

Tucked in at the end of John Webster’s 2003 book Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, there’s a 28-page chapter about “Scripture, Theology, and the Theological School.” It’s Webster’s attempt to draw out the conclusions of his bibliology for theological education, and it’s full of stimulating suggestions. He calls this final section a “sketch of the…

Malcolm Yarnell recently published God the Trinity: Biblical Portraits (B&H Academic, 2016). Yarnell, who is Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has previously written a fine study on The Formation of Christian Doctrine, among other things. I knew Malcolm had been at work on a Trinity book for a while, had…

One of the organizing principles in my forthcoming book The Triune God (Dec. 6; available now for pre-order) is divine sending. The idea of God sending God is fundamental to this whole scheme of presenting the doctrine of the Trinity, and is especially prominent in chapter 5 (“God Who Sends God”). Just Sending Here’s one…

My book The Triune God (part of Zondervan’s New Studies in Dogmatics) is available for pre-order now and will officially be released in December. In this book, without claiming to be more biblical than thou, I do try to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity with a special sort of attentiveness to the mode of…

The 2017 Los Angeles Theology Conference (Jan 12-13 at Biola University), entitled “The Task of Dogmatics,” was already going to be a great conference: we have major presentations by Michael Allen, Henri Blocher, Katherine Sonderegger, Scott Swain, and Kevin Vanhoozer. This slate of plenary speakers, discerning readers have noted, is the editorial and advisory board…

You have to really care about a book if you set out to translate it for the very purpose of arguing against it. There’s just no way to make a decent translation without getting your hands dirty, your mind filled with the original text, your own vocabulary relativized by an alternative system, and your attention…

If I baptize you, but I’m just kidding, are you baptized? What if both of us are children? What if it’s fake church for fun? What if I grow up and become a famous bishop? Medievalist Marcia Colish has spent a lot of time thinking about a wide range of marginal baptismal situations. She wrote…

In brief presentations of the doctrine of the Trinity, we can observe two different styles. On the one hand is a kind of genetic style, which introduces the three persons in a salvation-historical framework, leading off with the Father, then adding the Son, and then (after a brief historical account of the work of the…