In First Timothy 1:11, Paul speaks of “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” There was a nineteenth-century pastor named William Knibb who paraphrased this passage as “the gospel of the happy God,” and, as Charles Spurgeon said in his own sermon on the

In a couple of recent posts about Tim Pawl’s In Defense of Conciliar Christology, I began with some reflections on why it might be meaningful to speak of a single Christology of the early church. I thought I should also declare some of my own

In an article in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, T. Mahlmann claims that the first use of the word christology occurs in Friedrich Balduin’s commentary on Paul’s letters. When I ran across this reference in a footnote about something else, I realized (a) I found this

The heart of Tim Pawl’s In Defense of Conciliar Christology is his attempt to solve what has been called the fundamental challenge. He states the objection several ways, but the book’s most elaborate statement of it is as follows: Anything with two natures, one divine,

There are several reasons why it might be both valuable and meaningful to speak of an identifiable, single Christology of the ecumenical councils of the ancient church. First let us consider why it might be valuable, and then why meaningful. It might be valuable to

Here’s a little book I picked up a few years ago and have found helpful: The Soul of the Apostolate by the Trappist abbot Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935). I’m reading it as an evangelical Protestant and commending its virtues from that point of view, but in

I noted recently that Michael Horton worked out an elaborate systematic theology before turning to give sustained attention to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I further noted that the relative lack of elaboration of pneumatology in his earlier works did not undermine them, while

What happens when an accomplished and prolific theologian, who has not previously given extensive attention to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, produces a substantive book on that doctrine? This was the situation when Michael Horton published Rediscovering the Holy Spirit. In short, what happens

Michael Horton’s Rediscovering the Holy Spirit is a carefully-wrought work which re-organizes much of the material we expect to find in a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In it, Horton connects some things that are too often bifurcated while distinguishing some things that are too

  For the spring semester of 2019, I’ll be one of the resident fellows at the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago. The Henry Center is undertaking a multi-year project about creation, and this year’s theme

The final paragraph of Augustine’s On True Religion is a tight triple knot, a threefold cord triply cinched to make an amazing rhetorical conclusion about the unity of the Trinity and the threefoldness of salvation. On True Religion is among Augustine’s early works; one of

Here is the first online public announcement of the theme and the speakers for the eighth annual Los Angeles Theology Conference on January 16-17, 2020. We will be taking up the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, with a special focus on the role of pneumatology