Simplicity and Trinity

Divine simplicity means that God is not composed of different parts, but utterly whole and indivisible.  Its opposite is not “complex” but “composite.”  To affirm divine simplicity is to affirm that each of God’s attributes...

An Infinite Multiplication of Happiness

If the Lord in his kindness were ever to grant me the opportunity to pursue doctoral studies in theology, the dissertation I would like to pursue (at least these days) would be something like: “An...

Barth on Calvin

I love the way Barth describes his struggle with Calvin. I know something of this delightful feeling, when you encounter a new thinker and he blows you out of the water. He wrote in a...

Quotes on Christ’s Resurrection (12)

Jonathan Edwards: “That justification that believers have at their conversion is as partaking of the justification that Christ had in his resurrection; and so all the benefits that believers , their comfort and hope and...

Two Calvin Quotes

Calvin, commenting on Exodus 34:6-7, writes: “Thereupon his powers are mentioned, by which he is shown to us not as he is in himself, but as he is towards us; so that this recognition of...

Stott versus Calvin on the Saving Efficacy of Christ’s Resurrection

I’m a huge fan of John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, but I think a weakness of the book is its relative neglect of Christ’s resurrection. Not only does Stott have very little treatment of...

Disagreements with Barth

I thought it might be helpful to flesh out what I referred to in my last post on Barth but did not discuss, namely, areas in Barth’s theology which I find troubling. Ironically, I part...

Why Study Barth?

People often ask me why I am interested in spending some time studying Barth. This morning in a meeting I jotted out an answer to this question, as best as I am currently able to...

Bruce Gordon’s biography of Calvin