“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 136:1). According to Psalm 136, we have many reasons to give God thanks. God is by nature good and, because God is eternal, his goodness towards his people endures forever. Psalm 136 identifies the good God as the supreme […]
Seven theses on the divine name(s) (drawn chiefly from the Pentateuch)
One of the central themes of the Pentateuch is the revelation of God’s proper name, YHWH. Below are seven summary theses drawn therefrom. (1) The revelation of the divine name is an act of divine condescension in which the high God stoops down and self-proclaims his name to us in our language (Exod 34:5; cf. […]
A biblical argument for divine simplicity: the analogy of Scripture
The doctrine of divine simplicity teaches that God is “without parts” (WCF 2.1), i.e., that there is no real distinction between God’s being (that he is) and essence (what he is), or between God’s being (that he is) and the various attributes we use to describe his essence (he is this and this and this). […]
The holiness of Scripture
“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever” (Ps 19:9a). Because it occupies the penultimate spot on Psalm 19’s list of scriptural perfections, we should take “the fear of the Lord,” in this context, as a perfection of Scripture as well. What’s going on? I take this as an example of naming something by […]
On tradition
“One generation shall commend your works to another” (Ps 145:4). I’ve just finished two recent but very different books (here and here) on the nature of “tradition,” the church’s process of transmitting the faith once for all delivered to the saints from one generation to the next (1 Cor 15:3; 2 Tim 1:13-14; 2:2; Jude […]
Four paragraphs on perichoresis (in the Gospel of John)
1. In order to follow John’s testimony regarding the person and work of Jesus Christ, we must attend to the ways he describes Jesus’ oneness with the Father along with the ways John describes the natural kinship relation that grounds their oneness. These two ways of speaking about Jesus correspond to the two ways John […]
