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In my previous post , I took up the question of God’s beauty. In this penultimate post, we move to the question of God’s goodness. If the question of beauty takes the form of worrying that God is a killjoy, the question of goodness worries that God is a killer simpliciter. Not only is His […]
Don’t let the religious preference on their dog tags fool you—like American society, the vast majority of soldiers are not practicing Christians. Yet even if, say, 80% of soldiers are not Christians, some 80% of soldiers will go to their chaplain in their hour of need. Compare this to mainstream society, where struggling people rarely […]
Most people with a basic knowledge of English history have heard the name of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, the only one in the list that could be said to have “survived” without experiencing a divorce. Few, however, are familiar with her story, and even fewer with her writings. In fact, her […]
Disputes about how churches should worship are often hard not only due to disagreement about specific practices but also due to disagreement about the standards by which we should evaluate them. Clarifying these differing assumptions and standards is an essential first step toward better understanding. Above all, confessional Protestants want worship to be biblical, but […]
It’s been over ten years since I last read John Owen’s famous (or infamous!) treatise on the extent of Christ’s atonement, popularly called The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Since that time, I have written a dissertation on John Davenant, an English delegate to the Synod of Dordt, and his own book […]
Upon completing my doctoral degree in July this year, I spent subsequent months reflecting on the nature and ends of academic theology. I was fortunate to have received an excellent theological education at Westminster Seminary California, where I met some exemplary theologians who laboured hard to serve scholars, students, pastors, and churches. I was captured […]
How does God save sinners? This is one of the richest theological questions a person can ask, and the answer requires a mind-stretching and heart-enlarging quest that spans the whole of the Bible. The “how” of salvation takes us into the eternal counsels of the Triune God, through the covenant promises and relationships of redemptive […]
Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven. Tryon Edwards All summer long, I dreaded the start of the school year. Our oldest son graduated high school this spring, and at the end of August, we packed up the car and moved him into the university dorms. I […]
What should the role of theology be in the construction of political prescriptions? The role of theology can be said to exist on a continuum between two hypothetical extremes. One extreme would assert that all political thought must be rooted in revealed theology. This is a hard standard to find in historical practice. There has […]
Denominations across the spectrum are facing the reality of youth attrition. Findings from Pew Research Center suggest that upwards of three-quarters of today’s religious “nones” were “raised as a member of a particular religion before shedding their religious identity in adulthood.” Historically, at least a portion of those who left the church would return when […]
One of the more familiar tropes of Roman Catholic historiography is the claim that the Reformation marked an immediate sea change in Christians’ understanding of salvation. On this account, a realist metaphysics of participation and transformation abruptly gave way to a nominalist, purely “forensic” account of the Christian life, in which God chooses arbitrarily to […]
As noted in part 1 of this series, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in systematic theology. Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley’s projected four-volume Reformed Systematic Theology is a solid example of an expanding renewal of research and publication concerning properly categorical theology. This post explores Beeke and Smalley’s section on theology proper. […]
