Uncategorized

There’s a passage in Basil of Caesarea’s Against Eunomius (written 364) that is so helpful that I keep coming back to it over and over. I think I had to see it quoted about a dozen times before I finally began to recognize just how good it is. It may not jump out and grab you instantly. But if you’re trying to think about the absolutely fundamental principles of trinitarian theology, Basil makes a few moves in this passage that draw everything together. I was about to make a handout of the passage for students, when I realized it would be better to put it here in public. So here it is. It’s got everything: conceptual clarity, terminological precision, and epistemic distinctions that help keep you on track. I’ll add a little commentary below, but the main thing to see here is primary text…

A while ago, I did some teaching about the doctrine of eternal generation. It’s something I teach about plenty: see this book, or this chapter, or this free article at Desiring God. As I wrapped up the lesson, a friend asked about the terminology. The exchange took place on social media, but with someone I know in real life. He’s not a trained theologian but is an active church member, and he has legal training which he uses both in practicing and teaching law. You’ll see the fine, analytic turn of his mind in the way he poses this (lightly edited) question: Under the ordinary lay use of “generate” as I understand it (something akin to “create” or “cause to come into being”) the notion of eternal generation appears self-contradictory, as something generated must have not existed before it was generated. (This would also…

One of 2024’s most helpful books on the Trinity is Beholding the Triune God: The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit, by Matt Emerson and Brandon Smith. I’ve been recommending it widely for people who have a basically sound trinitarianism but recognize their need to reflect a little more deeply on how the three persons work together. In my endorsement for the the publisher, I said: Two trustworthy theologians team up on a project to explain why it’s never enough to say that the persons of the Trinity team up on projects. There is a much deeper unity to the work of the triune God, and this short, readable book directs our attention to it. When I praised the book (and the classic doctrine of the inseparable operations of the Trinity) on social media, a pastor friend replied: I get this in principle…

Lutheran theologian Friedrich Balduin (1575-1627) wrote a commentary on Paul’s letters, compendiously filled with goodies from previous ages, and animated by doctrinal interest. Balduin also has some diagramming skills. This little brackety outline of Ephesians caught my eye: Which goes something like this: Bonus: Here’s the bragadocious title page of his commentary. (That’s Paul being inspired by Christ up above; Balduin is in the inset portrait.)

Here are some suggestions I’ve shared in a few places for how to teach the doctrine of the Trinity to children. Consider me an amateur as a teacher of young kids—I do serve a regular rotation with the first-to-fifth graders at my church, so I’m drawing from some experience, though not a deep well of it— but an expert on the doctrine side. These suggestions are especially designed to help with any complex doctrine, but I have in mind the Trinity above all. Think About Delivery Yes, bracket the subject matter for just a moment and consider how you’re presenting yourself as a communicator. Are you a friendly, trustworthy adult who looks like they enjoy talking to kids? Is the chance to talk about God and the Bible something that you delight in? Show it. When it comes to complex doctrines like the Trinity,…

As I work on my theological commentary on Ephesians, I usually follow pretty predictable tracks. Ephesians has drawn centuries of excellent interpretation, including some powerful recent scholarship from professional exegetes. But sometimes I find myself “falling down a hole,” stumbling into discoveries I had not expected, and catching glimpses of things none of the commentaries have prepared me for. On those occasions, I give myself permission to follow the subject matter where it leads, and to write freely without worrying about word count or, frankly, audience. Something like that happened this week with the inconspicuous words “which he set forth in Christ” in Eph 1:9. It got hold of me, and I produced about 1400 words of comment on a phrase that is only four words in Greek. No doubt I will edit this down to something briefer before publication. A sense of due…

In his intro to the new translation of Campegius Vitringa’s Fundamentals of Sacred Theology, Levi Berntson describes how Vitringa, in numerous other works, defended the traditional (Nicene) doctrine of the Trinity, and in particular the eternal generation of the Son. Vitringa had written his 1679 dissertation about the exegetical basis of the doctrine of eternal generation, so when the doctrine came under critique about a decade later, Vitringa was well prepared to engage the arguments. What was the critique, and what were the arguments? Here’s Berntson’s summary: When controversy arose at Franeker during the late 1680s, Vitringa found himself as the lead defender of orthodox Trinitarian theology in Friesland. At this point in his teaching career, he entered into a series of debates with Röell, who was professor of theology and philosophy at Franeker from 1685 to 1704. Based on a strongly Cartesian doctrine…

God has imprinted truth and meaning into the history of salvation, making that history not just a series of events in which he did something, but a carrier of revelation. The sequence of divine actions and human responses is so structured that it communicates, by design, something about God that could not be communicated otherwise. That history is, in a word, an economy: a deliberately arranged medium bearing a divinely appointed message. Looking down on it from above, salvation history is like a wax seal that has received (and until the eschaton, within certain established lines, is still receiving) the impression of the signet. That signet signifies authoritatively the personal presence of its owner. In Ephesians 3:9-10, Paul says that his purpose is “to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all…

This is the eulogy I delivered for my stepfather-in-law, William Ralph Paris, on Sept 25, 2024 in western Kentucky. I should have spoken a little more about the presence of music in his life. The music at the memorial service included a traditional shape-note performance of “There is a Happy Land” and a congregational singing of “Higher Ground.” Both songs are appropriately land-related and old-fashioned. Family, friends, loved ones, and neighbors, We are gathered here today to remember the life, and to mourn the death, of William Ralph Paris, Jr. It’s not exactly clear to me what I should call him, because he went by many names: William and Ralph, of course, but also Will, Rodney, Rodsey, Papa Will, Papa, and several more context-dependent names and nicknames. He also handed out nicknames for others: he always called me Sir Frederick Von Sanders, which is…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…