We need some good papers on pneumatology. In January 2020, the Los Angeles Theology Conference will take up the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, under the title “The Third Person of the Trinity.” We’ve already invited five plenary speakers to address this doctrine, and if

I’ve been puzzling over a perplexing passage from Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918). Holland was an English theologian who did his best theologizing in sermons, especially in the preaching he did at St. Paul’s in London, where he was a canon. The passage that I’ve been

Humans are not nothing. But fundamentally we are made from nothing, and deep down, we know it. At least some of us do. Ruth Burrows knows that humans are poised between God and the nothing out of which we were made, the nothing that is

Here is a helpful way of thinking about the relation between the life of Jesus  and the resurrection of Jesus. “His life rose with him.” When Jesus rose from the dead, he not only came back to life, but also brought back with him the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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