Category: Church History

A Treatise on Grace

It’s mid-morning and I’m enjoying a morning coffee at Le Petit Café in the university district of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I arrived to the background sound of Amazing Grace in English playing on their sound system. It’s remarkably apropos because of my focus here for today: Jonathan Edwards’ Treatise on Grace. I drew from it yesterday …

Read More A Treatise on Grace

A New Way

This entry repeats the article posted at Cor Deo – please offer any responses on that site The early church father, Irenaeus, offered bread for hungry hearts. Here’s something from him I find helpful in coming to a new year. He wrote sometime around AD 180. “God recapitulated in Himself the ancient formation of man, …

Read More A New Way

What about the Spirit?

Success in living a spiritual life depends, not surprisingly, on the Spirit. Yet the Christian tradition has been very soft in addressing the Spirit’s place in the Godhead and in our lives as believers. That despite many strong advocates for him both now and in the past. His role in both Old and New Testaments …

Read More What about the Spirit?

Affective Theology

“I tried to find a definition for ‘affective theology’ in the dictionary but it wasn’t listed—so where does it come from and what does it mean?” That question was posed to me a number of times when I was a seminary teacher. Students wondered why I used the phrase regularly in my classes while it …

Read More Affective Theology

A Passionate God

Too many Christians, I’m afraid, have the disaffected God of the Greek philosophers in mind when they pray or when they plan their day. The Greek versions of God are all about power—about having control over everything—rather than about his forming and sustaining relationships with a treasured creation. The full post has been published in the …

Read More A Passionate God

Two Traditions

Years ago I read a thought-provoking article by Heiko Oberman: “Calvin’s Critique of Calvinism” [in The Dawn of the Reformation, ch. 11, see p. 265]. There he noted Lucien Richard’s The Spirituality of John Calvin that demonstrated that Calvin turned from a spirituality of devotio (spiritual devotion) to a spirituality of pietas (spiritual piety). Devotio …

Read More Two Traditions