Category: Trinitarian Theology

Affective Spirituality

“What do you mean by ‘affective theology?’ I’ve never heard of it before I met you.” It’s a fair question. I first found the label in Heiko Oberman’s The Dawn of the Reformation where he wrote of fourteenth-century Christians whose “suspicion of speculation” led them away from prior theological streams. They preferred “an affective theology …

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God’s Soft Spot

God has a soft spot. It’s not a weakness—as if he’s less than divine at this point—but a quality in his Triune relations that allows us to connect with him in uniquely tender terms. Here’s the secret. Say, “Thank you, Lord”—everywhere and all the time! Make it a steady part of your walk, your talk, …

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Three unions

Richard Sibbes, my favorite English puritan (1577-1635), treated human salvation very much as Martin Luther had done in Saxony a century before—mainly as a function of ontology. It shifted the focus away from the more judicial notion of salvation common in his day. In the judicial view Jesus took up the Father’s judgment against sin—death—on …

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