Category: Theology
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Ask Solomon Stoddard
Today (September 27) is the birthday of Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729), the puritan pastor in colonial New England. Three hundred years ago, if you wanted to tell somebody who Jonathan Edwards was, you’d say “He’s Solomon Stoddard’s grandson,” and they’d say “Wow!” But now the shoe is on the other foot, and we say: the largely…
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Happy Birthday Adolph Saphir
Adolph Saphir (1831-1891), born today (September 26) was a highly-regarded nineteenth-century preacher and Bible expositor. His entire family converted from Judaism to Christianity when the Scottish Free Church sent missionaries to Hungary in 1843. Saphir studied in Berlin, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. He entered the ministry in 1854, and after time as a missionary to…
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Meet Lancelot Andrewes
Hear T.S. Eliot: The Right Reverend Father in God, Lancelot Bishop of Winchester, died on September 25, 1626. During his lifetime he enjoyed a distinguished reputation for the excellence of his sermons, for the conduct of his diocese, for his ability in controversy… and for the decorum and devotion of his private life. Eliot goes…
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Jesus in Your Heart, Yes.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” says the risen Lord to the Laodicean church (Revelation 3:20). There is an evangelical tradition of using this verse’s imagery in evangelism, and Dan Wallace recently gave some attention to this notion of telling unbelievers to ask Jesus into their hearts. The bottom line is, according to…
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Lose My Wits? Unhinge My Brains? Ruin My Mind? Pursue Distraction?
Last year I tried to find the source of the oft-quoted but seldom footnoted saying, The Trinity: Try to Understand It and You’ll Lose Your Mind. Try to Deny It and You’ll LOSE YOUR SOUL! Rooting around in a large collection of Trinity books, I couldn’t find a source any older than 1953. It seemed…
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The Trinity in a Nutshell
Biola’s website editor recently asked me a few questions about my new book, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, as part of an announcement for the upcoming book release event (Monday, Sept. 27). The first question was, “In a nutshell, what is the doctrine of the Trinity, and why is it…
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Deep Things Book Release Event Sept. 27
If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you might want to plan on attending the book release event that Biola’s department of Apologetics is hosting. It’s on Monday, Sept. 27, from 7:30 to 9:30. Hosted by Craig Hazen, this free event will be two hours of great teaching on the Trinity, with my new book…
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A Quick Look at the History of Revelation
“God has spoken,” says the opening sentence of Hebrews. And as that astonishing sentence unfolds, it exhibits a balance and symmetry that cries out to be diagrammed. Or cartooned, even if only with the restricted means of Microsoft Word. Here is the chart I habitually draw during class discussions of Hebrews 1. This is just…
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Twitter my Quotes, Three-Person Book
Since the release of my new book last week (The Deep Things of God), I admit I’ve been keeping an eye on the twitter-stream and blog-feed to see how it’s doing. It’s got a few reviews already, which is nice to see. But the most interesting phenomenon is in the tweeting and microblogging, where people…
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Happy Birthday, Fletcher of Madeley
Born this day (September 12) in 1729 was John Fletcher of Madeley, about whom John Wesley said: “An obedience discovered itself in Fletcher of Madeley, which I wish I could describe or imitate.” Who did John Wesley wish he could be more like? John William Fletcher (1729-1785), or, to use the French name he was…
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Diversely and Diffusely in Days of Old
The first four verses of Hebrews are one sentence in Greek, and there aren’t many sentences this good in the whole history of the world. Just looking at the first few words in Greek, even without knowing Greek, you can see that it starts with some very long and interesting words: two four-syllable compound words…
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"First the Reality, then the Understanding." STR Radio on the Deep Things of God
On Sunday Sept. 5, I got to talk with Greg Koukl on the Stand to Reason radio show about my new book The Deep Things of God. Greg’s a great interviewer: he’s knowledgeable, has read at least part of the brand new book in advance, understood the key ideas, and started the conversation by asking…