Category: Evangelical Calvinist

My frequency of posting has clearly dropped off. Years ago I would write a blog post every single day. As life’s demands became greater that slowed to a few posts a week. At the moment it seems as if I’m generally down to one post a week. My work schedule, once again, has changed (to being on-call 24/7) which is why my pace of posts has slowed to nearly a trickle. It isn’t because I want to write less, it is simply because I am physically exhausted all of the time. Pray that the Lord might open other doors for…

Unreality. 17 Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word. 18 Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law. 19 I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me. 20 My soul is crushed with longing After Your ordinances at all times. 21 You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, Who wander from Your commandments. 22 Take away reproach and contempt from me, For I observe Your testimonies. 23 Even though princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes. 24 Your testimonies also…

The following is taken from my final exam from my Patristic Theology class in seminary (circa 2003); we had to answer three out of five questions in essay form. This essay highlights the person and theology of Irenaeus. I will provide a brief description of Irenaeus first, and then get into the essay. This was before I ever started reading either Barth or Torrance in any depth. But you might see how once I did, I was already predisposed to their respective theologies vis-à-vis informing theologies like Irenaeus’ represents. Irenaeus (ca. 130-200) was Bishop of Lyons. Most likely he grew…

Karl Barth, in his Göttingen Dogmatics, takes from neo-Reformed Dutch theologian’s, Herman Bavinck’s notion of Deus dixit (‘God has spoken’), as a way to think about the way God has revealed Himself bound up in a radical doctrine of the Word of God. Many have probably heard of Barth’s threefold form of the Word of God; it is in the early years of his time at Göttingen that this line of thinking got started for him; particularly as he was pressed upon to teach a Reformed dogmatics within a Lutheran setting. The following showcases the way Barth articulated his understanding…

Let me say another word about theological exegesis (I prefer that to theological interpretation of Scripture, as far as the language goes). I’m not sure I made myself as clear as I would like to have in my last post: everyone and anyone who attempts to interpret the Bible does so “theologically.” I don’t think this is appreciated enough, at all! In order for folks to appreciate this properly they might have to reorientate their thinking a bit. No matter what belief system, or belief reality someone is committed to, they bring this to the text of Scripture. So, if…

A recent podcast I did on the simplicity of salvation. I sketch performative based schemas of salvation, and then counterpose those by way of offering what I take to be a genuine offering of God’s free grace for the world in Jesus Christ (a non-transactional/non-performative based doctrine of salvation). Click Here Athanasian Reformed

The following are three vignettes on Theological Exegesis or Theological Interpretation of Scripture (TIS) that I just posted today on Facebook. I think, in the main, so many Christians are so far removed from all things theological or actual, when it comes to excavating the reality of the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, that when some do attempt deep dives into such things they simply attempt to apply “common-sense” everyday linguistic and cultural reading theories onto the text of Scripture that Scripture itself resists. Scripture is Holy because its reality is in Jesus Christ. Scripture is…

As a radical Protestant I am a theologian of a radical theology of the Word. This means that I first understand the Word, to be the eternal Logos, the begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. I understand his free election (Deus incarnandus) to be for us to entail what has become the written and proclaimed Word. So, the creaturely media, such as written and proclaimed Words are, in order, at least for the former to be living and active, requires that its res or reality be antecedently given in and from the eternally living and active Word of…

I have been accepted into the PhD program in Systematic and Historical Theology at St. Alcuin House Seminary, an Anglican institution of the Benedictine order in the Communion of Anglican Churches. I’ll give more details as I have them. They have been accredited in the past, and are currently in application for renewing their accreditation (I believe the accreditation comes through Cambridge Assessment International Education of Cambridge University). Athanasian Reformed

God is not “a datum or factoid that is best understood with the scrutiny of a scholarly mind.”[1] And yet, enter the fray of theological social media, enter the faculty lounges across many seminaries and divinity schools, or simply attempt to learn of God with more depth by reading theology books unawares (i.e., without critical resource to know otherwise), and you will end up coming up against a notion of God that has nothing do with the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ. Whether that notion be informed by the scholasticism of Aristotelian or scholastic vintage, or it be of more…