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?
Bible
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
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
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
Exegetical Theology: a Methodological Proposal
Introduction: Recovering the Order of Theology Christian theology has always required method even if it is not acknowledged . From the patristic era onward, the church has wrestled with the relationship between Scripture and doctrinal formulation. Yet in modern theological practice, the disciplines have frequently drifted apart. In the early centuries, doctrinal controversies were exegetical … Continue reading Exegetical Theology: a Methodological Proposal
Participating Without Competing: Removing Competition From Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom
Is God in control? If God is in control how can I be free? If I am free, how can God be in control? Few theological tensions feel as sharp as this one. The question has animated Christian theology from Augustine's controversy with Pelagius. It continued to the sixteenth-century disputes between Arminius and his Reformed … Continue reading Participating Without Competing: Removing Competition From Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom
Understanding God’s Pure Actuality in Christian Theology
The question is not whether God is living, loving, and free. Those affirmations belong to the unanimous confession of Christian theology across every era and communion. The question is what those words mean when predicated of the One who says, "I AM WHO I AM" (Exod 3:14). Can a being who lives, loves, and acts … Continue reading Understanding God’s Pure Actuality in Christian Theology
Leaving, Dwelling, and Returning
Lexical Repetition, Narrative Architecture, and Covenant Movement in Genesis The apparent tension between God’s command to Abraham to leave his land and kindred and God’s command to Jacob to return to his land and kindred is not a loose thread in Genesis. It is a carefully woven feature of the narrative. When read in isolation, … Continue reading Leaving, Dwelling, and Returning
Donnie's Dogmatics 