“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Why does John call Jesus “the Word” (Jn 1:1)?
Students of John’s Gospel have long pondered the question: Why does John call Jesus “the Word” in his prologue? Given the prologue’s resonance with discussions of Wisdom in the Old Testament (e.g., Job 28; Proverbs 8) and within ancient Judaism (e.g., Wisdom 7, which bears multiple similarities to John 1:1-18), the obvious title for the […]
To what end retrieval? Five theses
Peter Leithart’s article today at First Things prompted (provoked?) me to jot down some thoughts regarding the ends of retrieval. Here are five theses. To what end retrieval? 1. Retrieval rests on a twofold judgment: (1) that all is not well in contemporary theology and biblical studies and (2) that the help we need might […]
