Biblical Reasoning: Recent Episodes
Brandon D. Smith
Today is the feast of St Matthias, the man providentially chosen to replace Judas Iscariot as the twelfth apostle (Acts 1:21-26). The early church recognized the symbolic significance of the number twelve. Twelve tribes prefigures twelve apostles. Jesus, as the True Israel, reconstituted the people of God, not around physical lineage but rather around right relationship to him. Matthias was chosen by lot over the other candidate (Joseph/Barsabbas/Justus–maybe Matthias was chosen for nominal simplicity!) and took his place in the ministry of the apostles as a witness to the resurrected Son of God.
Like several of the other apostles, we know next to nothing about Matthias from Holy Scripture other than his name and, in his case, this peculiar selection ceremony. But unique among the Twelve, Matthias was never mentioned in the gospel accounts. If it weren’t for this scene in Acts 1, we would never know that a man named Matthias had followed Jesus “beginning from the baptism of John” (Acts 1:22). But, of course, many went unnamed in the gospel: the 72, some of the women, many of the healed individuals. So, in a way, we might say that Matthias serves as a patron saint for gospel obscurity (Tradition actually identifies Matthias as the patron saint of alcoholics, because of an apocryphal saying attributed to him by Clement of Alexandria: “We must combat our flesh, set no value upon it, and concede to it nothing that can flatter it, but rather increase the growth of our soul by faith and knowledge.”)
As Matt and I have repeated a number of times, one of mentors, Craig Bartholomew, has encouraged us for years with this axiomatic advice: pursue obscurity. Last year, I published a piece reflecting on this advice. Here’s how it begins:
Craig Bartholomew, who has been a friend and mentor to many of us younger Christian scholars, often repeats the admonition: “pursue obscurity.” It is not enough simply to accept obscurity, if it happens to be our lot. Rather, there is virtue in positively pursuing obscurity, in seeking anonymity and non-recognition. I have thought a lot about this proverbial advice over the years. In fact, it has become a kind of life code for me, even if it often remains more aspirational than actual. I think about it especially in terms of our Lord’s warning in the Sermon not to practise our “righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them,” but rather to practise our spiritual disciplines – fasting and praying and almsgiving – in secret, where only our Father can see and reward (Matt 6:1–18). Jesus often exhorts us with this countercultural demand: to take the lowest place rather than the place of honour (Luke 14:7–11), to lose our lives rather than save them (Matt 16:25), to serve rather than be served (Matt 20:28). Comfort with obscurity is one important test of genuine Christian discipleship.
In the article, I apply the advice especially to the pursuit of craft: the kind of work that demands undistracted and unnoticed discipline and solitude. Below is how I land the plane, but you’ll want to read the whole thing to learn the source where Craig got the proverbial advice. But today, we can thank God for St Matthias and the challenging example he leaves to all of us.
The quest to be fully present to everyone all of the time is, of course, only amplified by social media. We can’t let a single thought go un-Tweeted, a single experience un-Instagrammed, or a single life update un-Facebooked. The internet, as the prophet Bo Burnham reminds us, offers “a little bit of everything all of the time.” And it perpetually invites us to become our own content creators and publicists. But at what cost? What is lost in this perpetual need to be seen, this constant pull toward public exposure, this chasing of personal platforms? Is it really so hard to discern the ways that our souls shrivel when their doors never close for craft and contemplation? Surely there is wisdom in resisting what Robert Cardinal Sarah calls the dictatorship of noise. Surely there is wisdom in keeping some reserve on tap….Surely there is wisdom in accepting and even seeking obscurity and preserving those most intimate moments for our shops and cells rather than our social media timelines.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Thomas Schreiner of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He returns to discuss the Book of Revelation, including why he wrote his new commentary (2:12), recapitulation and symbolism in the book (6:12), the book’s relationship to related extrabiblical material (15:36), authorship of the book (22:27), a fresh take on the millennium (29:31), and more. Buy Tom’s books.
Check out Brandon’s recent books: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation (IVP Academic, 2022), The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023), and The Trinity in the Canon (B&H Academic, 2023). You can also preorder Taught by God: Ancient Hermeneutics for the Modern Church (B&H Academic, 2024).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Get 40% off on up to 3 full price CSB Bibles at LifeWay.com with promo code CGCSB.
Producer: Ryan Modisette. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl.
Brandon D. Smith is Chair of the Hobbs School of Theology & Ministry and Associate Professor of Theology & Early Christianity at Oklahoma Baptist University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” -2 Corinthians 8:9
This was the sermon text for the Christmas Eve service my family and I attended last night. The pastor suggested that this verse is perhaps the most succinct summary of the purpose of the incarnation in the whole Bible. It emphasizes especially the grace of the Son’s condescension in becoming human: the pre-existent one becomes poor by taking our frail humanity into personal union with himself so that through his poverty we might be lavished with the riches of redemption.
This text also includes Christ’s full appellation: “our Lord Jesus Christ.” Sometimes Paul abbreviates this formula (the Lord, Christ, Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, etc.), but here we have the full title. And in this title, we have an entire Christology summarized in just a few words.
Lord: His Divinity
The Greek word kurios (Lord) was a divine title for Hellenistic Jews of the first century like Paul. Indeed, it was the word used to translate the divine name, YHWH, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The word could sometimes be used simply as an honorific for one’s superior (lord or master). But the New Testament usage makes clear that it has divine connotations when applied to Jesus. The title is also applied to the Father and in a few instances to the Spirit as well. New Testament scholar Kavin Rowe speaks of a “kyriotic unity” and a “triplicity in the life of God” that are implied by this threefold application of the divine name “Lord.” The New Testament, no less than the Old, teaches that there is and can only be one living and true God. And yet, this one Lord exists eternally (note that Christ “became” poor, implying his pre-existence) as three distinct persons in everlasting relations of origin and love. The person whose birth we celebrate this day is none other than God himself: the eternal Son of the eternal Father in the unity of the eternal Spirit. Indeed, the church fathers often spoke of two births of this one Son: his eternal nativity from the Father without a mother, and his nativity in time from a mother without an earthly father.
Jesus: His Humanity
Mary and Joseph didn’t have a book of baby names from which to chose the name for this remarkable child. His name was chosen for them by a word from the Lord through the angel Gabriel: “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). The name Jesus (Joshua) means “the Lord is salvation,” and it was a fairly common name for Hebrew boys at the time. So, this name highlights Christ’s humanity, but it also indicates that he is something more than merely human: he is the unique embodiment of the Lord’s salvation in human flesh. The very same Son, who eternally exists with the Father and the Spirit, is the one who became poor, who became incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There may be two births (his eternal generation from the Father and his earthly generation from Mary), but there are not two Sons. There is only one person in the incarnation. But this one person, who is necessarily and eternally divine, also became human in the fullness of time. To quote the church fathers once again: without ceasing to be what he was, he became what he was not. Without leaving heaven, he came down to earth. Without divesting himself of his divinity, he clothed himself in humanity. He was and is fully and truly human. On earth, he was born, he grew and developed, he suffered, died, and rose again. In heaven, even now, he intercedes for us as our Great High Priest, and from there he will return in his resurrected, glorified humanity to judge the living and the dead. Because he is truly human, Christ can serve as a representative and substitute for fallen humans like us. God knows what it is to weep, to bleed, to suffer, and to die. Therefore, he is more than able to help us in our weakness (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15).
Christ: His Office
Christ is not Jesus’ last name; it is his title and office. “Christ” or “Messiah” means “the anointed one.” It is a term pregnant with Old Testament hope and anticipation. There were three offices in ancient Israel that were marked out by the anointing of oil: priests, kings, and (on at least some occasions) prophets. Christian theologians have thus spoken about Christ’s threefold office (munus triplex). As prophet, he not only teaches us the will of God but is the decisive embodiment of divine revelation: the Word and Wisdom of God made flesh. As priest, he makes atonement for our sins through the sacrifice of himself and through his ongoing priestly intercession for us. As king, he subdues our rebellion, lovingly rules over us, and defeats all of our spiritual enemies. In short, as the Christ, Jesus is the Revealer, the Redeemer, and the Ruler.
One Final Qualifier
I have yet to comment on the first qualifier in this full title for Jesus from 2 Corinthians 8:9: “our.” It is first person plural and possessive. The Lord Jesus Christ belongs to the church that he founded and for which he died. He is “our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is the King over his kingdom. He is the Elder Brother in his global family. But implied in that first person plural are many first person singulars. So, the question for us this Christmas Day, this Feast of the Nativity, is simply this: Is he my Lord Jesus Christ? Is this God-Man Messiah mine? Will my heart prepare him room this and every day?
This Advent, I’ve been reading Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos by Leontius of Byzantium (485-543). Leontius was a sixth century theologian, who was instrumental in the development of the doctrine of the incarnation, especially in the controversies that led to the Fifth Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Constantinople (553). As its title suggests, this book tackles the opposite errors of Nestorianism (which split Christ into two persons) and Eutychianism (which merged the two natures of Christ into one). Leontius argues that these two heresies are actually opposite forms of the same error: docetism (from dokeo, to seem or appear). In Nestorianism, Christ only seems to be divine, while in Eutychianism, he only seems to be human. In place of these errors, Leontius defends the Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ: Christ is one person (indeed, a divine person, one of the Holy Trinity) with two natures: the nature of God and the discrete human nature that he assumes and personalizes (enhypostasis) in the incarnation. These two natures are united in the one person of the Son and yet they retain their distinct properties.
One of the ways that Leontius seeks to explain this doctrine is by appeal to the unity of two distinct substances in an ordinary human person: body and soul. Leontius acknowledges, however, that this analogy isn’t perfect. After spending several pages exploring the analogy and its usefulness and limitations, he argues that all analogies simply give us “faint impressions of the truth that is above all examples.” He says his aim is “giving drink to all lovers of truth in a small container.” That, I think, is an beautiful description of all doctrinal apparatuses, terminologies, and analogies: they simply give us a little cup to hold what is ultimately uncontainable: the transcendent truth of the mystery of Christ.
The last few years I have compiled a list of my favorite book, album, and movie of the year. Here are the lists from 2022, 2021, and 2020. It’s a fun way to chronicle what really spoke to me over the course of the year. So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite things from 2023.
Favorite Book:
Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Invitation to Wonder by Ross Inman
This book is not an introduction to philosophy so much as it is a prolegomenon to its proper study in a Christian mode. Ross suggests that a Christian approach to philosophy is an invitation to wonder. He writes that wonder is “a window through which we can see reality in its proper light; what is genuinely good, true, and beautiful–and subsequently worth pursuing–tends to evoke wonder.” And as he demonstrates, philosophy is not the exclusive preserve of tweed-jacketed academics. We are all invited to take on the philosopher’s mantle, as we seek to live in light of the truth and to pursue the good life. Ross writes from a deep well of knowledge (he’s range is incredible), with wisdom and virtue to boot. The book is artfully written, intellectually enriching, and spiritually nourishing (and challenging!). It’s accessible too. Everyone from high schoolers to seasoned philosophers can benefit from this phenomenal book.
Honorable Mention: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Favorite Movie:
Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese
This might be the greatest film from one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I know that opinion will be disputed, because Scorsese’s corpus is filled with so many all-timers and fan-favorites. From one angle, it is classic Scorsese: it is an epic tale of organized crime, greed, and violence. But this time the canvas is spread wide on the flatlands and open skies of Oklahoma, and the themes are at the very heart of the American story: prosperity and opportunity on the frontier, but with the dark stain of racial injustice coloring nearly every brushstroke. The conflicted love story at the center of the narrative humanizes these sweeping motifs. Leonardo DiCaprio turns in a career performance as the ambitious Ernest Burkhart, but the subtlety of Lily Gladstone’s portrayal of his wife Mollie Burkhart steals the show. Plus country crooners Jason Isbell (see below) and Sturgill Simpson have cameos, and the late Robbie Robertson’s score was masterful.
Honorable Mention: Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan
Favorite Album:
Weathervanes, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Isbell has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters since his days with the Drive-by Truckers. He almost never misses. Southeastern (2013; a ten-year anniversary edition was recently released) and The Nashville Sound (2017) are generationally good in terms of song-writing. This album is true to form. It many ways, it feels like an homage to our shared homestate of Alabama (one track even centers on “Vestavia Hills”). His standard soundscape of Southern Rock and acoustic Americana is woven together with some Muscle Shoals soul on tracks like “Middle of the Morning” and “This Ain’t It.” The track commemorating the passing of Isbell’s erstwhile friend and collaborator Justin Townes Earle (“When We Were Close”) might be my favorite song from 2023 as well.
Honorable Mention: Echo the Diamond, Margaret Glasby
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Daniel Treier of Wheaton College. We discuss Christology in Scripture and the Christian Tradition (2:20), Christology and communion with God (11:18), union with Christ and adoption (21:43), the incarnation and its implications (24:45), Christ and his relationship to the Holy Spirit (31:34), the relationship between Christ’s two natures (37:57), Christ and catholicity in the church (45:26), and more. Buy Dan’s books.
Check out Brandon’s recent books: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation (IVP Academic, 2022), The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023), and The Trinity in the Canon (B&H Academic, 2023).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Get 40% off on up to 3 full price CSB Bibles at LifeWay.com with promo code CGCSB.
Producer: Ryan Modisette. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl.
Brandon D. Smith is Chair of the Hobbs School of Theology & Ministry and Associate Professor of Theology & Early Christianity at Oklahoma Baptist University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
I was recently invited to write a post on the purpose of theological education for the Henry Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. My post focused on theological education as habitus formation. Here’s a bit:
In these perilous times (and all times are perilous before that great and terrible day of the Lord), we stand in need of a renewal of theological education that is centered on the word of God, interpreted and applied in the context of the church (both local and universal), with a view to the theological and moral formation of the minister and those to whom he or she ministers. In short, theological education exists to form a theological habitus, a virtuous disposition, in its students as they follow Christ and preach his word…
Theological education, then, is habitus formation in a Christian mode: it aims to produce in its students intellectual and moral virtue through certain curricular and extracurricular practices, both theological and spiritual, taught and modeled by faithful professors. Obviously, the means are not foolproof. Professors and administrators can only do so much. The students must bring to the equation their own studiousness, docility, and compunction. They must be willing to “study to shew thyself approved” (2 Tim 2:15 AV), and they must be open to having their minds shaped and their consciences pricked by the word of God.
But from the institutional side of the equation, what kinds of elements should be included in theological education in order to produce this theological habitus? Virtue formation in the Christian religion is ordered to the word of God. It especially employs the ear as the primary organ of religion through a humble and faithful listening to the voice of Christ in the pages of Holy Scripture. It invites students, with Mary of Bethany, to choose the “better part”: sitting at the feet of the Master, heeding his life-changing message. Only then can students, like Martha, rise to serve the faithful. The divinity school serves as a conduit for the word of Christ in several ways.
I then go on to describe four main ways a divinity school forms its students in the Word:
- Studying God’s Word
- Interpreting and Synthesizing God’s Word with the Great Tradition
- Teaching and Applying God’s Word
- Prayerfully meditating on God’s Word in corporate worship and private devotion
You can find the post and the others in the series here.
In the classic 1984 film rendition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring George C. Scott, the Ghost of Christmas Past rebukes Ebenezer Scrooge for his failure to give careful attention to the world around him. She points out how Scrooge’s nephew looks so much like his mother, Scrooge’s sister. Scrooge replies, “Does he? I never noticed.” The Ghost responds with chastisement but compassion, “You never noticed? I think you’ve gone through life with your eyes closed. Open them. Open them wide.”
I think many of us go through life with our eyes closed. We are like the father in another cinematic masterpiece, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, who confesses: “I wanted to be loved because I’m great, a big man. I’m nothing. Look: the glory around us, the trees, the birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all and didn’t notice the glory. A foolish man.” I can sometimes justify myself by claiming, “Well, I’m just not a very observant person,” which my wife can attest is often true! But a failure to attend to reality is not just a character trait; it’s a vice. It’s folly. It’s a failure to live in prudence, a virtue that entails docility (docilitas, aptness to learn), a disposition of “open-mindedness which recognizes the true variety of things and situations to be experienced and does not cage itself in any presumption” of self-deception. Docility requires “the ability to take advice,” “a desire for real understanding,” and “genuine humility” (Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 16). Virtue demands that we open our eyes wide and “notice the glory.”
In his excellent new book, Ross Inman suggests that a Christian approach to philosophy is an invitation to wonder. He writes that wonder is “a window through which we can see reality in its proper light; what is genuinely good, true, and beautiful–and subsequently worth pursuing–tends to evoke wonder.” And as Ross demonstrates, philosophy is not the exclusive preserve of tweed-jacketed academics. We are all invited to take on the philosopher’s mantle, as we seek to live in light of the truth and to pursue the good life. Wonder is not just about contemplating weighty metaphysical or epistemological questions (though it includes those, as well). It’s not even just about transcendent moments of rapture, say, at the expanse of the Pacific Ocean or the sheer granite walls of Yosemite Valley. It’s also about simply noticing the glory all around us: the wrinkles and flaws on the face in the mirror, the movements and shouts of children playing the yard, the music of the morning songbirds, the rustling of the water oak leaves under our feet, the smiles and grimaces of the faces we meet, the pleasures and pains of mundane human existence.
Christian spiritual masters have long recognized that the objects of meditation include, not only the truths of Scripture, but also the glories of the creation around us and the depths of meaning within us. The better part of communion with God is learning to open our eyes to awe: to the glory all around us in creation, to the beauty and dignity of the people right in front of us, to the sacred truths of Holy Scripture, to the presence of God within us, and to the being and attributes of God himself. So, open your eyes, friends. Open them wide.
Simeon in the Temple, by RembrandtChristmas starts earlier every year. It’s not unusual to see the candy aisle at the local supermarket well-stocked with Christmas confections the day after Halloween. Christmas music can be found on certain radio stations throughout November and December. The long-awaited red cups and gingerbread lattes show up just as early in Starbucks. Small wonder. We long for the joy and nostalgia of Christmas. We cling to it as long as possible. We lament the moment when the final present is opened or the last meal shared on Christmas Day. December 26 is perhaps the most dreaded day of the year on many personal calendars.
But there is an older framing of the holiday season that gives space not only for mirth but also for mourning, and in the process places joy in its proper context, allowing it to shine with its full brilliance after the long night of darkness. The season of Advent, the four Sundays before the Feast of the Nativity (December 25), marks the beginning of the traditional church year. Originally, Advent was a time for remembering, not the first, but the second advent of the Lord: his appearing on the last day to judge the living and the dead (for more on this history, see this excellent book). The four Sundays of Advent often commemorated the so-called quattuor novissima, the “four last things”: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The hymns and carols of the season carefully resisted the pull toward joy and celebration and focused instead on themes of longing, yearning, and hope. The famous “O Antiphons” are indicative, with the most well-known antiphon crying out, “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.” Another traditional Advent hymn invites us to “look from afar” and “see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth.” This older liturgical tradition can seem jarring to our holiday sensibilities, and yet, if we are bold enough to be honest with ourselves, it rings truer to our experience.
The joyful mystery of the Nativity is set against the backdrop of pain. The coming of the Lord only makes sense to a people who know what it means to wait—to a “people prepared,” as Zechariah prays in his Benedictus (Luke 1:17). Advent invites us, like righteous Simeon and faithful Anna, to wait for the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2:25, 38). Advent is not about sappy sentimentalism, gauzy nostalgia, and cheap grace. It is about a “weary world” in desperate need of rejoicing. The land of Advent is spotted with deep valleys, impassable mountains, and crooked paths (Isaiah 40:4). As the Lord himself would remind us, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
And so, Advent welcomes our mourning. It has a place for our pain. It allows us the freedom to be honest about our losses, either through our own sins or the sins of others. It tunes our heart to sing, not only of God’s grace, but also of our sin and guilt and suffering. To be sure, we already live in the luminous reality of the first advent. No season of the year is entirely devoid of that joy. We need not pretend otherwise for some kind of pious effect. But we also live in the time between the times, in the overlap of the ages. The kingdom of Christ has been definitively inaugurated through the incarnation, birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but it is not here in its full glory and felicity. We, too, wait for consolation and redemption. And in this liminal space between the two advents, we can welcome a third, “middle advent,” as many spiritual writers have articulated: the coming of Christ in our hearts through the ministry of the church and personal devotion.
The season of Advent invites us to a kind of delayed gratification. We mourn before we rejoice. We sing of our weariness and captivity before we herald “Joy to the World!” In some traditions, Advent, like Lent before Easter, is a penitential season of fasting and self-examination. Only after the long night of sorrow can we rejoice that “the dayspring from on high” has visited us (Luke 1:78). Advent reminds us that Jesus didn’t come to a people who had their stuff together. He came to a broken world longing for healing.
With all of this in view, I would invite you to craft your own spiritual rule this Advent, one that centers mourning rather than joy, longing rather than realization. Obviously, none of these things are binding. The church year itself is not binding. But it is a useful tool for framing our time as sacred and centered on the whole life of Christ.
- Limit your holiday music (as much as you can!) to Advent themed songs until Christmas Day. Sing “Come Thou long expected Jesus” before you get to “Joy to the World! The Lord is come!” Create your own playlist of Advent hymns and carols.
- Read traditional Advent texts from Scripture. Consider using a lectionary (a list of readings) like this one.
- Consider fasting for one meal or one full day each week. You might even consider abstinence from something you would otherwise enjoy during this season, as many do during Lent.
- Practice these spiritual disciplines with others. Even if you don’t attend a church that observes the church year, you can still practice these rhythms with your family, roommates, or friends.
The good news is, mourning eventually gives way to joy. In the church calendar, Christmas isn’t a single day but an entire season! We call it Christmastide, the famed “twelve days of Christmas” that we forgot actually existed! And Christmastide gives way to Epiphany, which expands the joy, as we celebrate the manifestation of the Lord to the nations. Epiphany is traditionally marked by a reflection on the Visit of the Magi, when the Gentiles first meet their Savior, and the Baptism of the Lord, when the Triune God is manifested in the Jordan. Lent follows Epiphany, as we once again enter into a season of repentance, fasting, giving, and praying before the sorrowful mysteries of the Passion and the glorious mysteries of Easter. After seven weeks of Eastertide, we move on to the Ascension and to Pentecost, which frame our “ordinary time” as life in the Spirit. And so, the whole church year takes us through what John Calvin called the “whole course of Christ’s obedience”: from his advent to his birth to his ephipany to his suffering and death to his resurrection and ascension to his gift of the Spirit and back again. What joy awaits us as we are set to begin a new church year! For those hidden with Christ in God, mourning never has the last word. “He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:6).
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Ross Inman of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. We discuss his journey into philosophy (1:58), a definition for philosophy as a way of life (7:58), the practicality of philosophy (or lack thereof) (12:36), the relationship between philosophy, theology, and biblical interpretation (33:58), and more. Buy Ross’s books.
Check out Brandon’s recent books: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation (IVP Academic, 2022), The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023), and The Trinity in the Canon (B&H Academic, 2023).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Get 40% off on up to 3 full price CSB Bibles at LifeWay.com with promo code CGCSB.
Producer: Ryan Modisette. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Craig Bartholomew of the Kirby Laing Centre and Dr. Heath Thomas of Oklahoma Baptist University. We discuss a theological reading of the Minor Prophets (1:27), problems with interpreting the Minor Prophets (16:40), Jesus and Jonah (22:36), the Trinity in the OT and the Minor Prophets (30:24), and more. Buy their new book, The Minor Prophets: A Theological Introduction (IVP Academic, 2023).
Check out Brandon’s recent books: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation (IVP Academic, 2022), The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023), and The Trinity in the Canon (B&H Academic, 2023).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Get 40% off on up to 3 full price CSB Bibles at LifeWay.com with promo code CGCSB.
Producer: Ryan Modisette. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Kyle Strobel of Talbot School of Theology and Dr. Zachary Bowden of Cedarville University. We discuss Jonathan Edwards on the Trinity and creation (2:24), salvation and the Christian life (23:46), slaveholding (39:07), and more. Buy Kyle’s books and read Zachary’s contribution to Historical Theology for the Church. Check … Continue reading Jonathan Edwards (If You Can Keep Him) with Kyle Strobel and Zachary Bowden
Rod Dreher has a scathing and important review of the new book by Andrew Isker, The Boniface Option, which riffs on Dreher’s own 2017 title, The Benedict Option. I have read the latter, but not the former. So, I’ll leave it to others to determine how accurate the review is. But Dreher’s piece is important … Continue reading Dreher and the Angry Young Men
I’m not on Twitter anymore. So, mercifully, I don’t see the daily crazy. But it came to my attention this week that a group of posters associated with the Christian Nationalist right were on there feigning ignorance of and then questioning the “narrative” about the lynching of Emmett Till. Apparently, we can’t acknowledge one of … Continue reading Race to the Bottom: Is Racial Reconciliation Still a Priority for Evangelicals and Baptists in 2023?
This episode is a repost of a conversation with Dr. Fred Sanders of Biola University. We discuss the names for the Holy Spirit in Scripture (2:16), the seeming “silence” of the Spirit in major moments in the biblical narrative (5:17), the Spirit in the OT (15:40), the Trinity in salvation (20:34), theological retrieval (24:30), the … Continue reading Fred Sanders on the Holy Spirit and the Trinity in Salvation (Repost)
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Todd Hains of Lexham Press. We discuss what the Reformation was all about (4:28), Luther’s relationship to the church fathers and the rule of faith (15:44), Luther’s interpretive instincts and his doctrine of the Word (35:02), Lutheranism’s contribution to the church today (59:42), and more. Buy Todd’s books. … Continue reading Todd Hains on Luther and Biblical Interpretation
This episode is a conversation with Collin Hansen of The Gospel Coalition. We discuss writing a book about Tim Keller during his last days (1:41), his major influences (13:25), projecting his legacy (27:07), lessons from his life and ministry (32:50), and more. Buy Collin’s books. Check out Brandon’s recent books: The Trinity in the Book of … Continue reading Collin Hansen on Tips from Tim Keller’s Life and Ministry
Myk Habets and I have recently published a book with Lexham Press on how the theology of T. F. Torrance interfaces with evangelical theology. Lexham interviewed Myk and I about the book here. One of Myk’s comments sums up well why you should be interested in the book and in Torrance’s theology more generally: At … Continue reading New Book on T. F. Torrance
One my favorite British Baptist theologians, Steve Holmes, has written a reflection on the Coronation liturgy of King Charles. It’s straight Baptist fire. His concerns center on the Baptist conviction, beautifully expressed in the First London Baptist Confession of Faith, that Christ alone is the true Prophet-Priest-King of the New Covenant people of God. As Holmes explains, this doctrine of Christ’s threefold office (munus triplex) had important precedents in earlier Christian history, but it takes on a particular force in Baptist theology:
Thomas Aquinas presents the doctrine like this; Calvin starts to use it as an organising principle for narrating the work of Christ. The expansion of its range amongst the English Separatists and Baptists is extensive and perhaps surprising. It is also dependent on a further claim that King Jesus does not delegate any of these offices: he is our great high priest, so there is no need for any human priesthood; he alone is the true prophet, and so we look for truth nowhere other than his word; he alone is king, and so no-one else may presume to command any congregation of his people.
Now, both the expansion of the scope of the offices and this point about the lack of delegation are contestable, of course, and so other theological constructions than a Baptist one are possible. But the instinctive Baptist fear/complaint/demand is always that some human authority is trying to muscle in on a role that belongs to Christ alone.
British Baptists have not, generally, been anti-monarchy: there is a temporal realm, that requires governing, and a monarchy is a possible way to do that. The seventeenth-century English Baptists, even when persecuted, did not stop declaring their loyalty to the crown—but they thought that, in imposing forms of worship and doctrine, the crown had badly over-reached its authority, and was trying to govern where Jesus alone can reign.
Read the whole thing. If the coronation represents an expression of “Christian nationalism” or whatever you want to call it, the Baptist complaint against it not just that it’s a relatively empty symbol in a nation even more secular and progressive than the United States. No, even if the ceremony had more teeth–especially if it had more teeth–the problems are systemic, on a Baptist reckoning. No king or government should pretend to usurp the place that belongs to Jesus alone as the King of the Church and Lord of the conscience.
This episode is a repost of a conversation with Dr. Lynn Cohick of Houston Christian University. We discuss becoming a scholar (5:30), the present and future of the United Methodist Church (9:40), being a female scholar in evangelicalism (14:15), women in the early church (38:30), and more. Buy Lynn’s books.
Check out Brandon’s new book: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (IVP Academic, 2022). You can also preorder his next one, The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Episode sponsor: B&H Academic. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
To prevent mistakes, however, it is proper to observe that the patriotism required of us is not that love of our country which clashes with universal benevolence, or which seeks its prosperity at the expense of the general happiness of mankind. Such was the patriotism of Greece and Rome; and such is that of all others where Christian principle is not allowed to direct it. Such, I am ashamed to say, is that with which some have advocated the cause of negro slavery. It is necessary, forsooth, to the wealth of this country! No; if my country cannot prosper but at the expense of justice, humanity, and the happiness of mankind, let it be unprosperous! But this is not the case. Righteousness will be found to exalt a nation, and so to be true wisdom. The prosperity which we are directed to seek in behalf of our country involves no ill to any one, except to those who shall attempt its overthrow. Let those who fear not God, nor regard man, engage in schemes of aggrandizement, and let sordid parasites pray for their success. Our concern is to cultivate that patriotism which harmonizes with good-will to men. O my country, I will lament thy faults! Yet, with all thy faults, I will seek thy good; not only as a Briton, but as a Christian: “for my brethren and companions sakes, I will say, Peace be within thee: because of the house of the Lord my God, I will seek thy good!”
Andrew Fuller, “Christian Patriotism,” 1803
Among the many biblical, theological, and historical reasons the earliest Baptists gave for religious liberty, is one that is sometimes forgotten or neglected, namely, evangelism. It’s not a stand alone argument. The biblical-theological, covenantal case has to be made. The regulative principles of the New Testament must be exegeted. The freedom and dignity of the human person must be defended. But among those other reasons, Baptists can also appeal to the free proclamation of the gospel as an additional rationale for religious liberty.
It is remarkable that some of the earliest Baptists argued for religious liberty, not only for themselves and their fellow Protestant dissenters, but even for other religions. Thomas Helwys’ famous lines from The Mystery of Iniquity (1612) are always worth repeating: “Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.” Part of Helwys’ argument is that true obedience to God must be “spiritual obedience,” that is, willing obedience to Jesus, free from governmental compulsion. In other words, if you want non-Christians to be truly saved, religious liberty must be granted to them.
Roger Williams, whose influence on Baptists in the New World outlasted his own brief tenure as a part of a Baptist church, made a similar argument in The Bloody Tenent of Persecution (1644). Williams appeals to Paul’s imperative that meekness and gentleness be shown to “all” in the hopes that God might grant them repentance and salvation (2 Timothy 2:24-26). Williams applies this call to universal patience to the various religious opinions in society: Jews, “Turks” (=Muslims), “Antichristians” (those who preach a false Christ), and pagans. Williams asks his readers to remember their own former spiritual blindness and the mercy extended to them in the Lord Jesus. He concludes, “And to all these sorts–Jews, Turks, Antichristians, pagans–when they oppose the light presented to them, in sense of [the soul’s] own former opposition and that God peradventure may at last give repentance, I add [that] such a soul will not only be patient, but earnestly and constantly pray for all sorts of men, that out of them God’s elect may be called to the fellowship of Christ Jesus. And lastly not only to pray but also to endeavor (to its utmost ability) their participation of the same grace and mercy.” Religious liberty, not religious persecution, is the conclusion of those sensible to God’s sovereign grace in their own lives.
Many Baptists since have understood the evangelistic and missionary benefits of religious liberty. The Baptist insistence on “a free church in a free state” is motivated, in part, by this evangelistic impulse: “the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power” (Baptist Faith & Message, 2000). That doesn’t mean religious liberty has no limits. As the BF&M says elsewhere, “Freedom in any orderly relationship of human life is always limited and never absolute.” When religious liberty brings physical or moral harm, it may be limited in a principled and carefully qualified way. But otherwise, men must be free to reject, if they are to be truly free to accept, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the church must be free to share and to persuade but never to compel or to coerce. Religious liberty, in this understanding, is an evangelistic stewardship as much as an enumerated right.
I mentioned in my previous post that the Baptist confessional tradition should be weighted more heavily than individual authors when we are making generalizations about the historic Baptist view on the civil magistrate. I also mentioned that the Second London Confession has a particular pride of place in this regard. The 1689 Confession influenced, in one way or another, most of the other major Baptist confessions in an English-speaking context. So, paying careful attention to what the confession says–and most tellingly, what it doesn’t say–about the civil magistrate is especially important.
You can find a tabular comparison of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the 1689 Confession here. Below is a screenshot of the articles “Of the Civil Magistrate.” Again, this comparison and contrast is especially important to considering how Baptists have historically positioned themselves in relation to the broader Reformed movement, and magisterial Protestantism more generally.
The portions in red indicate divergences between the two confessions. But note that the portions in black indicate continuity with the great Reformed confession. The seventeenth-century Particular Baptists were trying to strike a balance here: to express their solidarity with other Protestants as far as possible and to defend unashamedly their Baptist distinctives. They were aiming for, we might say, a Baptist Catholicity.
The first paragraph here is pristinely carried over from the WCF. God ordains civil government for his own glory and the public good. But the power of the sword is carefully delimited: to defend and encourage those who do good and to punish those who do evil (cf. Romans 13:1-7).
From there, the omissions tell the real story. These early Baptists believed, contrary to the Anabaptists, that Christians can rightly participate in the civil government. But the duties of the magistrate are limited to the maintenance of civil justice and peace. The WCF’s mention of “piety” as one of the aims of the magistrate is conspicuously absent. The church, not the civil authority, has within its jurisdiction the maintenance of piety. The jurisdiction of the civil government is limited to civil, not religious, matters. As Baptist historian Thomas Nettles has put it, “The Baptists would not have the magistrate insert any of his power into the divine prerogative of creating and maintaining piety in his people. That is the function of the Holy Spirt by the word of God under the faithful labors of God-called ministers of the word in the context of the church.”
Likewise, the WCF’s third and fourth paragraphs are omitted entirely and replaced with an original paragraph arguing for submission to and prayer for the magistrate. Gone are the magistrate’s duties related to the ministry of the church. The Baptists intentionally omitted any reference to the government preserving the unity of the church, keeping the truth pure, suppressing blasphemies and heresies, preventing abuses in worship, calling synods, and so on. Even the American revision of the WCF, which made space for the magistrate’s protection of all Protestant denominations, still affirmed the magistrate as the “nursing father” who has charge to “protect the church of our common Lord.” Regardless of what any individual Baptist thinker may have thought or written elsewhere, the Baptist confessional tradition knows nothing of a civil government with such explicitly religious responsibilities.
The difference between the establishmentarianism of the WCF and the separation of the civil and religious spheres in the SLBCF is rooted in the two groups’ distinct views on biblical theology. As Nettles notes, the position of the WCF, “assumes a direct continuity between Israel and political entities subsequent to the coming of Christ. It assumes that earthly kings have the same authority and duties of the king in that covenanted society. It does not embrace the distinction between Israel as an elect nation and the church as the ‘chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.’ These people are not all of any nation but are to be looked upon as ‘sojourners and exiles’ who once were ‘not a people, but now the people of God’ (1 Peter 2:9-11).”
In sum, the 1689 Confession intentionally and deliberately distanced itself from the the WCF on the matter of the civil magistrate. At least as far as our confessional tradition would bind us, the Baptist view on the separation of church and state seems clearly inconsistent with any kind of specifically religious authority being given to the civil powers. The magistrate is God’s servant for God’s glory and the public good but only within its limited jurisdiction: maintaining civil justice and civil peace.
Addendum: Note well that the Baptist belief in the separation of church and state does not entail a separation of church and society nor even a separation of morality and state. Civil justice demands, for example, the protection of the unborn from the evil of abortion and the protection of children and adolescents (and adults, for that matter) from the irreversible harm of so-called “gender affirming care.” I hasten to add this because so many people today seem to set up a false dichotomy: it’s either Christian Nationalism or radical progressivism. But Baptists have long been engaged in promoting moral legislation. Think of William Carey’s opposition of sati, or Andrew Fuller’s support of the abolitionist movement, or Charles Spurgeon’s opposition to slavery, or the SBC’s opposition to “racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography.” (BF&M 2000). Baptists in America today can push for just laws right now, without blowing the whole system up and seeking to retrieve something more “magisterially” Protestant.
Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of chatter online about the promises and perils of Christian Nationalism. Definitions vary. If you espouse some form of nationalism (as opposed to globalism) and are a Christian, does this make you a Christian Nationalist? Or does Christian Nationalism entail something more? If it does, just what is that “something more”? The establishment of a particular denomination? Or at least some form of mere Protestantism? Or mere Christianity? Or mere theism? Does CN require that certain privileges be afforded to Christianity? Does it also warrant certain punishments for expressions of non-Christian beliefs? Does CN demand Sabbatarian or “blue” laws? Is the punishment of blasphemy and heresy permissible, at least in principle (even if prudence may call for some measure of toleration)?
To be honest, I’m not all that interested in the online wars over this (I got off Twitter for a reason!). My research interests lie elsewhere. And my normal tasks as a professor lead me elsewhere. I am more interested in helping people understand the trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. I’m more interested in helping students mortify sin, grow in holiness, share the gospel, deal with grief and pain, and prepare for death and judgment. I’m more interested, in short, in helping people understand the gospel and its implications for their lives. To be sure, some of those implications are civil and political. But too many Christians (especially extremely online Christians) can give outsized importance to politics and political theory. By all means, know the issues, vote according to biblical principles, volunteer at the local level, etc. But don’t let the political tail wag the theological dog.
But I digress. As a student of Baptist history and theology, I get more interested when people start making appeals to our Baptist forebears in defense of this or that political theory. Can a Baptist be a Christian Nationalist? Can a Baptist even support a kind of magisterial Protestantism or a de facto “mere Christendom” establishment? In answering these questions, Baptists often and rightly look to our past for guidance. But danger lurks here. It is possible to cherry-pick quotes or particular thinkers, which may be outliers, and treat them as typical. It is possible to do what Matt has called “control-F” theology: you hit control-F on the keyboard to find a particular term in a historic text, read it out of context, and voila! find support for your predetermined conclusion.
This blog post isn’t going to settle the debate over the possibility of a “Baptist Christian Nationalism.” To lay my own cards on the table, I think such a notion is a contradiction in terms, if by CN you mean some kind of overtly religious establishment or giving the state the power to prosecute religious matters (the first table of the law). But I’m not here to make that argument. What I want to do in this post is more modest. I simply want to point to a few principles that should guide our appeals to Baptist history when making contemporary theological arguments. I think these principle have broader application, but I am thinking about them especially in terms of the CN debate.
History is subordinate. For the Protestant—and perhaps especially for the Baptist—the fundamental question of theology isn’t what this or that historic author wrote, but what Scripture teaches. The question of what we ought to believe is a matter of biblical theology, not historical theology in the first instance. For a Baptist political theology in particular, it is a matter of Baptist covenant theology and its logical and theological entailments: What is the relationship between the old covenants and the new covenant? What kind of hermeneutical priority does the New Testament have? What NT principles and precepts govern the development of a political theology? What jurisdiction does the NT give to the church, the family, and the state, and how are they diffferent? And so on. History can be a guide in answering those questions. But the Bible retains its pride of place as the infallible rule of our theology.
History is contextual. When we appeal to Baptist authors in the past, we have to recognize their particular historical location. They lived in particular times, in particular places, and under particular political arrangements. Their horizons were limited (and in some cases, perhaps, enriched) by those particularities. Baptists have thrived under a variety of political circumstances, in both persecution and toleration, but mostly from the margins of power (maybe with the exception of my home state of Alabama!). We have to be careful not to enshrine any of those circumstances as the standard Baptist view.
History is complex. Related to the last point, we also have to recognize that no particular author and no particular place speaks for the entirety of the Baptist tradition. Some have recently appealed to John Gill or Isaac Backus as possible sources in defense of a more explicitly Christian government. I’ll let the experts on those theologians and those eras make those judgments. But even if Gill says something more in line with the magisterial Protestants here or there, that doesn’t mean that he speaks for the Baptist tradition as a whole (We certainly wouldn’t want to appeal to Gill on, say, eternal justification as the standard Baptist view). Gill’s judgment that the magistrate has authority to prosecute the first table of the law puts him out of step with at least a substantial portion (the majority?) of the Baptist tradition more broadly (not just later authors in the early American republic, but also back to the foundational seventeenth-century Baptists). Furthermore, the Baptist tradition is not limited to Anglo-American majority culture authors either. The Black Baptist experience is also worthy of careful study, as is Baptist history in continental Europe and elsewhere. We also have to be careful not to judge our own moment in history as definitive either. To argue against CN is not necessarily to argue for the superiority of liberal democracy or anything else. We have to avoid both a whiggish view of history and a naively nostalgic view of history. Again, history, including our own present moment, is complex.
History is hierarchical. What I mean here is the hierarchy of tradition, which I have written about elsewhere. Under Scripture’s ultimate authority, the derivative, interpretive authority of tradition is stratified: creeds have the greatest authority as the expressions of the universal church; confessions come next as expressions of particular denominational convictions, and individual authors come last as important but subordinate standards. What this means for Baptist political theology, is that the confessional tradition deserves greater weight than any individual author, even an esteemed author like Gill. Especially significant in this regard is the great Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is the most influential confession in Baptist history. An examination of the so-called 1689 Confession and its statement on the civil magistrate is paramount on this question, especially the omissions and revisions it introduces to its source material, the Westminster Confession of Faith. For Southern Baptists, the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) is also worth careful inspection on these matters (especially articles XV—XVIII). If you want to make a claim about the historic Baptist view, the confessions are a surer guide than a particular individual author or two (who may be outliers).
So there you have it. A few principles to keep in mind when appealing to Baptist history. Again, this doesn’t settle the debate over CN. I’d have more to say about that, and perhaps I will in this space or elsewhere. But in meantime, here’s some homework: go read Andrew Fuller’s excellent sermon on Christian Patriotism (and Michael Haykin’s clarification about its historical context and place in Fuller’s overall thought).
The Crucifixion by Nikolai GeAt several different points in his monumental three-volume Jesus of Nazareth, the late Pope Benedict XVI contrasts the kingdom that Jesus preached with that of the ancient Zealots. According to Ratzinger, Jesus “left no room for political or military interpretations of the Messiah’s activity” (II: 181). Jesus’ cleansing of the temple signals his fight against “a politicization of the faith that would see God’s constant protection of the Temple as something guaranteed” (II: 20). Jesus comes not as a revolutionary but with the “gift of healing.”
Ratzinger knew all too well the dangers of confusing the kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world. As an adolescent, he saw it firsthand in the terrors of the Third Reich. As a young professor, he saw a different kind of political idolatry in the Marxism of the student movements. As Prefect and Pope, he continued to battle the relio-political syncretism of Liberation Theology.
And so Ratzinger sees the kingdom of Christ–a kingdom of suffering love–as a direct confrontation to all attempts to bring about God’s work by dint of political action. Indeed, he sees the cross as the definitive end of every unholy alliance of religion and politics. “Through the message that he proclaimed, Jesus had actually achieved a separation of the religious from the political, thereby changing the world: this is what truly marks the essence of his new path” (II: 169). The cord was decisively severed at the cross: “Only through the total loss of all external power, through the radical stripping away that led to the Cross, could this new world come into being” (II: 171).
This separation of the religious and the political does not mean, of course, any kind of quietism in the face of injustice. Benedict quite obviously continued to defend the Church’s social teaching and to proclaim it prophetically and courageously to the world. The faith has political implications, to be sure. But Ratzinger’s point is that the kingdom does not advance by political means. Its work is of a different order, that is, an heavenly and eternal one. “My kingdom is not of this world,” our Lord confessed on this sober day of trial and suffering.
Too many today seem to miss this point. As B.B. Warfield once remarked, one of the most pernicious errors in the history of Christian thought is the notion what when Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” what he actually meant is that it is. But Jesus was not a Zealot. That option was open to him in first century Judaism. But he didn’t take it. He proclaimed and embodied a completely different sort of kingdom: a kingdom of self-giving, suffering love. He subverts our natural assumptions. Power is found in weakness. Victory is found in defeat. Life is found in death. And that is how he brings healing to the world on this Good Friday. Transformation cannot be coerced from without. It must be established within the heart of man: the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21). The change we needed couldn’t be effected in Pilate’s Praetorium nor on the Palatine Hill, where the emperor Tiberius reigned, nor on Washington’s Capitol Hill, for that matter. It could only be founded on the hill of Golgotha, with all of its shame and ignominy and all of its glory and grace.
This episode is a conversation with Fr. John Behr of the University of Aberdeen. We discuss his transition from St. Vladimir’s Seminary to the University of Aberdeen (2:35), how to read John’s Gospel (4:00), the authorship of John’s Gospel (9:13), John as “the high priest of Pascha” (16:22), the relationship between the Gospel accounts of the Lord’s Supper (27:00), the fuller meaning of “it is finished” (28:44), and recovering the ancient Easter (52:45). Buy John’s books.
Check out Brandon’s new book: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (IVP Academic, 2022). You can also preorder his next one, The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Episode sponsors: B&H Academic and Lexham Press. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
Pordenone’s Holy TrinityIt’s that time of year again when we find people debating the Cry of Dereliction online. Just what did Jesus mean when he quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matt has written effectively in this space about the theological and canonical parameters for understanding this text. The trinitarian, Christological, and hermeneutical stakes have been thoroughly rehearsed.
But one aspect of the debate that also deserves attention is related to the doctrine of atonement itself. What I mean is the assumption, often articulated only in underdeveloped ways, that somehow the Father cannot “look upon sin” and so must “turn his face away” from the Son. It is certainly true that God is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Hab. 1:13). But the context of this teaching is a complaint from Habakkuk that God might countenance evil people without judging them. It does not mean (and cannot mean theologically) that God somehow delimits or cordons off his omnipresence from the presence of sin. After all, “where shall I flee from your presence?” Even if I “make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” (Psalm 139:7, 8). Further, this is where we get all of the trinitarian and Christological errors: Is the Father alone so holy that he cannot look upon sin? Isn’t the Son a divine person too? Even if you make a reduplicative move that it is the Son in his humanity who is abandoned, it is still a divine person who is dying and making atonement on the cross. Saying that the cross demands that God turn away from Jesus ends up proving too much (or too little, depending on which way you look at it).
Which brings me to the point about atonement: the “Father turns his face away” approach to the cry of dereliction operates with a sub-biblical doctrine of atonement. The idea that God’s holiness requires that he remove himself from the presence of sin runs in the opposite direction of the biblical teaching on atonement. In his atoning mercy, it not that God turns his face away from sin; it’s that sin, when it comes into contact with the divinity, is thus cleansed and expiated. Consider the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). The cleansing of Israel’s guilt takes place in the burning center of God’s manifest presence among them: in the Holy of Holies. The blood of the sin-bearing victim, sprinkled on the mercy seat where God dwells between the cherubim, purifies the people from their sin. When sin comes into contact with God’s presence, he is not contaminated by it; it is cleansed by him. Only in this way can sin then be removed from the people, symbolized in the scape goat driven into the wilderness.
So, God’s presence with (and in and as) Jesus is not removed once the sins of the world are laid upon him. That would forestall the whole process. It is precisely because Jesus is a divine person, in unbroken communion with his Father (John 16:32) and their shared Spirit (Heb. 9:14), that his death can provide atonement for sin. As the late Joseph Ratzinger put it, “In his self-offering on the Cross, Jesus, as it were, brings all the sin of the world deep within the love of God and wipes it away.”
This episode is a short talk based on my post at the Center for Baptist Renewal, “The Trinity and Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.” Read it here.
Check out Brandon’s new book: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (IVP Academic, 2022). You can also preorder his next one, The Biblical Trinity.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
The revival continues at Asbury. But some are doubting. Social media skeptics abound. The questions range from the legitimate (what is the biblical and theological content of what’s going on?) to the nakedly cynical (why are there so many white people in these photos? why is there so much emotional singing?). But the reports seem pretty overwhelming at this point: something real and Christ-exalting is happening at Asbury.
Listen to this testimony from a visitor to the revival services, Robert Cunningham, director of Christ for Kentucky and a Presbyterian minister:
https://twitter.com/RobertC4KY/status/1624882686283194368?s=20&t=gcnteP43gWDGHxVA9Dp9Wghttps://twitter.com/RobertC4KY/status/1624882689768673281?s=20&t=gcnteP43gWDGHxVA9Dp9WgLay down your doubts and believe. Open yourself to revival. A powerful exhortation.
Again, some initial questions are legitimate, but what does it say about us that we are so quick to be skeptical? We would rather remain cynical than risk looking naive. What does that choice say about us? Isn’t it better to believe and hope all things and risk the possibility of a later retraction or correction than to remain judgmentally aloof?
Something similar could be asked about the responses to the “He Gets Us” campaign and the commercials that aired during the Super Bowl last night. To be sure, there is a critique to be made of this ad campaign. Are all of these analogies between Christ and us really apt? What is the underlying theology? Why so much money devoted to this? All legitimate questions to ask. But that’s not really my point. The more revealing question is why are people this agitated by it? I have a friend who likes to say “mirrors before windows.” Before you focus on someone else, look at yourself first. Yes, there may be serious problems with the “He Gets Us” campaign, but why am I so bothered by it? It is not a little ironic that people got so angry over an ad that emphasized Jesus’ love for those who are the objects of our anger! Maybe you don’t like the message behind the ads. Okay. You can still use the conversations it raises to tell people about the biblical Jesus and his life-giving gospel.
Maybe these things are related. Maybe God is up to something in American Christianity. Maybe there are fresh openings for renewal popping up all around us. Maybe if we had eyes to see and hearts to pray, we would see more. Discernment is still needed. Every revival in history has had to distinguish between the true and the false. But, for my part, tenderhearted hope is a better posture than calculated coldness.
I don’t know about you, but I want revival on my campus! I want revival in my life and family and church. I want to see “each soul be rekindled with fire from above.” Don’t you?
UPDATE: Robert Cunningham has deleted the thread above. The gist of the thread was that this PCA minister witnessed an authentic revival focused on Jesus, Scripture, and prayer.
Image credit: https://twitter.com/TransformVille The fresh wind of revival seems to be blowing at Asbury University. Word started spreading on social media Wednesday that students simply didn’t want to leave the chapel service after it ended. I’m not on social media anymore, but I had several friends send me links to what was happening. Hundreds of students stayed or came back throughout the day to pray and sing and recite Scripture. And it kept going. Tom McCall, chair of theology at Asbury Seminary, gives an account:
2/4 At 10:45, they gave the benediction as the gospel choir sang once more… but something happened. Students just stayed. Praying for one another, for themselves, and their world; singing songs of worship; reciting Scripture from all over the auditorium. At 3:30 I joined them
— Tom McCall (@RealTomMcCall) February 10, 2023
4/4 There is such a vivid, palpable sense of hope and joy and peace. It was immediately obvious to me why no one wants to leave.
The good news is truly so good… and so beautiful.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
— Tom McCall (@RealTomMcCall) February 10, 2023
Winfield Bevins, director of church planting at the seminary, shares a taste:
There is a powerful revival going on here @AsburyUniv! I have witnessed many young adults lives changed by the One who is ever ancient and ever new! pic.twitter.com/NAlKJTvtDO
— Winfield Bevins (@winfieldbevins) February 11, 2023
Testimonies continue to pour in on Twitter and Facebook. For the latest, just search for #asburyrevival.
Tom’s thread above captures my own sentiments well. I am the inheritor of a strongly revivalist tradition of Alabama Baptist piety, and I appreciate so much of the spirituality that gave birth to my own faith. But I see the weaknesses in it as well: the dangers of manipulation, an overemphasis on experience, and sometimes a neglect of more regular patterns of spirituality–gospel-patterned liturgies, regular observance of the ordinances, and worship and preaching that is oriented toward the edification of the body, not just the conversion of the lost. But for those of us who critique revivalism, we must be careful not to foreclose the possibility of true revival. The Spirit appears to be blowing where it listeth at Asbury, an institution rooted in Wesleyan spirituality. And we all need to be paying attention. And praying.
The reason why these early reports of revival are so moving, I think, is that we all have grown so cold and cynical toward the possibility of an authentic experience of the Spirit, and we don’t even realize it. Or else we don’t fully appreciate it. The Christian West is dying, withering, fracturing. Out of an apparent sense of desperation, many professing Christians are becoming more radical and divisive, drawing tighter and tighter circles of theological (and, more often, political) narrowness. Others are grasping for something, anything, to recover an authentic faith. Often we are searching for something historical, something back behind our current malaise: medieval scholasticism, Reformation- and post-Reformation-era political theology, Calvinism, etc. There is, no doubt, some utility in these arenas of retrieval. I’m interested in them as well. But for those of us whose spiritual patrimony lies, at least in part, in the Anglo-American revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps we have neglected something important. Maybe there is still some fire left in the embers of evangelical piety. God grant it.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Daniel Treier of Wheaton College. We discuss sports heroes (3:29), defining evangelical theology (6:16), the Nicene Creed and theological method (9:10); the Ten Commandments as moral formation (12:00), the Lord’s Prayer as spiritual formation (14:16), the Trinitarian shape of theology (19:00), and more. Buy Dan’s books.
Check out Brandon’s new book: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (IVP Academic, 2022). You can also preorder his next one, The Biblical Trinity.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Episode sponsor: Speak for the Unborn. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
In the Eastern calendar, today is the commemoration of the so-called Three Holy Hierarchs: Basil “the Great” of Caesarea (330-79), Gregory “the Theologian” of Nazianzus (329-90), and John Chrysostom, “the Golden-Mouthed,” the bishop of Constantinople (347-407). Many of us are more familiar with the grouping of Basil and Gregory with Basil’s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, the trio known as the Cappadocian Fathers. But the grouping of Basil and Nazianzen with John Chryostom is rooted in an eleventh-century debate over which of the three was the greatest theologian, a debate allegedly resolved by a vision of the three to John the Bishop of Euchaita in which they declared their unity and equality.
All three were defenders of Nicene orthodoxy and were committed churchmen (as was Gregory of Nyssa). All three were men of holiness and prayer. All three were supported by close Christian friends and family members, many of whom are also canonized in the Eastern tradition (especially noteworthy is Basil and Nyssen’s sister Macrina, a profound theological and spiritual influence on them both). But each of the three had his own unique gifting and personality, and each has his own lesson for today’s church.
Basil the pastor underscores the importance of the church. He left a monastic life to pursue a public ministry in defense of the divinity of Christ. He soon conscripted his reluctant friend Gregory to the same task.
Gregory the theologian teaches us the value the intellectual life. He is given the title “the Theologian” for a reason. Among his other writings, Gregory’s Five Theological Orations, preached to a small band of orthodox Christians while the see of Constantinople was in the hands of the heterodox, remain a classic defense of the doctrine of the Trinity.
John the preacher reminds us of the power of proclaiming the Word of God. He was given the moniker “Golden-Mouthed” because of his remarkable gifts of oratory. Few in church history have moved the church more powerfully to obey all that Jesus demands in Holy Scripture.
Men like these are an inspiration to the whole church of Jesus Christ. One need not be Orthodox or Roman Catholic to find great value in the lives of the saints. Yes, we Protestants understand that all Christians are already saints through faith in Jesus Christ. No, we Baptists will not be found asking the saints in heaven to intercede for us. But we confess belief in the communion of saints just the same. We too believe that all Christians share life together in the one body of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ. We too are the inheritors of the whole history of the church. All things are ours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Basil or Gregory or John. And we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s (1 Cor. 3:22-23).
Considering the lives of the saints who have gone before us serves as inspiration to our own faith and life. Growth in Christian virtue takes place, by the grace of God, through habits inspired by exemplars. So, let us remember faithful pastors, theologians, and preachers like the Three Holy Hierarchs. And let us imitate their faith as they imitated our one Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 13:7; 1 Cor. 11:1).
Today’s episode features a discussion about my new book with Madison Pierce of Western Theological Seminary. You can purchase the book here and also preorder my next one, The Biblical Trinity, here.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
This episode is a conversation with Fr. Thomas Weinandy. We discuss the making of the Jesus Becoming Jesus series (1:50), the Synoptic Gospels’ contribution to Christology and Trinitarian theology (11:14), Christology and Trinitarian theology in John’s Gospel (22:49), immutability and impassibility in the incarnation (42:50), and more.
Check out Brandon’s new book: The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (IVP Academic, 2022).
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
The last couple of years I have compiled a list of my favorite book, album, and movie from those years. Here are my 2020 and 2021 picks. It’s a fun way to chronicle what I was especially moved by in a given year. My pick for the book is not necessarily time-bound. In other words, I pick from the books I read this year, not necessarily books that were published this year. But for the album and movie, I try to pick one that was actually released during the year.
Favorite Book
Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis by R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman
What is the proper relationship between Scripture and Doctrine? How are we to conceive of the precise relationship between biblical exegesis and Christian dogmatics? For several decades, theologians and biblical scholars alike have explored what it would mean to reintegrate these crucial disciplines. But attempts at a reunion have sometimes been characterized by a lack of cohesion, rigor, and concrete specificity. From a certain perspective, Biblical Reasoning serves as a kind of remedy to these deficiencies. Exploring seven “principles” and ten “rules” for exegesis, the book shows how the relationship between exegetical reasoning and dogmatic reasoning is reciprocal and reinforcing, even if asymmetrical. Drawing on the seminal work of the late John Webster (but also ranging widely in the fathers, the medieval doctors, the Reformers, the post-Reformation scholastics, and modern scholarship as well), Biblical Reasoning has rightly been called a “book of generational significance” and “a master class in how to read the Bible directly and accurately.” I hope this book gets a wide and serious reading.
Honorable Mention: Jesus and the God of Classical Theism by Steve Duby
Favorite Movie
Everything Everywhere All at Once, written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
A trippy and bizarre multiverse fantasy sets the stage for a moving dramedy about an immigrant family. It made me laugh and cry…in the theater. It skirted right up to the line of nihilism and backed off, rediscovering family as our primal meaning-maker as human beings.
Honorable Mention: Top Gun: Maverick
Favorite Album
American Heartbreak by Zach Bryan
Zach Bryan has been building a cult following for years, with homemade Youtube videos he made moonlighting from his former day job in the United States Navy. He’s one of those rare singers that punches you in the gut from the first listen. So by the time Bryan released his first major record label album this summer it felt a bit like letting a bucking bronco out of the shoot. The production is clean but doesn’t overwhelm the rawness and authenticity of Bryan’s voice. It’s a sprawling and epic production (34 tracks long!) that mixes Red Dirt country with a good dose of folk songwriting reminiscent of Bryan’s fellow-Oklahoman Woody Guthrie. Having moved to Oklahoma this summer, I’ve seen the skies that inspired a track like “Something in the Orange.” This album is an opus from the cutting edge of the authentic country music revival we have been witnessing in recent years.
Honorable mention: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
The world lost a theological and spiritual giant today. It’s not too much to say that with the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict XVI this year, the West lost something of itself. The West has lost a living connection to another world, the world of its Christian patrimony.
I have an obituary and reflection on Benedict’s life that will be published over Mere Orthodoxy, I believe on Monday. In the meantime, I want to point you to a fascinating conversation between then Cardinal Ratzinger and the late Johann Christoph Arnold, elder of the Bruderhof Communities. The conversation launches from a discussion of Anabaptist martyrs who died at the hands of Catholic authorities. Ratzinger’s comments on the danger of relying on worldly power to do the Lord’s work seem especially relevant in our day:
What is truly moving in these stories is the depth of faith [of these men], their being deeply anchored in our Lord Jesus Christ, and their joy in this fact, a joy that is stronger than death. We are distressed, of course, by the fact that the church was so closely linked with the powers of the world that she was able to deliver other Christians to be executed because of their beliefs. This should be a deep challenge to us, how much we all need to repent again and again, and how much the church must renounce worldly principles and standards in order to accept the truth as the only standard, to look to Christ, not to torture others but to go the way of witnessing ourselves, a way that the world will always oppose, a way that will always lead to some form of martyrdom. I believe it is very important for us not to adopt worldly standards but to be ready to take upon ourselves the opposition of the world and to learn that his truth is expressed above all in love and forgiveness, and that this is truth’s most trustworthy sign. I believe this is the point at which we all have to learn anew, the only point through which he can truly lead us together.
A joy that is stronger than death. Truth expressed in love. Looking to Christ. These are some of the lessons the whole church learned from the late pope.
In honor of the release day for The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse, I’m posting Lewis Ayres’s foreword to the book. Aside from the kind words about my book at the end, I was encouraged by his comments about the current rise of retrieval among evangelicals. Ad fontes!
It is a commonplace that theologians today—especially younger theologians—work in a more ecumenical mode than did previous generations. theologians who are deeply embedded in their tradition—as Brandon Smith is in his, and I am in mine!—nevertheless find dialogue partners far beyond what might seem their natural community. Those who manage to keep this balance over great hope for the future. That future is, of course, in God’s providential, benevolent, and mysterious hands—not in ours. All that those of us who attempt to argue faithfully can do is to seek to enter the truth more deeply and attempt to share it respectfully and lovingly with others.
Perhaps the most significant feature of this new ecumenical outlook is that, despite our significant and currently unresolvable doctrinal differences, many from widely divergent traditions have come to recognize that the deep Christian tradition offers us the resources needed to think through the mighty theological mysteries that confront and dazzle the student of Christian theology. By “the deep Christian tradition” I mean the history of responses of men and women to God’s call over the long centuries since the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, and since the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost. We will necessarily view this tradition from a variety of perspectives and with different understandings of its authority in view. But for many now, it is in turning to that tradition that we best find resources for describing God’s action among us and resources for reading the Scriptures. And from this long tradition, it is the early, vibrant centuries of the Christian church that have drawn the attention of perhaps the widest group of theologians.
Further, perhaps nowhere is this new interest more apparent than in work on trinitarian theology and scriptural exegesis. It should surprise no one that Orthodox and Catholic theologians turn to this deep tradition as they seek to articulate classical trinitarian theology, but it is noteworthy that a host of theologians in (for example) the Baptist and Presbyterian traditions have also begun to turn toward early Christian theology as a key resource for explaining and exploring God’s revelation to us of the triune life. In some ways this is no new development—there is a number of Baptist church historians who have made important contributions over the past few decades to our understanding of early Christian theology. What does seem to be new is the rise of a new generation of younger Baptist theologians who wish to use the resources of the early church to present a fully scriptural account of the divine being and economy.
Many of these figures have been caught by the sheer power and beauty of the expositions of Scripture that they have found from this period. Many have come to recognize that older narratives—in which this period sees the overcoming of true Christian faith by “Greek philosophy”—hold little water, and that early Christian theology is both deeply exegetical and philosophically engaged (rather as is Paul’s own engagement with the Jewish Scripture!). As we seek to avoid the perennial danger of reinventing the wheel in every generation, it is only right that we turn again to the figures who played such an elemental and foundational part in drawing from Scripture one of its most central themes—the inseparable unity and yet irreducibility of Father, Son, and Spirit.
It is within these contexts that Smith writes. In the first place his theology is deeply informed by attention to the heritage of early Christian thought. In the second place his goal is to read Scripture, in this case the book of Revelation, in aid of a compelling presentation of God’s self-revelation. The book unfolds as a dialogue between careful engagement with modern scholarship on Revelation and the manner in which pro-Nicene trinitarian patterns of scriptural reading may lead us to understand the possibilities of this complex and mysterious text more fully. As the book proceeds, Smith draws us deep into the text of Revelation by careful study of key passages. At the end we are left with an important challenge: to read this text anew as an integral part of Scripture’s revelation of the simple and undivided life of Father, Son, and Spirit. His work should be welcomed by all interested in the constant renewal of Christian thought.
Rembrandt, The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1625)Today, December 26, is the Feast of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr. It is always striking to me that the liturgical calendar follows up the Feast of Nativity with commemorations of St Stephen, who was stoned for his witness to the Risen Christ (December 26), of St John the Evangelist, who died in exile (December 27), and of the Holy Innocents, who were slaughtered by King Herod (December 28). The First Advent leans forward to the Second.
For all of its joy and mirth and light, Christmas doesn’t actually bring an end to our darkness. No one needs to tell us this. We know it experientially. We wake up on December 26 (or on January 6, when Christmastide gives way to Epiphany) with all of the same problems. The diagnosis doesn’t miraculously change. The devilish temptations don’t magically disappear. The dead remain painfully cold in their graves.
Christmas signals the end of the old order of sin, suffering, and death. But, taken in isolation, it doesn’t actually bring it to pass. The mystery of Christ’s nativity is connected like a chain to the subsequent mysteries of his suffering, crucifixion, and death. Christ’s birth sets him on a journey that will end in the cruel death of the cross. The death of the Holy Innocents (and then, later in the gospel, the beheading of John the Baptist) foreshadows this.
But even the crucifixion, taken in isolation, doesn’t shatter the darkness. It too, is tethered to the further mysteries of Christ’s descent, resurrection, and ascent to the Father’s right hand. But, painfully, even these glorious mysteries, as we well know, have not brought an end to our suffering. Eastertide bears its own burdens as well.
And so we come to St Stephen, the Spirit-filled deacon (Acts 6:5), wonderworker (Acts 6:8) and exegete of redemptive history (Acts 7). Even he, on this side of Christ’s ascension, is not spared martyrdom.
Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
And herein we see the light breaking through the darkness that even the ascension does not remove from our experience: the Risen Lord Jesus, the divine-human Son of Man, temporarily suspends his session–his having sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high–and stands in honor of his first martyr. Daniel’s promise of the Son of Man coming in the clouds is given a kind of preview, at least in its first moment, at the protomartyr’s death.
Soon, this same Jesus will stand once again from his throne and return to earth to make all things new. And so, the chain will be complete: the whole mystery of Christ–his incarnation, life, death, burial, descent, resurrection, ascension, session–will be brought to a climactic conclusion in his Second Advent to judge the quick and the dead, to defeat all his and our enemies, and to usher in a new creation. And the denouement: a world of perpetual light (Revelation 22:5).
If you’re looking for a few ideas for last second Christmas money/gift card redemption, here’s a few ideas. You can also check out my past lists: 2015 and 2016 lists at my old Patheos blog, and my 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 lists posted here at Biblical Reasoning.
Please forgive my shameless plug upfront, but beyond these five fantastic books below, I have two books to briefly plug:
- Out tomorrow(!) is an academic monograph with IVP Academic entitled The Trinity in the Book of Revelation, which brings together pro-Nicene retrieval and engagement with modern biblical scholarship. Order here.
- Out in May, you can preorder my next book with Lexham Press entitled The Biblical Trinity, which is an introductory book to the Trinity in Scripture for pastors and thoughtful laypeople. Order here.
Thanks for considering! And now, in no particular order, here are my five favorite books that I read in 2022.
Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition by Kathy Eden
This book was recommended to me by several friends as a necessary read for working in early Christian theology and exegesis, and I see why. It is an excellent introduction to the larger contextual influences on early reading cultures and their intersection with/influence on early Christian writings. Order here.
The Trinity by Thomas Joseph White
I simply do not have enough superlatives for this book. Just read it and reference it over and over. Listen to our conversation on tough Trinity questions here. Order here.
Jesus Becoming Jesus (vol. 2) by Thomas G. Weinandy
This three-volume series (see also: vol. 1 and vol. 3) is a treasure trove of theological interpretation of the Gospels. Aside from Jesus himself, of course, Weinandy’s prose is the star of this book. I devoured each volume rather quickly due to how effortlessly Weinandy blends beautiful writing with deeply engaging insights, but I especially enjoyed volume 2. I’ll be revisiting these often. Order here.
Post-Hellenistic Philosophy by G. R. Boys-Stones
This book is not an easy read, but well organized and gets straight to the point regarding the major philosophical developments in and around early Christianity. The discussion toward the end on Christian appropriations of philosophy is worth the price of the book. Order here.
Sprawlball by Kirk Goldsberry
I know everyone tells me to read more fiction, but I typically reserve my “free time” reading for sports books. I really enjoyed this one on the evolution of the modern NBA game by Kirk Goldsberry, a pioneer in NBA advanced analytics. Order here.
Artwork by Mackenzie KissellThis Advent, I have been reading a book on the Christology of the great medieval Franciscan theologian, St. Bonaventure. The Seraphic Doctor summarizes the mystery of the incarnation—which results in the union of two natures in the one hypostasis, or person, of the Son—like this: The hypostatic union “consists in nothing other than the fact that a divine person who, from eternity, has been a hypostasis of the divine nature becomes the hypostasis of a human nature in time.”
It is astounding to consider: a divine person, the Second Person of the Godhead, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, is the very same person who was born to a poor, Jewish virgin two-thousand years ago. He has made himself accessible to us; indeed, he has made himself one of us. The One who was from the beginning has made himself hearable, visible, and touchable (1 John 1:1). Whatever else we may be going through this year, our lives have been definitely qualified by this fundamental fact in the history of the cosmos: God has come near. Though it strains credulity, a divine person has been born.
May this truth cheer you this holiday season.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Trevin Wax of the North American Mission Board. We discuss our years serving and podcasting together (2:32), the definition of orthodoxy (6:13), the inclusivity of orthodoxy and the exclusivity of heresy (10:08), orthodoxy and cultural engagement (24:28). Buy Trevin’s books and his new podcast, Reconstructing Faith.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible and Cedarville University’s Graduate School. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
You can preorder Brandon’s new book, The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (IVP Academic, 2022).
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a co-founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
Racism is persistent. It comes in a variety of forms, some more veiled and incipient, others more explicit and fully formed. Many seem to espouse a myth of progress that envisions a gradual waning of all racialized ideologies. But recent years (and months and days) have given the lie to that myth. The truth is that only the redeeming work of the incarnate Christ can finally “bid our sad divisions cease.”
The breaking down of the dividing wall of hostility is one of the central messages of Advent, indeed of the entirety of the “Winter Pascha,” to use Alexander Schmemann’s memorable phrase to describe the liturgical cycle of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. In Advent, we long for the appearing of the Prince of Peace. In Christmastide, we celebrate his nativity, which is good news of great joy for all peoples. And in Epiphany, we herald his manifestation as King of the nations, signaled by the visit of the magi, bearing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
This last mystery, the visit of the magi, has been received by the church with a special connection to Christ’s universal work. As Joseph Ratzinger has noted, the Christian tradition developed the notion that the magi are kings hailing from all three known continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. So, says Ratzinger, “the black king is part and parcel of this: in the kingdom of Jesus Christ there are no distinctions of race and origin. In him and through him, humanity is united, yet without losing any of the richness of variety.”
In this way, Christ as the Last Adam is simply restoring the inherent unity of the human race that is obscured and undermined by human sin. In another place, Ratzinger reflects on the unity of man in Adam, the man from the dust:
Thus the unity of the whole human race becomes immediately apparent: We are all from only one earth. There are not different kinds of “blood and soil,” to use a Nazi slogan. There are not fundamentally different kinds of human beings, as the myths of numerous religions used to say and as some worldviews of our own day also assert. There are not different categories and races in which human beings are valued differently. We are all one humanity, formed from God’s one earth. It is precisely this thought that is at the very heart of the creation account and of the whole Bible. In the face of all human division and human arrogance, whereby one person sets himself or herself over and against another, humanity is declared to be one creation of God from his one earth. What is said at the beginning is then repeated after the Flood: in the great genealogy of Genesis 10 the same thought reappears — namely, that there is only one humanity in the many human beings. The Bible says a decisive “No” to all racism and to every human division.
“Blood and soil” ideologies seem to be on the rise again in some quarters. But the church of the universal Savior–the people whose identity is definitively marked by Advent, the Nativity, and the Epiphany–of all people should not be deceived by them. The church is the sign of a coming kingdom of peace in which the Desire of the nations will “bind in one the hearts of all mankind.”
This episode is a conversation with Dr. William Marsh of Cedarville University. We discuss truths and myths regarding the late medieval church and Luther’s concerns (3:03), Luther’s hermeneutics and their relationship to the Christian tradition (19:37), the Reformers on reading and preaching Scripture (31:57), how the Reformation can help the church today (40:09), and more. … Continue reading William Marsh on Luther’s Hermeneutics and Reformation Truths and Myths
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Darian Lockett of Talbot School of Theology. We discuss how the Catholic Epistles fit together in the biblical canon (1:22), faith and works in Paul and James (22:52), scholarship on James (28:05), scholarship on 2 Peter and Jude (34:17), and more. Buy Darian’s books. Church Grammar is presented … Continue reading Darian Lockett on Reading the Catholic Epistles and the Biblical Canon
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Bobby Jamieson of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. We discuss the benefits of theological resources in doing exegesis (2:15), partitive exegesis as a rule for reading Christologically (19:28), things that “need to die” in biblical studies scholarship (38:06), and more. Buy Bobby’s books for the church and for the … Continue reading Biblical Reasoning (Part 2): Bobby Jamieson on Theology and Exegesis
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Tyler Wittman of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. We discuss the relationship between theology and exegesis (2:18), honoring God in exegesis (9:34), the Trinity and the New Testament (20:07), inseparable operations and appropriations (27:23), and more. Buy Tyler’s books. Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Intro … Continue reading Biblical Reasoning (Part 1): Tyler Wittman on Theology and Exegesis
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Matthew Bingham of Oak Hill College. We discuss how to understand Baptist history (1:28), the shared identity of 17th-century baptistic churches in the context of the English Reformation (4:50), the development of a Baptist identity (25:57), popular Baptist history truisms (30:37), what it means to be a “Reformed” … Continue reading Matthew Bingham on Baptist Origins, Historiography, and Being “Reformed”
This episode is a repost of a conversation with Dr. Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School. We discuss being a Baptist and appreciating the Great Tradition (2:00), ecumenism and catholicity (7:35), the future of Christian higher education (22:35), and more. Buy Timothy’s books. Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur … Continue reading Timothy George on Evangelicals, the Great Tradition, and Christian Higher Education (Repost)
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Jarvis Williams of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. We discuss the phrase “redemptive kingdom diversity” (1:27), a biblical theology of the people of God (4:42), the difference between “race” and “ethnicity,” and avoiding extreme positions on personal and corporate responsibility (12:54), the church’s mission in pursuing diversity (34:51), … Continue reading Jarvis Williams on Ethnicity, Diversity, and the Church’s Mission
This episode is a conversation with Drs. Madison Pierce of Western Theological Seminary and Ched Spellman of Cedarville University. We discuss the anonymous authorship and audience of Hebrews (7:50), the hermeneutical effect of anonymous authorship (24:26), the development of the canon and tradition (46:05), and more. Buy Madison’s and Ched’s books. Church Grammar is presented … Continue reading Madison Pierce and Ched Spellman on Anonymous Authors and Audiences in the New Testament
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Steven Duby of Phoenix Seminary. We discuss “classical theism” as an aid for reading Scripture and doing Christology (3:12), boundaries the doctrine of God provides for the doctrine of the incarnation (19:12), the best case for the covenant of redemption/pactum salutis (32:09), engaging other scholars with clarity and … Continue reading Steven Duby on Divine Attributes, the Incarnation, and Engaging Other Scholars
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Gavin Ortlund of First Baptist Church of Ojai, California. We discuss how evangelicals can retrieve theology from the past (2:50), benefits and dangers of retrieval (6:05), evangelicals who “leave” to other traditions (11:01), retrieving Augustine and getting beyond modern theology debates (13:53), why theological triage is important and … Continue reading Gavin Ortlund on Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals and Theological Triage (Repost)
In a recently published collection of essays on the Trinity, Scott Swain discusses B.B. Warfield’s treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity, with particular attention to Warfield’s rejection of the language of “eternal generation.” That’s a hugely interesting and important topic, but it’s not the subject of this post per se. Instead, I want to … Continue reading The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity: A Summary
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Michael Svigel of Dallas Theological Seminary. We discuss the Lord’s Supper in the early church (2:19), philosophy’s influence on early Christian theology (6:45), where the doctrine of the Trinity came from (13:48), the role of Constantine and the Roman Empire in the church (17:45), and the Great Schism … Continue reading Michael Svigel on Urban Legends in Church History
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Jeremy Treat of Reality LA. We discuss the NBA (1:33), integrating the Kingdom and the cross in atonement theories (5:20), a definition the gospel (11:23), how atonement theories relate to one another (14:07), the implications of living out the gospel (20:49), pastoring in the pandemic (26:38), and more. … Continue reading Jeremy Treat on the Atonement and Pastoring in the Pandemic
This episode is a conversation with Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. of the Angelicum. We discuss the continuity and discontinuity between Scripture and Nicaea (3:17), the relationship between ontology/theology and economy (10:30), omnipresence and incarnation (20:00), simplicity and persons (29:21), personal distinctions and eternal relations (35:56), filioque and spiration (43:02), and more. Listen to our … Continue reading Thomas Joseph White on Tough Trinity Questions
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Matthew Bennett of Cedarville University. We discuss what we can learn from Islamic culture (3:52), the history of Muhammad and Islam origins (7:58), Jesus in the Qur’an (15:18), the role of the Bible in the Qur’an (21:00), truths and myths about jihad and violent Islamic groups (21:48), Christianity’s … Continue reading Matthew Bennett on Truths and Myths about Islam
This episode is repost of my conversation with Dr. Carmen Imes of Talbot School of Theology. We discuss the Institute for Biblical Research (2:05), YHWH and Sinai (3:00), God’s covenants and the Great Commission (16:43), Gentile inclusion and the “spirit” of the Law (24:58), and practical implications for bearing God’s name (34:50). Buy Carmen’s books. … Continue reading Carmen Imes on Sinai, God’s Covenants, and the Biblical Story (Repost)
This episode is a conversation with Dr. John Meade of Phoenix Seminary. We discuss early biblical canon lists (1:06), the Old and New Testaments and “other writings” in the lists (7:00), the canon up to the Reformation (18:11), the unity and diversity of “authoritative” books (25:42), why we can trust our Bible (40:54), Origen the … Continue reading John Meade on the Development of the Biblical Canon, Canon Lists, and Origen the Text Critic
This is a crossover episode with Dr. Matthew Emerson from the new Center for Baptist Renewal podcast and YouTube Channel. We discuss one of the books from our CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge, Gregory of Nazianzus’s Theological Orations. Subscribe to the CBR podcast: Apple | Spotify | YouTube Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard … Continue reading Gregory of Nazianzus’s “Theological Orations” with Matthew Emerson
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Kyle Strobel of Talbot School of Theology. We discuss the fall of leaders (2:37), a brief Jonathan Edwards troll session (7:40), what is missing in books on prayer (8:58), what we need to unlearn about prayer (12:37), true confession in prayer (22:39), unanswered prayers (29:33), reality vs. fantasy … Continue reading Kyle Strobel on the Fall of Leaders and Learning How to Pray
Here’s a prayer for New Year’s Day from James Hinton, an eighteenth-century Baptist minister who compiled one of the few prayer books in Baptist history (Thanks to Michael Haykin for sharing this work with me). Oh thou who inhabitest eternity! By thee was infant time created, and every rolling year speaks of thy goodness. Help … Continue reading A Prayer for New Year’s Day
This episode is a conversation with Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. of the Angelicum. We discuss his journey from Atlanta, GA to Rome (1:35), the life of a Dominican friar (5:45), basic guardrails for the doctrine of incarnation (9:50), avoiding problems of the Son “subtracting” or “adding” in the incarnation (14:17), could Christ have sinned? (19:50), the relationship between Christ’s divine and human knowledge (25:28), Christ’s beatific vision and “self-awareness” (31:47), the Holy Spirit’s role in Christ’s human life (41:46), Aquinas among the Protestants (45:54), favorite Protestant theologians (52:04), and more.
Buy Thomas’s books. Also, check out his band, The Hillbilly Thomists.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, Editorial Director for the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
Last year, I started a tradition of compiling a few of my favorite things from the year ending. Books, music, and film have been my constant companions for as long as I can remember. So here are my superlatives from 2021.
Favorite Book
The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, by Thomas Joseph White
I am a slow and deliberate and fairly selective reader. I rarely read books that are hot off the presses. There are so many great books that I haven’t read that I usually wait to see which books stand up to the scrutiny of time before making the commitment to read them. I try to prioritize the classics I haven’t read, or haven’t read in too long (for example, this year I did some remedial work in Pseudo-Dionysius, Bernard of Clarivaux, and Bonaventure). So I almost never read enough books published in the current year to have a favorite. This year was no different. My favorite book from 2021 was actually published in 2017. Thomas Joseph White, a Dominican Thomistic scholar of the first rank, has written a truly magisterial treatment of this central Christian doctrine (I noticed it made Brandon’s best of list too). White’s book covers a remarkably wide range of issues on the person and work of Christ: everything from dyothelitism and the satisfaction theory of the atonement to the descent into hell and the nature of the resurrection body. I don’t quite agree on every point (his critique of the Calvinist doctrine of penal substitution distorts some things) but White’s treatment is consistently erudite and fair. Almost he persuadest me to believe Thomas’s view on the knowledge of the human nature of Christ (that Christ possessed the beatific vision and perfect knowledge in his higher soul). Overall, this book is a remarkable achievement in defense of classic Christology and an ontological understanding of Christ as true God and true man.
Honorable Mention: Dracula, by Bram Stoker, a classic in the horror genre I only recently read for the first time.
Favorite Movie
Minari, written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung
I believe this was officially a 2020 film but only had wide release in early 2021. It tells the story of a Korean immigrant family trying to build a farm and adjust to life in 1980s rural Arkansas. Beautifully shot and brilliantly acted, Minari is small story with massive implications for the human predicament. Some of the turns are wrenching, but the resolution is positively feel-good . Don’t miss the religious overtones: the religious fanatic, the exorcisms, the idol of money, the importance of church/community, the inclusion of the other, the costs of love, the gifts of grace (the minari plant that gives the film its title grows without effort). Also, the main character is named Jacob and he builds a well! Another subtext: the emotional strains of manhood in bleak economic circumstances, a theme that is noticeably muted in much popular art. (As I write this, there are a couple movies I have yet to see that are much anticipated: P. T. Anderson’s Licorice Pizza and Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley).
Honorable mention: Dune: Part One, directed by Denis Villeneuve
Favorite Album
Pressure Machine, by The Killers
I have always enjoyed The Killers (and lead singer Brandon Flowers’ solo work as well) but this album marks a decisive step forward for the band, in my estimation. The polished pop rock anthems are traded in for mostly subtle and somber acoustic reflections on the depths of human pain. I don’t want to share too much because the album needs to be experienced not over-analyzed, but suffice it to say the album is about life in rural Utah (where Flowers lived for a period as a child) and especially the aftermath of the opioid epidemic (overdoses, suicide, and the shattered dreams of youth). Musically, it has echoes of R.E.M. and fairly obvious homages to Bruce Springsteen. The latter comparison is most apt because Flowers is able to accomplish for his native West what the Boss did for the working class in his native New Jersey. Religious themes are threaded throughout. So this isn’t just an album about pain; it’s also about wrestling through doubt and despair to find meaning and hope, symbolized in the opening track’s “West Hills” (a theme pregnant with biblical allusions).
Honorable Mention: I Don’t Live Here Anymore, by The War on Drugs
It’s become an annual tradition for me and many others to write a post like this. Check out my past lists: 2015 and 2016 lists at my old Patheos blog, and my 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 lists posted here at Biblical Reasoning.
In no particular order, here are my five (six! I cheated this year) favorite books that I read in 2021.
Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? by Thomas H. McCall
This is a classic example of a book I should’ve read years ago—it came out in 2010!—but just never had the chance to, aside from dabbling in a few chapters here and there. In my view, McCall represents the best of the “analytic theology” (AT) movement: the notably logically-rigorous flavor of AT, but rooted deeply in Scripture and the Christian tradition. His critique of eternal subordination of the Son, years before the 2016 debate, is particularly helpful and still relevant.
The Incarnate Lord by Thomas Joseph White
Another book I came a little late to, but am glad I did. Few people have White’s rare ability to engage some of the most theologically and philosophically complex issues with clarity and precision. In this book in particular, he tackles all of the major issues and questions that arise in Christology in general and Aquinas’s Christology in particular.
Faith, Hope, Love by Josef Pieper
After becoming somewhat bored of overwrought, pragmatic books on morality and ethics, I asked a few philosophy/ethics scholar-friends for recommendations. This book by Pieper was the near-unanimous recommendation. I was blown away by his simple, even doxological, approach to theological ethics, which has obviously been fostered over Pieper’s decades of personal reflection and practice.
On the Trinity by Hilary of Poitiers
I’m always reading the church fathers as part of my research, teaching, and personal interest, and it was my goal this year to read the entirety of Hilary’s work on the Trinity. “The Athanasius of the West” did not disappoint; his orthodox Trinitarian formulations are worked out in unique ways, and his framing around Exod. 3:14 is worth the price of admission.
Letters for the Church by Darian R. Lockett
Lockett is one of my favorite New Testament scholars (and all-around human beings). His broader scholarship contributes to two broadly under-appreciated fields: canon and the Catholic/General Epistles. Those two expertises combine into an excellent, accessible volume on the major theological and canonical issues in interpreting these epistles.
The Same God Who Works All Things by Adonis Vidu
Vidu’s work is truly a monumental addition to the field of Trinitarian theology. Simply put, inseparable operations are a crucial piece of the Trinitarian puzzle, and Vidu’s is the first full-scale work done on the doctrine in recent memory. This book has a great combination of exegetical insights, theological imagination, and historical sensitivity.
This episode is a repost of our conversation with Dr. Thomas Kidd of Baylor University (soon-to-be Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary). We discuss becoming a scholar (2:50), the Great Awakening (9:50), the faith(?) of America’s founding fathers (14:40), how to define “evangelical” (27:17), and more. Buy Tommy’s books.
Church Grammar is presented the Christian Standard Bible. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Episode sponsor: Speak for the Unborn. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, Editorial Director for the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Ephraim Radner of Wycliffe College. We discuss a figural reading of Scripture (2:20), the relationship between Scripture and time/history (9:06), examples of figural readings in church history and modern practice (12:38), how to think about figural reading in preaching and teaching (31:52), human suffering (38:35), and more. Buy Ephraim’s books.
This episode is brought you by the Text & Canon Institute of Phoenix Seminary. Check out the new and improved textandcanon.org.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, Editorial Director for the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
This episode is a conversation with Dr. Madison Pierce of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Today is a listener Q&A with a wide range of questions on theology, biblical interpretation, and more. Buy Madison’s books.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, on the Board of Directors for the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.
This episode is a short talk from a piece I wrote at the Center for Baptist Renewal, seeking to introduce the doctrine of eternal generation with some help from Athanasius.
Church Grammar is presented by the Christian Standard Bible. Intro music: Purple Dinosaur by nobigdyl. Producer: Katie Larson.
Brandon D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology & New Testament at Cedarville University, a director for the Center for Baptist Renewal, and writes things. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandon_d_smith.
*** This podcast is designed to discuss all sorts of topics from various points of view. Therefore, guests’ views do not always reflect the views of the host, his church, or his institution.