On:
In: Christology, Reviews, Theology

The penetrating style and exceedingly capable analytic skills of Oliver D. Crisp has given us an outstanding work on atonement. Previously, Crisp co-edited a collection of papers presented at the third annual Los Angeles Theology Conference under the title, Locating the Atonement. In his newest, Crisp lays out atonement modelsRead More

On:
In: Christology, Church History, Reviews, Theology, Trinity

I’m reading through Michael Bird’s What Christians Ought to Believe: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine Through the Apostles’ Creed and finding it an outstanding resource for basic Christian doctrine. For those not familiar with Bird, he is solidly grounded (and educated …. [wink]) in Christian origins and New Testament theology,Read More

On:
In: Christology, Church History, Theology

I’ve put together a snapshot of many of the Christological heresies that the Christian Church had to contend with in the first several centuries of its existence. Altough other heresies are not mentioned (e.g., Sabellianism, Montanism), this matrix captures errant beliefs on the person and nature of Jesus Christ and the orthodox responses. Century/ErrorRead More

On:
In: Christology, Church History, Theology

Setting the stage for the second chapter “Perichoresis and Christ”, Twombly begins by describing the “genuine advances” in christological development since Chalcedon (pp 48-53). I have to say that those already familiar with Chalcedonian (451 CE) and its import will readily find these few pages a gold mine of Christian history and worth the price of theRead More

On:
In: Christology, Church History, Theology, Trinity

In my reading on the Trinity (Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity; Advancing Trinitarian Theology; The Holy Trinity), one question has repeatedly been raised with regard to the meaning of “perichoresis”. The authors of the above books use the term (and its cognates) but do not carefully or adequately explainRead More

On:
In: Christology, Mutualist • Egalitarian, Reviews, Theology

Darren O. Sumner has a very nice contribution to Advancing Trinitarian Theology titled “Obedience and Subordination in Trinitarian Theology”. In critiquing Barth’s thesis that God the Son is eternally subordinated to the God the Father, Sumner writes: The distinction between ontological and functional subordination finally rests upon a metaphysical division between God’sRead More

On:
In: Apologetics, Christology

All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. —Mt 11:27 Jesus claims that his Father (i.e., God, cf., vv. 25-26) andRead More

On:
In: Christology, Theology, Trinity

The latest Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS 58/1, pp 131-149) has a fascinating article by D. Glenn Butner, Jr. entitled “Eternal Functional Subordination and the Problem of the Divine Will.” In it he argues that maintaining eternal functional subordination of the Son to the Father “is completely contraryRead More