Few doctrines stand closer to the heart of the gospel than justification. When Martin Luther reflected upon this truth, he described it as the article by which the church stands or falls. The reason is not difficult to see. The question that presses upon every sinner is ultimately this: How can a guilty person stand … Continue reading Justification: God’s Decree of Righteousness
Substitution or Participation?
For a growing number of Christians, substitution has become a suspicious word. It sounds too violent, judicial, mechanical, and too tied to forms of Protestant scholasticism that seemed to describe salvation as little more than a legal transaction occurring somewhere above human life rather than within it. Many younger theologians and pastors now prefer different … Continue reading Substitution or Participation?
Exegetical Foundations for Divine Plenitude
Any theological account of divine plenitude must begin with Scripture’s own depiction of God as infinitely alive, blessed, and communicative in his goodness. The Christian doctrine of divine plenitude does not arise from metaphysical speculation. Instead, the Christian doctrine of divine plenitude (the overflowing of God's perfect life into blessedness) emerges from the biblical data. … Continue reading Exegetical Foundations for Divine Plenitude
Divine Plenitude: The Overflowing Life of God
God is powerful. God is sovereign. God is immutable. Yet one can affirm all of them while still imagining God as fundamentally closed, static, or solitary. The result is a doctrinally correct deity who nevertheless feels emotionally and metaphysically thin. The church’s classical tradition resisted this reduction with remarkable consistency. Scripture and the great theologians … Continue reading Divine Plenitude: The Overflowing Life of God
The Sacrifice That Answers the Problem: How The Garden Sacrifice, Leviticus, and Isaiah 53 Prepare Us For the Cross
Christ's cross did not arrive at Calvary without preparation. Before Christ was crucified outside Jerusalem, God was training his people to understand his eternal plan for what would happen on that Friday afternoon. God prepared his people through images of blood, through priests, through altars, through the repeated and irreversible death of innocent animals in … Continue reading The Sacrifice That Answers the Problem: How The Garden Sacrifice, Leviticus, and Isaiah 53 Prepare Us For the Cross
The Covenantal Framework of Atonement
Why Representative Headship Is the Key to Understanding the Cross Many modern misunderstandings of penal substitutionary atonement arise from a failure to grasp the Bible’s covenantal and representative logic. Contemporary Western individualism often assumes that persons exist as isolated moral units whose actions belong to themselves alone. Yet Scripture regularly presents humanity in corporate and … Continue reading The Covenantal Framework of Atonement
What is Atonement?
What is the atonement? What is penal substitutionary atonement?
DID GOD REALLY CHANGE? PRINCIPLES FOR READING ABOUT GOD
The noble task of reading about God and discussing God must begin with humility and be guided by the entirety of Scripture as it describes God with careful attention to how it describes God. God is not an object within the world to be measured, mastered, or comprehended as creatures comprehend other creatures. He is … Continue reading DID GOD REALLY CHANGE? PRINCIPLES FOR READING ABOUT GOD
What Is A Person? Recovering a Theological Grammar for Speaking of God
The word person feels simple. We use it regularly without thought. Yet in Christian theology it carries a precision that everyday language cannot sustain. If we import modern assumptions into Trinitarian doctrine, we distort the biblical data concerning the triune God. The term “person,” in large part, arose within the church’s effort to confess the … Continue reading What Is A Person? Recovering a Theological Grammar for Speaking of God
Firm at the Center and Gentle at the Edges: Navigating Opinions While Pursuing Truth and the Unity of the Church
The line between truth and opinion is not thin. It is not negotiable. Truth is what God has spoken and commanded. Opinion is what he has left open, entrusting his people to judge with wisdom. Our judgmental restraint obedience and humility. It is not weakness. The distinction between what God said and how I feel … Continue reading Firm at the Center and Gentle at the Edges: Navigating Opinions While Pursuing Truth and the Unity of the Church
Donnie's Dogmatics 