Category: Theology

Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly [places] in Christ:     ~Ephesians 1:3 After the opening greeting Paul here bursts into a glowing ascription of praise to God. He blesses God who has so infinitely blessed us (cf. II Cor.…

There’s an old joke, “How do you say ‘Happy Easter’ in Russian?” Answer: “Christ is Risen.” It’s a good joke, because it shocks by re-intruding the religious content into a word (Easter) that does a good job sounding, to most of its users, more neutral than religious. Somewhere in the long, strange history of the…

Grace [be] to you, and peace, from God our Father, and [from] the Lord Jesus Christ. ~Ephesians 1:2 Paul prays that the saints in Ephesus may have two things: (1) “Grace,” i.e., loving favor, or unmerited favor; (2) “Peace” (i.e., inward peace of heart, cf. John 14:27). This “grace” and “peace” that Paul prays the…

“It’s the Bible that saves us!” Why do we talk that way? Actually, I know why. I recently heard a very good sermon about the Bible. It was based on Jesus’ story about the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man begs to be allowed to return from his afterlife torment to warn his…

Old Testament scholar Rolf Rendtorff died this week.  Rendtorff spent most of his career at the University of Heidelberg. He was a diligent scholar who was able to pursue the largest questions in his field without losing his grip on all the details. He had a knack for biblical exposition that kept his work fairly…

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:     ~Ephesians 1:1 We begin today the study of what is in some respects the most profound and wonderful of Paul’s letters. A rich treat is in store for…

There is a very close connection between The Fundamentals (published 1910-1915) and Biola’s magazine  The King’s Business (published from 1910-1970). One way to describe that connection is to say that they grew from the same root: from the same editors and funders during the same period. Another way to describe it is to say that…

Robert W. Jenson is one intriguing, stimulating, and important American theologian. David Bentley Hart once called him “America’s perhaps most creative systematic theologian,” and Hart ought to know. A friend of mine started reading his Systematic Theology Vol. 1 a few years ago, and sent me an e-mail that said (maybe in all caps) “It…

In July 2013 in Cambridge (UK), the Tyndale Fellowship’s Historical Theology Study Group gathered to hear papers responding to Steve Holmes’s book The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (published in the U.S.A. as The Quest for the Trinity).  I got to attend because I was already in the area for Torrey’s annual July class in…

For the frontispiece of his book Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, Michael Horton chose one of the best passages in the entire Institutes. It’s a paragraph –four sentences, actually, though the central sentence is one of those long, classical affairs with eighteen “if”s in it– in which Calvin delivers the payoff…

Here are some key passages I have long cherished from a wonderful little book, God’s Life in Us (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1969), by Jean Daniélou. If “God’s Life in Us” sounds a little too devotional for you, be encouraged: the book was originally published in French under the title La Trinite et le mystere de l’existence:…