Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

“The Problem of Thirdness”

At least one chapter in The Third Person of the Trinity directly addresses how odd it is to call the Holy Spirit “third,” what we might mean by doing so, and in what sense doing so might signal a theological problem. That chapter is co-authored

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

Unity, Spirit, and Church

I’ve been asking the authors of chapters from our recent book The Third Person of the Trinity (Zondervan Academic, Dec. 2020) to explain a little bit about what’s in each of their chapters. By the time the book appears in print, the editors (Oliver Crisp

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

A Black American Pneumatology of Freedom

The new book that Oliver Crisp and I co-edited, The Third Person of the Trinity (Zondervan, Dec 2020), has a dozen chapters exploring the doctrine of the Holy Spirit from a number of angles. I’d like to draw your attention to the one by my

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

Spiritual Enlightenment and Pneumatological Epistemology

Daniel Castelo is Professor of Dogmatic and Constructive Theology at Seattle Pacific University and Seminary. He was one of the plenary speakers at the 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference on the Holy Spirit, and contributed chapter 5 to the resulting book, The Third Person of

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

Filioque and Divine Missions

Adonis Vidu is Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He contributed chapter two to the new collection of essays on pneumatology that Oliver Crisp and I edited, The Third Person of the Trinity: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics. I knew that Adonis’ chapter, “Filioque and

Essay / Theology

A Technique of Indirect Communication

I just noticed an author using a technique for communicating very difficult subject matter, and I wanted to make a note of it. I’ve seen it employed in various kinds of writing, but my main interest in it is as a way of teaching theology.

Essay / The Third Person of the Trinity

“Who’s On Third?”

Oliver Crisp and I have edited a brand new book in Zondervan Academic’s Los Angeles Theology Conference series. This volume is on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and its title is The Third Person of the Trinity. The book is such a solid showcase

Essay / Theology

Hating Vain Thoughts

Just a quick note here on the blog, to hold a link to a helpful sermon from Richard Chenevix Trench, “On the Duty of Hating Vain Thoughts.” It’s from an 1886 collection of sermons freely available at various places online, but I excerpted the sermon

Essay / Theology

Norms of Blessing

I almost missed this, because I wasn’t reading very closely in what I considered a mere devotional book by a forgotten author. I admit I don’t expect to be smacked with new insights from devotional reading. A few years ago I picked up a copy

Essay / Theology

Polanus: Tales from the Classroom

Ten hours of discussion of the actual text wasn’t enough for us, so Ryan Hurd and I are inviting some guests to come talk with us about the trinitarian theology of Amandus Polanus. This week we asked Dr. Tyler Wittman to talk with us about

Essay / Theology

Polanus: Life, Sources, Theology

We recently finished our series of conversations on seventeenth-century theologian Amandus Polanus’ 18 Axioms on the Trinity. Now Ryan Hurd and I are going to have a few conversations with people who know a thing or two about Polanus, Protestant Scholasticism, trinitarian theology, and related

Essay / Theology

Polanus, Axioms 17 and 18 On the Trinity

The three persons of the Trinity coexist eternally, but not in the same way that other things coexist, mainly because these three are infinite, and not external to each other. And one of the Trinity, the eternal Son, took human nature into union with himself