Fred SandersA scene from the Leben der heiligen Altväter (1482)
Pannenberg’s Trinitarian Theology (from Theology for the Future)
Andrew Hollingsworth has edited a set of ten chapters on Theology for the Future: The Enduring Promise of Wolfhart Pannenberg, with a foreword by Friederike Nüssel and an afterword by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. I wrote the fifth…
Review of Harrower, God of All Comfort: A Trinitarian Response to the Horrors of this World
Working from the conviction that Christian theology has deep resources for those who have experienced trauma, this volume explores “how God the Trinity engages with horrors and trauma, and what people can hope for in light…
Review of Daley’s Leontius of Byzantium
This impressive volume provides the full text, in Greek with an English translation on facing pages, of six polemical works attributed to an accomplished sixth-century monastic theologian. It also includes much of the necessary textual arcana,…
Review of Levy, Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation
This volume introduces the thought of key interpreters of Scripture from nearly a millennium of Western intellectual history. Though there is a brief opening overview of church fathers reaching back to Origen, Levy’s real tale picks…
A Profound MysteryHow the Trinity Helps in Our Evangelism
Here’s a piece I wrote for the FIEC publication called Primer. It’s available in the November 2019 print edition (full issue, free!). David Shaw provided some excellent editing for me that made the article much clearer,…
Book Symposium on The Triune God
This suite of responses to Fred Sanders’ book The Triune God (Zondervan, 2016) is from papers originally read at the 2016 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. This symposium publishes the papers by Wesley Hill,…
Foreword to Barrett, None Greater
(None Greater can be purchased from Baker Books or at Amazon) Usually when theologians find out they were wrong about something, they admit it readily enough. But then they cover their tracks. They revise their views…
Holy Scripture Under the Auspices of the Holy TrinityOn John Webster's Trinitarian Doctrine of Scripture
As he approached the monumental task of writing his own systematic theology, John Webster gave strategic attention to constructing a doctrine of Scripture that was adequate to support such a project. In contrast to some well-respected…
Foreword to Hongyi Yang, A Development, Not a DepartureThe Lacunae in the Debate of the Doctrine of the Trinity and Gender Roles (Reformed Academic Dissertation)
(Hongyi Yang’s book may be purchased from P&R, or at Amazon) The public controversy over trinitarian theology that culminated online in the summer of 2016 was a remarkable event. Academics and commentators, pastors and laypeople, experts…
Review of Anthony C. Thiselton’s A Shorter Guide to Holy Spirit
‘‘Shorter Guide’’ is a peculiar genre. Though it is on the same topic by the same author, this volume is an entirely new book rather than a condensed version of its predecessor.
Spiritual Formation in the Trinity: A Review Essay of Donald Fairbairn’s Life in the Trinity
As I was rearranging some shelves recently, I was struck by the fact that my books on spiritual formation occupy a peculiar region. They live somewhere toward the end of the whole theological collection, after the…
Review of Carl L. Beckwith’s The Holy Trinity
To those on the outside of its institutions and traditions, Lutheranism can sometimes seem like a parallel universe. Even when Lutheran theologians are writing about doctrines with a common ecumenical status (and the Trinity is such…
Classical Theism Makes a Comeback
In recent years, there has been a change in the way theologians talk the doctrine of God. One way to describe the change would be to say that classical theism has made a comeback. By “classical…
Biblical Grounding for the Christology of the Councils
When theologians take up the crucial catechetical task of teaching about Jesus Christ, what principle of ordering should they follow? Which sub-topics within this rich field should be taught first, which ones postponed until later, and under what overarching categories should they all be gathered? In this article, I would like to commend one particular organizational schema for introducing Christology to students, and then demonstrate the advantages of that schema by offering a brief example of its key points. The method I recommend is this: follow the leading ideas of the ecumenical councils of the early church and then support them with biblical argumentation. Conciliar Christology is thus the framework for teaching Christology, with biblical material brought in to fill it out.
Biola in the American Evangelical Story
Douglas A. Sweeney’s The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movementis a masterpiece of concise storytelling. In introducing the movement, Sweeney combines an insider’s sympathetic understanding with an objectivity and sense of perspective about what to report. The result is a short, readable book that can serve multiple audiences well. I am particularly interested in using Sweeney’s American Evangelical Storyto help new Biola faculty understand their own institutional heritage more fully. If Biola is going to equip and empower its faculty for the task of integration, one of the resources it should provide is a grasp of the school’s identity that is not just superficial.
“Is There a Theology of California?”
In a previous chapter, I argued in favor of a localist approach to the work of systematic theology, and in particular to claim that such a thing was desirable in this particular locale, California. That chapter…
“California, Localized Theology, and Theological Localism”
Wallace Stegner once said, “Like the rest of America, California is unformed, innovative, ahistorical, hedonistic, acquisitive, and energetic—only more so.” As California becomes increasingly self-conscious as a social and political entity, an academic conversation is beginning…
“A Name, Names, and Half a Name,” in a symposium on Kendall Soulen’s The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity
For a 2014 book symposium in Pro Ecclesia, six theologians (Karen Kilby, Matthew Levering, Paul Hinlicky, Neil MacDonald, James Buckley, and me) responded to an important book by Kendall Soulen. Here is my contribution, along with…
