Essay / Theology

Ratzinger on the Undiminished Trinity

Here’s a new book worth looking out for: The Theology of Benedict XVI: A Protestant Appreciation , ed. Tim Perry (Lexham, 2019). It’s just an interesting idea to call on Protestant witnesses to write about the theology of this very theological Pope, and Tim Perry pulled together

Essay / Theology

Class on the Third Person of the Trinity (LATC 2020)

In the spring semester —really in January 2020— I’ll be offering a short course on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit at Biola’s Talbot School of Theology. It’s a course based on the annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, and it’s the easiest course in the world

Essay / Theology

Ruth Burrows: Our Nothingness as a Gateway to the Trinity

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

Essay / Theology

Blessed Trinity (Kistemaker Lectures)

I’ve been thinking about the doctrine of divine blessedness for several years, and in late February I got to gather my reflections on the subject for the 2019 Kistemaker Academic Lectures at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Here’s the slightly modified summary text about the

Essay / Theology

Trinity in Scripture (Lanier Library Lecture)

In October 2018 I got to make my first visit to the remarkable Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas. I was there to give a lecture on my favorite subject, the Trinity. Specifically, the lecture is an overview of how to read the Bible to

Essay / Theology

Union and Communion of the Trinity

Puritan theology makes a very helpful distinction between union and communion: “Union is the foundation of communion,” says Sibbes. A union is an underlying oneness of some kind, but communion is an ongoing set of  responses, actions, habits, and disciplines by which fellowship is cultivated

Essay / Theology

Life in the Trinity (Fairbairn Review)

The Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care has been going for ten years, and has recently become available as an academic journal through Sage Publications. If you’re not familiar with the journal, you should check it out, and if you’re in pastoral or spiritual

Essay / Theology

Blessing of the Trinity (Sermon)

On Sunday Jan 28, I preached on Ephesians 1:3-14 at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Tenth is a historic site for doctrinal and expository preaching, and I’m grateful to Pastor Liam Goligher for the invitation. It’s a 40-minute exposition of my love affair with Ephesians

Essay / Theology

Tozer’s Meditations on the Trinity

A friend recently gave me a copy of this new devotional book, Meditations on the Trinity: Beauty, Mystery, and Glory in the Life of God, by A.W. Tozer. A. W. Tozer (1897-1963) wrote a lot of books, but if you’re a fan, you’re probably thinking,

Essay / Theology

Trinity Article in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

Daniel Treier’s new (third) edition of The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology has just been published, and it’s a marvel. A big hardcover weighing in at just under 1,000 pages, it is a wisely-planned compendium of theology and spiritual life from an evangelical perspective. Every time I

Essay / Theology

Invisible Mission of the Trinity

The Father sent the Son to save sinners. The main thing that should make us think of is, of course, the incarnation, in which the Son of God took human nature into personal union with himself and lived out divine sonship in the stuff of

Essay / Theology

Trinity and Atonement Essay

Adam Johnson’s T&T Clark Companion to Atonement has just dropped like the hundred-plus chapter, hundred-plus dollar behemoth that it is. More on that later. For now I’m just posting an excerpt from the chapter I wrote for it, entitled “These Three Atone: Trinity and Atonement.”