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I recently fielded a question about the being of God. The question was at the level of asking if God is a being, or has being, or if we know what we’re talking about when we use being language. I think the reason this kind of question comes up (and it does!) is not that people are wondering about whether there is a God, or whether God exists. It’s specifically about that word being, or any of its semi-synonyms. It gets sticky because in any given setting, people might be confused or distracted about any word that can be used to pick out being: nature, being, essence, substance, etc: anything that rises to the level of metaphysics or ontology. It’s further entangled in the fact that be-ing is a verb form (one who be-s), or it can mean being itself (anything which is), or…

Here’s my Nov 1 sermon on Psalm 62: Since I speak from a manuscript, I sometimes post it under the recording. I’m skipping that this time because my text was a little choppy–though it runs to 5k words! I will, however, post a few of the slides that I think might be useful for others as visual aids. They’re nicely integrated into the video above, but they’re handier as jpgs.

“God so loved the world he gave his Son.” This argument about the greatness of God’s love depends on the uniqueness of the Son. If the Son were less special, the love would be correspondingly less conspicuous. There is a kind of ratio between the greatness of the Son and the significance of the sacrifice. You could put this in terms of the quantity of love: God the Father loved the Son so much that his sacrifice raises our estimation of how much he must love the world. But the classical theological move is to handle it not so much on a sliding scale but more categorically. It’s about the actual identity of the Son, recognizing that he is strongly unique. God’s great gift in the gospel presupposes the great and unique status of the Son. Here’s Cyril of Alexandria’s version of that, not…

Petrus van Mastricht’s preface to his 1677 book Novitatum Cartesianarum Gangraena (The Gangrene of Cartesian Novelties) includes his reflection on his theological vocation. Having already embarked upon the project of the comprehensive, multi-volume Theoretical-Practical Theology, he intends with his Gangraena to indulge in a bit of controversy. But lest he fall prey to the temptation of fighting for fighting’s sake, he takes a moment to assure himself, and then his reader, that this little 500-page polemic is in fact strategically connected to his true calling in theology. That’s the context in which he writes a great opening line. His Latin’s well over my head, but here’s how I take it: The study of practical theology, and of theological practice: I have betrothed it to myself, and in turn I have betrothed myself and all that is mine (of whatever amount) to it. I have…

[This is a ten-minute meditation for a Lord’s Supper service at my church, Grace Evangelical Free Church of La Mirada. We’re an EFCA congregation that observes the Lord’s Supper monthly in our morning service and also regularly in an evening service.] I sometimes give little guided talks in art museums on “How to Look at Art.” It’s just seven or eight tips that help people with art appreciation: “Here’s a painting in front of me; what am I supposed to do to get into it more?” As we gather for the Lord’s Supper, I thought it would be helpful if I did something like that here. So here are a few observations, all taken directly from Scripture, on “How to Look at the Lord’s Supper.” The Bible points us in several directions that we are supposed to look, or devote our attention. 1. Look…

I found this prayer in the opening of Mayer’s Catechism Abridged (link goes to a different edition than the EEBO ed. I used) and laid it out like a bookmark. Feel free to print and use (especially use). The text: A Prayer to bee vsed before the reading of Bookes of Pietie, or Instruction. O God that art the Father of Lights, enlighten my darkned vnderstanding, that I may see into the wonders contained in the Law. Dispell in me the mistie clouds of ignorance, expell the loue of darknesse, and repel the rebellious Law of sinne. Sanctifie my wit, that I may bee able to retaine, and rectifie my will, that I may obediently submit my selfe to thy good will in all things. Thou which art the Master-builder of thine owne house, settle me as one of thy liuing stones vpon the…

Mere Orthodoxy has put together a powerful online tool for reading old Christian books. The Faith Received, though still in beta mode, is kind of a moon shot for retrieval. Congrats to @StvenWithAnI, @ianharber & company for hopping over numerous hurdles to get this started. A few thoughts: As soon as I saw the link I started poking around. What’s Grotius say about Eph 1? Last week I’d have to find the PDF online, scroll to the right page, & see how hard his Latin is. Now I can get there fast & skim an AI translation …which I can’t fully trust but can use. Almost immediately I spotted bad translation moves: Grotius is made to say “we owe God grace” for his blessings, which obviously (I don’t even have to check) is a misreading of “gratia” that fails to recognize it as “thanks.”…

One reason Paul gives for a husband to love his wife is an appeal to self-interest: “He who loves his wife loves himself.” And having stated the principle, Paul develops it in a couple of striking ways, especially with a kind of commonsense maxim that “nobody ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and tenderly cares for it.” (5:29) It might be a little tendentious and misleading to refer to this as self-care, which is a modern, therapeutic way of talking. But Paul’s own language is more like “flesh-cherishing,” so I think he was willing to risk putting things sharply. It’s not as if Paul is teaching that people ought to set out to nourish and cherish their own flesh. This is not a commandment (thou shalt nourish) nor an agenda (To Do Today: Nourish and Cherish My Flesh). Instead, he seems to appeal…

Here’s a sermon on my favorite passage, Eph 1:3-14, that I delivered at BeachCities Church in Huntington Beach. The congregation is used to pretty careful exposition, so I went long with a careful look at what makes this passage work. Our passage is the perfect introduction to all of Ephesians, which later on talks about: The immeasurable greatness of God’s power 1:19The immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us (2:7)The unsearchable riches of Christ,. (3:8)the love of Christ surpasses knowledge 3:19and praises “him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (3:20) I mean, Just look at the nouns: Blessing, adoption, purpose, praise, grace, the Beloved, redemption, forgiveness, wisdom, insight, a plan, an inheritance, truth, gospel, salvation, guarantee, glory. Now ignore the nouns and just look at the verbs: Blessed, chose, predestined, lavished, making known, to unite,…

Girolamo Zanchi (1516-1590) wrote a wonderland of a commentary on Ephesians. At about 350,000 words, it’s thorough and compendious. It’s also still only in Latin, though an Italian translation is well underway and English isn’t far behind. [Zanchi. So hot right now. Zanchi.] It will be great to have it available, especially for readers who just can’t get enough of truly jumbo theological performances of the theology of Ephesians. I call it a performance of Ephesians because the genre name “commentary” now suggests to us something rather less than what Zanchi is up to, and indeed what most classical theologians thought they were doing when they undertook longform engagements with Scripture. John Webster has noted that “a good deal of classical Christian theology was written as commentary, paraphrase, or reflection upon major texts,” but that in recent centuries “the biblical commentary has by and large…

Jaroslav Pelikan’s little book (93 pp) The Vindication of Tradition (Yale University Press, 1984) includes a passage in which Pelikan gives a sort of testimonial about how he began to understand the importance of theological work whose ambition is to recite the great tradition effectively. Trained in the modern academy, Pelikan shared the widespread assumption that what it meant to do scholarship was to produce new knowledge, to sift and judge and distinguish and, having reviewed extant literature, to push forward with a constructive proposal. That kind of research is, I suppose, self-evidently great. But as a paradigm for all knowledge-rightly-so-called, it excludes in advance some of the most important cognitive work that theologians, at least, should be busy with. A big part of the breakthrough, for Pelikan, was coming to understand the odd little premodern genre known as the florilegium. As Pelikan points…

Here are my public notes on Psalm 62: I get to preach this remarkable Psalm in a series my church is doing, and I have the luxury of 12 weeks to prepare! So I get to dig into it more than usual, doing deeper devotional sermon prep from before the dawn of deadlines. [UPDATE: Sermon preached, Nov 1. Here’s video. It’s a funny experience to spend months in a Psalm and then try to deliver a meaningful single sermon on it. Even in a congregation that appreciates 45-minute sermons, it feels like leaving everything out. But I know it was good for me to sit with the Psalm for a long season, and I trust that it informed what I was able to impart to the church.] I’m going to be preaching this as a Sola psalm: ONLY in God, in God ALONE. There’s…

It’s pretty effectively camouflaged behind the peculiar modern title Erasmus on Literature, but the good news is that we now have an English translation of Erasmus’ fullest account of how to use the Bible to do what he considered the right kind of theology. This excellent 2021 paperback from University of Toronto Press should be a helpful resource for a wide range of scholars in historical theology, biblical studies, and systematic theology. True Theology Compared to What? The book is his 1518/19 Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram theologiam, that is, “a system or method for arriving by a short cut at true theology.” Terms like “system” and “short cut” are intriguing enough, but what really ought to catch the eye is the claim to be showing the way to “true theology.” You might think this is in contrast to “false theology,” and…

Galatians 2:20: ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ χριστός· ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός με καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ. [31 words] KJV 1611:  I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. [44 words] There is much packed into those words. And there is a wonderful tradition of digging out and displaying that “much” by way of a running, copious paraphrase. Interpreters who expand 30 or 40 words into 100 or 200 will obviously be using strategies of repetition, elaboration, cross-reference, unpacking, telescoping, and more. They will be making judgements about what the original text says, what it means, what it doesn’t mean, what it implies, what it presupposes, what else it naturally connects to, and so on. But instead of writing a little essay…