A scene from The Canterbury Psalter (12th century)
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“Seemliness of Jehovah” (decentia divina)
Looking into the root and meaning of the divine name Jah, Johannes Cocceius opened up a suggestive line of thought which later Protestant theologians developed further. And I think it deserves more consideration as a useful, fruitful way of thinking. Here are some quick notes to mark the trailhead. Cocceius thought the name Jah came from a Hebrew root meaning “fitting” or “seemly.” Here’s a report on Cocceius’ deliberations; I take the summary from DeMoor’s Continuous Commentary because that’s available in English (thanks to Steven Dilday; original Latin here). The Most Illustrious COCCEIUS, in his Lexico Hebraici, root יאה , thinks that it is able to be derived from the root י אָה , to be fitting/ seemly, so that it might primarily denote God’s beauty, comeliness; which root occurs only once in the Old Testament, Jeremiah 10:7, , כַ֥י לְַּךָ֖ יַּ א֑ תה…
Augustine in God’s Word
The library of the Dominican monastery in Engelberg, Germany has a twelfth-century copy of Augustine’s Confessions. On the opening page is an illustration (an illumination) of Augustine in prayer. The bishop is tangled up in the first letter of the manuscript, a large letter M. This is mainly just conventional manuscript illumination. Art historians even have a name for a large initial capital letter with a figure painted into it: they call it a historiated capital (or a historiated initial). You see them all the time; they lively up the text. But there’s something special about this one, because it really does illuminate something about Augustine’s Confessions. If I were to ask what the first line of the Confessions is, most people who know the book would reply, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you,” or the longer version, “You have made…
Great Doctrinal Deductions vs Sentimentalism
I’ve been pondering these lines from a Martin Lloyd-Jones sermon on Eph 1:6. I don’t think they are in the published version of the sermon, and I don’t know the MLJ canon well enough to footnote it, but here’s what he says as he gets ready to preach on God accepting us “in the Beloved:” Now facts are very important but facts in and of themselves are not sufficient. A number of people may look at the same facts and may interpret them in a different manner, so that it is essential to our salvation that we should know something of the meaning and the significance of the facts as well as of the facts themselves. There are many for instance who no doubt during these coming days will consider certain facts, but they’ll sentimentalize them, they won’t draw any great doctrinal deductions from…
“Son” without Eternal Generation?
To maintain eternal sonship without linking it to eternal generation is to take up a theologically eccentric position. It is eccentric not just in the sense of being outside the mainstream of the Christian doctrinal tradition, but also in the sense of being a kind of mixed view, an uncentered position midway between the logic of consistent Nicene Trinitarianism and the logic of consistent Socinianism. In the hands of conservative theologians who place a high value on careful reading of Scripture, the resulting doctrine exhibits very little actual resemblance to Socinianism. In fact, such theologians can remain in such close proximity to a Nicene-style Trinitarianism that the differences rarely emerge into view. After all, they affirm the full divinity of Christ, his eternal Sonship, and the Triunity of persons in the one Godhead. That’s certainly not nothing! But for a variety of reasons, they…
The Holy Spirit Bridges the Gap (Sermon)
Here’s the video (below) and the manuscript (below below) of a sermon I preached at my church, Grace Evangelical Free Church of La Mirada, on July 28, 2024. We’re preaching through Acts, and when my turn came up in our team-preaching plan, the assignment was to open up Acts 9:32-11:18. It’s a long section (77 verses?) but it’s easy to see how it all goes together. The Holy Spirit Bridges The Gap (Fred Sanders) from Grace EV Free on Vimeo. I. The Word and the Spirit There is a great moment I want to direct your attention to this morning.It’s a dramatic moment in Acts when the apostle Peterpreaches the message about Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit falls on the listeners. That’s the moment: the word goes out, and the Spirit descends.–Out it goes, down it comes, and when they meet, –people are…
Three Things Are Too Difficult For Me
I hope it’s obvious that I freely and confidently affirm and teach the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, while I love to lose myself in the details and ponder the complexities of it, I am especially devoted to making sure the main things are the plain things and the plain things remain the main things. I try to teach the old-fashioned, standard, broadly consensual doctrine of the Trinity. Ask me hard questions and I’ll do my best to be thoughtful and responsible, but you can expect me to point to the Bible and to standard Christian confessions. Normie Trinity believer is all I aspire to be. Scratch me and you’ll get the Gospel of John and the theology of Nicaea. And yet, there are some important elements of the doctrine that seem almost impossible to state in a way that lets the mind…
“Many a Bridge:” Reading Tennyson’s In Memoriam in Cambridge
The Torrey Cambridge summer course reads short works by authors with a Cambridge connection. The works chosen this year are all related to themes from Colossians, so we’ve read sermons by Simeon (preached at Holy Trinity & Kings College Chapel), commentary by John Davenant (from his first course taught here as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity), and C.S. Lewis on how reading old books is like travelling to a foreign country. We also read Alfred Lord Tennyson’s great book In Memoriam, a set of 131 poems about grief and faith. In Memoriam was once very well known and greatly esteemed. Of all the books we cover in our summer curriculum, it’s the one most likely to earn a secure spot on an official “Great Books” list, both by reputation and by inherent worth. In Memoriam is a very Cambridge book in multiple ways. In…
Elucidarium (Honorius)
I can’t help but like the Elucidarium, a little book of popular-level theological instruction from around the year 1100. It’s written in dialogue form, sort of as a reverse catechism in which students ask questions and a teacher gives brief answers. Here’s how the section on the Trinity goes: Pupil: In what way is the Trinity understood as one God?Master: Look at the sun, in which there are three: a fiery substance, brightness, and warmth, which are inseparable to such an extent that if you should wish to take the brightness out you would deprive the world of the sun, and, again, if you should try to remove the heat, you would lack a sun. Therefore, in the fiery substance, understand the Father, in the brightness, the Son, and in the warmth, perceive the Holy Spirit. Pupil: Why is he called Father?Master: Because he…
Alanus de Lille’s Vision of Order
When C.S. Lewis took the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature in Cambridge, he knew it would be hard work to convince his new university, with its greater proportion of scientists than at his alma mater Oxford, to consider his extremely old-fashioned subject matter. For Lewis, ‘old-fashioned’ meant mainly the fully integrated, pre-scientific view of the cosmos: classical planets circling the central earth in nested crystalline spheres, and the whole thing moved by one great ontological desire for God. He gave a two-part lecture called “Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages,” not published at the time but later gathered with some other leftovers in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Walter Hooper rightly says these lectures “amount almost to a précis of The Discarded Image,” (viii) but written specifically with scientists in mind. In these lectures, Lewis is not so much introducing potential…
How to Read a Charles Simeon Sermon
Charles Simeon (1759-1836) published sermons on the whole Bible. Or rather, he produced a kind of commentary on the whole Bible in the form of sermons. Or rather, he worked through the whole Bible showing how each passage could be preached effectively, with a constant eye on the gospel. Whichever way of describing his undertaking is most accurate, what Simeon produced is a massive, multi-volume set of sermons spanning the canon of Scripture; the Horae Homileticae.1 They are expanded outlines, or “discourses in the form of skeletons,” intended to teach preachers to preach. And if you want to read some of them (let’s say I assigned 25 sermons on Colossians for a summer course, PDF here), you should bear in mind that these are not just sermons, but worked lessons in homiletical understanding of the Bible. Here are a few methods and hints for…
Choral Evensong Notes (Torrey Cambridge 2024)
On Tues 7 Feb at 6pm, the choirs of King’s and St John’s Colleges will be singing choral evensong in St John’s College Chapel. On this summer trip, we normally try to attend evensong in King’s College chapel as an opportunity to be in that especially special space with its famous fan-vaulted ceiling. (Students who want to do this on their own can attend worship at King’s on Fri, Sat or Sun.) But of course St. John’s chapel is also wonderful, and a double choir is especially powerful. Here is the order of the musical portions of the service, which I’ve fitted with links for students who want to study up in advance for what they’ll be hearing during the service (of course you can also refer back to these links after the fact, in case you prefer to keep exploring at leisure what…
Immersive Rereading: Colossians
Any chance I get, I introduce students to a classic form of Bible study that I call immersive rereading. It’s a simple method that has been around for ages, and has gone by many different names.1 Immersive rereading may not be the most elegant name, but it captures the goal (become immersed in the message of book of the Bible) and the technique (read it over and over). Choose a short book of the Bible and an extended span of days. For me this usually means a 4-6 chapter epistle and three weeks, because usually I get to assign this kind of work in an intensive summer course. A week would be far too short to get the benefits; a semester too long for most people to maintain their focus. This summer I’ve got about 30 students in Cambridge immersively rereading Colossians (4 chapters,…
“God Rested in Himself”
On the seventh day, God rested from all his works (Gen 2:2). The OT itself, and then the NT, especially Hebrews, shows some interest in the meaning of divine rest. Augustine brushes up against this notion of divine rest in several places (the very end of Confessions, the appropriate place in City of God, and the various Genesis treatises he wrote or started). While Augustine sees in this repose something of God’s eternity, he also tends to involve humans in the deeper sense of God’s resting: God works in us now but will repose in us at last, etc. [I thought this would be easy to look up, but it turns out I’ll need to get at least a half dozen books open in order to be properly attentive to a theme Augustine revisited often.] Thomas Aquinas asks (ST I Q73a2) whether it is…
“The Father is Greater Than I”
In John 14:28, Jesus says “the Father is greater than I.” There is one wrong way to understand his meaning, and two right ways. The wrong way is the Arian heresy or some other kind of subordinationism. People who take this view think that with these words Jesus intends to teach that the Son of God is of a lower status or order of being than God the Father. He’s doing some ontology, and putting himself ontologically lower than the Father, claiming to be less than God in the sense of not God, not truly or fully God. But what about the two right ways of understanding “the Father is greater than I?” They are complementary rather than contradictory. The first is that Jesus is referring to himself according to his human nature, assumed by incarnation: the Father is greater than the Son’s humanity…
On Frittering
From Frederick Faber’s Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, volume 2.
Distinction Between Creation and Generation
The Nicene Creed says the Son is “begotten, not made.” This contrast is one of the ways the creed clarifies its teaching about what begetting, or generation, is; by contrast with what it is not. It’s a statement of Christology, obviously. But the same contrast also helps us in the other direction, as a statement about cosmology or the doctrine of creation. What’s creation? Not begetting, not generation, not the internal coming-forth of a necessary relation in the singular divine essence. In other words, when you learn to call the Son “begotten, not made,” you learn to call creation made by contrast to begotten. You’re on your way to affirming creation from nothing more clearly, even though all you were trying to do was be clear about Christology. I like to think I could make that argument historically, showing that the doctrine of creatio…
“It Is The Lord!” (Sermon on John 21)
Here’s the video and written text of a sermon I preached at my home church on April 22, 2024. Because the written text was originally a script for oral delivery, it has more hard returns than necessary, and even / a few slashes / that I dropped in to make sure I didn’t run words or phrases together in way that might / confuse the ear of the listener. I. The Story After the Stories We’re focusing this morning on a very special story from the last chapter of the Gospel of John.Its nickname is “The Miraculous Catch/ of Fish,” or sometimes, “The Second Miraculous Catch/ of Fish,” because there was a previous one (Luke 5), but this story takes place after Christ has risen from the dead. And that changes everything. I believe it must be the final recorded miracle of Jesus. It’s…
Proportional Blessing
When I guest preach in a brand new place, it’s likely to be on Ephesians 1:3-14. I’ve lived in that passage long enough that I know what I’m doing in there, I’ve studied every word, and I have a good sense of where everything is. I can reach into it and bring out the parts that I think will speak to this congregation. I feely admit that my Ephesians 1 sermon is what some traditions call a “sugar stick” sermon. But I also never tire of it, and there’s always something new in it for me. I recently spoke at Sovereign Hope in Missoula (Hi Fongs! Hi Tyler!), and as I unfolded the riches of Ephesians 1 this time and explored the meaning of “every spiritual blessing,” I found something new. I’m not sure what to call it, but it has something to do…
About This Blog
Notes, quotes, thoughts, trial balloons, reviews, Twitter threads that turned out okay, position papers, miscellanies. Lightly edited theology writing from Fred Sanders.
