Category: Theology
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Rally and Radiate
Here’s a diagram (click through it to view a larger version) that the founders of Biola kept close at hand when they needed to explain the variety of activities the early Bible Institute was engaged in. It’s a scratchy copy, and the graphic design isn’t great even by 1910 standards. But the message is exactly…
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Thousands of Pages of New Trinitarian Theology
There are always books about the Trinity coming out, because it’s a perennially important doctrine. All roads in Christian theology lead to it in one way or another, and from this doctrine you can get to any other doctrine without taking too many steps. But in any given year, the two or three new Trinity…
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Wesley & Puritan Spirituality
Earlier this week I wrote a guest post for Seedbed, the online resource center of Asbury Theological Seminary. I got a wonderful education at Asbury in the early 90s, and was glad to contribute a few thoughts to this high-volume resource center. Seedbed (one of the many good signs at Asbury since Tim Tennent took the…
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Our Triune God & The Pastor: Adoption Conference
Astute theological observers should have noticed by now that there are two important things happening with regard to adoption. On the theological front, including biblical studies, systematic theology, and pastoral counseling, the doctrine of adoption is becoming more prominent and getting more attention. There are more books and articles devoted to various aspects of it,…
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Sermon: The Trinity as Surprise Ending
Last weekend I guest preached at Del Rey Church, on the Trinity. The sermon is available online, and you can view it below or at their site (where you can also download the audio). I’m warning you, it’s 50 minutes long (pastor Matt Jones has that congregation prepped for substantial sermons!) and it’s only on one…
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God the Father's Sons and Offspring
I’ve been reading about the doctrine of God the Father, a doctrine which has no handy name. Following the model of christology (the doctrine about Jesus Christ) and pneumatology (the doctrine about the Holy Spirit), we ought to call it patrology, but that word is already…
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"I Believe in the Maker of Moderate-Sized Dry Goods"
Katherine Sonderegger has a fine chapter on the doctrine of creation in the book Mapping Modern Theology. I especially appreciate the fact that, charged with explaining in about 23 pages how the doctrine of creation has been treated during the entire modern period, she manages to cover the main topics, mention the standard names, sketch…
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Faith and Good Works, Christ and the Spirit
Justification is by grace alone through faith alone. It’s a wonderful truth, established by Paul, classically recovered and emphasized by the Reformers. But as the Reformers learned in the sixteenth century, and as Protestants ought always to keep in mind when teaching this great doctrine, it is open to unhelpful mis-interpretation by those who would…
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O Tell Us, Poet, What You Do
A favorite Rilke poem: O tell us, poet, what you do. –I praise. Yes, but the deadly and the monstrous phase, how do you take it, how resist? –I praise. But the anonymous, the nameless maze, how summon it, how call it, poet? –I praise. What right is yours, in all these varied ways, under…
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A.T. Pierson's Biola Connections
I was asked recently about the relationship between A. T. Pierson (1837 -1911) and the early years of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. I am not aware of any direct connection –Pierson never worked at BIOLA, for example. But Pierson and Biola’s founders were the same kind of people, devoted to the same things, and…
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Jesus Loves Karl Barth
A witty colleague writes: I know “Jesus loves me, This I know,” is the most important thing Karl Barth ever wrote, but when I googled it, I came up with more questions than answers. Was he asked to give the “answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?” or “his most profound theological concept” or to…
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STUDY at BIOLA (1941)
I don’t have an image of it, but here is the nifty text from an ad in Biola’s King’s Business magazine from August 1941, p. 307. The ad invites prospective students to come to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, which had not yet started using the neologism “Biola” but occasionally did refer to itself…