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One of the last writings Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) completed was his Five Books on Consideration. The whole work is fascinating and worth reading: it’s essentially advice to one of his former students who had become bishop of Rome (Pope Eugene III), explaining how to manage such great obligations without losing his soul. The early books feature meditations on virtue, practical advice on schedule management and delegation, an apology for the results of the second crusade, and plenty of pointed directions for how to reform the church’s own government –these catalogs of abuses and corruptions help explain why On Consideration became a favorite text among reformers like Wyclif and Erasmus, and especially among capital-R Reformers like Calvin. But the real treasure is Book V, chapters 6-14. Here in the final 25 pages or so, Bernard turns the reader’s attention to the things above, and…

People who tend to think of the three persons of the Trinity as three distinct individuals, each with their own individual center of consciousness (maybe a differentiated self-awareness knotted together with a matching other-awareness), faculty of willing, and so on, are what we loosely call “social trinitarians.” I put this in scare quotes because it’s a notoriously imprecise label that has probably served more to confuse issues than it has succeeded to pick out any particular view. It’s one of those conventional labels that you have to use and then immediately define specifically; so it loses the advantages that labels are supposed to have: quick, clear communication. But when it functions adequately, the “social” in “social trinitarian” is supposed to evoke the old social analogy for the Trinity: the persons of the Trinity are like three people in a close relationship. Perhaps the label…

If you’re already familiar with the other Gospels, Mark can be startling. How in the world can he leave out so much? How can he start the story of Jesus without explaining either the virginal conception or the genealogy of Jesus? How can he bring in John the Baptist with no historical backstory? How can he just start right in with the heavens being torn open and Jesus hearing the voice of the Father saying, “You are my beloved son”? Even if you affirm Mark’s chronological priority, and on that basis believe that the proper form of these questions ought to be flipped around (“Why do Matthew and Luke add so much?”), Mark’s narrative parsimony is remarkable. His “suddenly this happened!” storytelling strategy leaves you wondering how we got here, even when we just got here. Consider the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan….

There’s a scene near the end of Pride and Prejudice where Mrs. Bennet has a social opportunity to say characteristically foolish things to Mr. Darcy. Alert readers are apprehensive! But the narrator reassures us: “Mrs. Bennet luckily stood in such awe of her intended son-in-law that she ventured not to speak to him, unless it was in her power to offer him any attention, or mark her deference for his opinion.” I thought this was an odd use of “attention,” which ought to mean “the act of attending or heeding; the act of bending the mind upon any thing.” This definition is from Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, nearly contemporary with Austen (P&P was published 1813; Johnson’s dictionary was published in its first edition 1755, fourth edition 1773). But it wouldn’t make much sense to say that Mrs. Bennet didn’t speak to Mr. Darcy except to…

Amphilochius of Iconium (ca. 345-404) was the bonus Cappadocian: he did not attain unto the three, and his works are not well preserved for us, but he was right there with Basil and the Gregs, and his theology was very influential in the early centuries. I ran across a nice little sequence of lines from his Iambics to Seleucus, and spent some time studying them. These lines didn’t end up working for the project I was writing, but I didn’t want to forget them. They seem to be rehearsing Trinitarian orthodoxy circa 400, and so the fact that they don’t try to boast much originality is one of the best things about them. We have an early pro-Nicene working out the best ways to say things, making sure to use the key terminology with conspicuous correctness. So here they are: For the eternal Trinity…

God commands us to do a good thing. We hear the precept, but what if we despair of our ability to carry it out? What can we do? We can ask God for divine assistance, or even ask him to do the commanded thing for us (or through us, or to us, or within us). In response, he promises to do so. Looking back on this three-step sequence, we might even find ourselves confessing that God intended to make the promise anyway, and so he gave the command in order to prompt us to ask for the gracious help. Precept-Prayer-Promise. It might seem convoluted, especially when drawn out to three beats. Augustine noticed the sequence and prayed to God in his Confessions, “Give what you command, and command what you will.” That sounds like only two beats (give=promise, command=precept), but of course we’re hearing…

One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is show Christians how to see the Trinity in the Bible. I like to teach a three-session series on the topic, looking at five key passages (John 1:1-3, Matt 28:19, Gal 4:4-6, 2 Cor 13:14, and Eph 2:18). My goal is to spend enough time with each passage to sense its own dynamics, understand it in context, and develop the confidence to paraphrase its meaning. As Bible students get more comfortable with the key ideas, their paraphrasing can take many forms. But in a short course at the congregational level, I make sure to introduce the traditional terms (essence, person, preexistence, eternal generation, inseparable operations, etc.) and to treat them as helpful guidelines provided to us from the Christian church of the ages. The emphasis is sola scriptura (since God alone is fit to…

There’s a kind of back and forth involved in teaching about the triune God. You have to be able to state the doctrine briefly, but be prepared to unfold it at greater length. The brief and easy statement needs to be clear and satisfying, and then the longer statement needs to not contradict the brief one. I find this back and forth movement throughout the Christian tradition, and though I’ll illustrate it by looking at the Heidelberg Catechism, I could also have used examples from the fourth, fifth, or thirteenth centuries. But it’s a movement of thought often missing in current conversations about the Trinity. Here’s the example: Question 24 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks how the three articles of the Apostles’ Creed are divided, and answers: Into three parts:God the Father and our creation;God the Son and our deliverance;God the Holy Spirit and…

1. Genesis 3: God Promises a Redeemer In the beginning, two trees stood in the midst of the garden. There was the tree of life, and there was the tree of knowledge, and they just made sense. They grew side by side, and self-evidently belonged together. The LORD God planted them there as a dual blessing in a world of blessedness, a match made in paradise. But now nobody remembers how they were ever supposed to go together, because Adam and Eve took them apart… and lost the instructions. Whatever else the LORD God had said about the two trees, he had definitely commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That prohibition was holy and righteous, but our first parents called it into question. Their ears had heard the holy word that walked among the ancient trees,…

“What benefits do we receive” from believing each doctrine we believe, asks the Heidelberg Catechism. This recurring question about benefits is a hallmark of the catechism, inviting the reader not to stop at mere affirmation, but to press on and embrace the practical results and the appropriate comfort that follow from faith. “What fruits do we derive,” “what comfort do we find,” and so on. But when the Catechism comes to faith in the Trinity (questions 24 and 25), it does not raise this question. Why not? We don’t know; it doesn’t say. Perhaps the author, confident that his exposition of the persons of the Father (Q. 26-28), Son (Q. 29-52), and Holy Spirit (Q. 53 and following) was adequately focused on practical application, decided to hold his fire on the Trinity question itself. There can be, after all, something impertinent in asking “what’s…

Sometimes when you’re working on a big project, you find yourself spinning off, almost by accident, little sub-projects. These can be of various kinds: some are distracting sidelines; some are sub-sections that are fine but just don’t fit the flow of thought; some are ideas that develop their own heft and center of gravity and just spin away. There’s a word for those little excrescences in your productivity: they (plural) are parerga, or each of them is a parergon. A little by-work, that developed alongside the large, main work. People used to use this word in literary or artistic contexts: if Michelangelo made a small painting while working out ideas for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, you would call that little stand-alone painting a parergon of the big project. So it’s different from a preliminary sketch, because sketches are practice for the main work. A…

“What’s the difference between the Holy Spirit & the Holy Ghost?” This is the most surprising question I get, doing interviews since publishing a book on the third person of the Trinity. It comes up often in Q&A! People want to know, so I figured I’d answer it here on Halloween. There’s no difference; same person. So why do we have two expressions? A quick answer is that “ghost” is a more old-fashioned English word for “spirit.” So if you’re reading an older English translation (KJV & company), or singing or reciting anything based on it, you’ll be comfortable saying “Holy Ghost.” Meanwhile, English changes, & “ghost” long ago stopped meaning “spiritual” in general usage. It now mainly suggests an apparition of the dead. So recent translations (Revised Version 1885 on) mostly say “Holy Spirit.” Less explaining, less spooky, still faithful to the original….

Paul prays (Eph 3:19) for believers “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” This “orthodox paradox” is the subject of a 1665 book by a Puritan named Peter Williams (1625-1680), with the title Φιλανθρωπια [philanthropia], or the Transcendency of Christs Love Towards the Children of Men. (Google Books scan is not uniformly legible; EEBO TCP text has some significant gaps and gaffes.) It’s a 275-page expansion of the theme, and though it starts with quite detailed exposition (even text-critical considerations), it spreads out into a survey that includes doctrinal theology and (what we would now call) biblical theology. This is Williams’ first book, and he is eager to quote from respected sources. His range of reading is impressive, the quotations are usually aptly chosen, and those other voices that he channels (in the main text or the packed margins) must make up half…

I was glad to see a review of my 2021 academic book Fountain of Salvation: Trinity & Soteriology appear in one of the liveliest of theological journals, Pro Ecclesia; even more glad to see the review is by Brad East, a keen-eyed observer well worth hearing from; and even even more more glad glad to find the review so very positive about my work. But beyond those gratifying (to me) elements of the reading experience, I think it’s the best book review one of my books has received because by the end it definitely rises to the level of talking not just about the book, but about the very things the book talks about: Trinity and salvation. Brad does some careful observation and description of my work, locates it among some other recent studies, and then ends the review with the suggestion that the…

The Synopsis of a Purer Theology (Leiden, 1625) is one of the most satisfying products of Protestant Scholasticism. It’s now available in English, and soon in paperback (Davenant, 2023). So there will be no excuse for being ignorant of the excellent argumentation in these rigorous disputations. I want to post a few excerpts from Disputation 9, on the person of the Holy Spirit, mainly because I wish this solid and vigorous Protestant pneumatology was more widely known. But another reason I want to share it because in my recent work on the Holy Spirit, I followed the guidance of the Synopsis’ treatment of the Spirit quite closely, but only cited the work once. So it’s not as visible in my footnotes as I wish I had made it. To compensate, here are a few of the most significant moves from the Synopsis: First, the…