INTRODUCTION: EVANGELICALS, THE GOSPEL, AND THE TRINITY
1.This widespread saying is usually introduced with the vague reference, “As somebody has said.” I have found a slightly more polite version of it in Harold Lindsell and Charles J. Woodbridge, A Handbook of Christian Truth (Westwood, NJ: Revell, 1953), 51–52, though it is surely not original there.
2.This was the view of Emil Brunner, who called the Trinity a “theological doctrine which defends the central faith of the Bible and the Church” but cautioned that it must not be preached or taught to the faithful, lest it present “an artificial stumbling-block.” See The Christian Doctrine of God: Dogmatics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), 1:206, 238.
3.This is another untraceable statement about the Trinity that we keep in circulation via the phrase “As someone has said.” I have seen it most recently, introduced thus, in Clifford Pond’s keenly gospel-centered little book This God Is Our God: Enjoying the Trinity (London: Grace Publications Trust, 2000), 58.
4.Gerald Bray, “The Filioque Clause in History and Theology,” Tyndale Bulletin 34 (1983): 91–144.
5.“The Glory of the Gospel,” The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace, 2000), 4:227–346. Goodwin says this repeatedly, at 238, 272, 281, 288.
6.Echoing Cecil F. Alexander’s translation of the Old Irish poem known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.”
7.J. C. Ryle, Knots Untied: Being Plain Statements on Disputed Points in Religion from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman (London: William Hunt, 1885), 8. Notice also that Ryle’s list has the profile of an experiential grasp of Trinitarianism.
8.The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, vol. 3 (Los Angeles: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917), chap. 12. For more on The Fundamentals as a witness to evangelicalism at large and to evangelical Trinitarianism in particular.
9.John Wesley, “Introduction,” in The Sermons of John Wesley: The Standard Sermons, ed. Thomas Jackson, 1872 edition.
10.See below, chap. 3, for more on this passage.
11.B. B. Warfield, “Redeemer and Redemption,” in The Person and Work of Christ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1950), 345.
CHAPTER 1: COMPASSED ABOUT BY FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT
1.David Wilkerson with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, The Cross and the Switchblade (New York: Pyramid, 1963). The book was a best-seller well into the 1970s in the Christian market. It was also the basis of a 1970 movie starring Pat Boone and Erik Estrada, and a 1972 comic book.
2.Nicky Cruz with Jamie Buckingham, Run Baby Run (New York: Pyramid, 1968).
3.Nicky Cruz with Charles Paul Conn, The Magnificent Three (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1976).
4.Ibid., 9.
5.Ibid., 13.
6.Ibid., 24–25.
7.Ibid., 51.
8.Ibid., 64.
9.Ibid., 103.
10.Ibid., 105.
11.Ibid., 70.
12.Ibid., 18.
13.Ibid., 15.
14.Ibid., 17.
15.Ibid.
16.Millard J. Erickson addresses precisely these questions in his short, incisive book Making Sense of the Trinity: Three Crucial Questions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000). His title for the third question, which he calls the “So What?” question, is, “Does It Make Any Difference?”
17.Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), xviii.
18.Mark Noll, “The Evangelical Mind Today,” First Things 146 (October 2004): 34–39.
19.See esp. Bruce D. Marshall’s critique of this story in his article “The Trinity,” in The Blackwell Companion to Theology, ed. Gareth Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). His warning about exaggerating the importance of Protestant liberalism and Catholic manualism is especially relevant for evangelicals, who were not directly formed by those traditions and so did not directly profit when Barth and Rahner undermined them.
20.Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. MacKintosh and J. S. Stewart (1830; repr. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928).
21.Ibid., 52.
22.Ibid., 123.
23.Ibid., 156.
24.Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799; repr. New York: Harper, 1958), 52.
25.Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 747. I have changed the standard translation here and substituted “Protestant” for “Evangelical,” which is what Schleiermacher manifestly meant.
26.John Bunyan, “Of the Trinity and a Christian,” The Works of John Bunyan, ed. W. R. Owens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 12:403–5.
27.Bunyan in fact had a much better grasp of the actual dynamics of biblical Trinitarianism than he gave himself credit for. See below (chap. 7) for his Trinitarian definition of prayer. I would even say Bunyan is a typical evangelical in that he is more Trinitarian than he thinks he is.
28.For background, see Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (London: T&T Clark, 2003).
29.This long prayer, entitled “The Author’s solemn Address to the great and ever-blessed God on a Review of what he had written in the Trinitarian Controversy,” can be found as sec. 21 of “Remnants of Time Employed in Prose and Verse, or Short Essays and Composures on Various Subjects,” in The Works of the Rev. Isaac Watts in Nine Volumes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1813), 9:505–12. The quotation is from p. 507. These remarks by Watts need to be taken in the total context of his work, in which Trinitarian commitments are evident and, as in the hymns, warmly affirmed.
30.Amanda Smith, The Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist (Chicago: Meyer and Brother, 1893); repr. from original typesetting in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
31.Ibid., 141–42.
32.Karl Rahner, The Trinity (1967; English trans. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 14.
33.Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
34.Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). It is also instructive to recall the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer in philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre in moral thought, and Imre Lakatos in the philosophy of science, in order to get a sense of the larger context in which Polanyi’s work can be meaningfully situated. To associate his project with thinkers like Paul Feyerabend, Bruno Latour, and the “science studies” discipline at large would, however, be going too far and misunderstanding his work.
35.Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Rout-ledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), vii.
36.Ibid., vii.
37.Ibid., 266.
38.Thomas F. Torrance, “Notes on Terms and Concepts,” Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for the Christian Faith and Life (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1980), 145.
39.Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 89.
40.Gerald Bray, “Evangelicals Losing Their Way: The Doctrine of the Trinity,” in The Compromised Church: The Present Evangelical Crisis, ed. John Armstrong (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998), 63.
41.Ibid., 64–65.
42.This remark by Unitarian John MacLachlan is reported in Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2005), 215.
43.Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
44.Ibid., 74.
45.Ibid., 75.
46.Ibid., 86.
47.Ibid., 93.
48.Drusilla Scott, Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 51.
49.Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), chap. 8.
CHAPTER 2: WITHIN THE HAPPY LAND OF THE TRINITY
1.Have you ever stopped to ask, What if there were no hypothetical questions?
2.Hymns Ancient and Modern (New York: Pott and Amery, 1870), no. 154.
3.From A Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle of St. Peter, The Works of Robert Leighton (London: Longmans, 1870), 3:137. The prophet he quotes is Isaiah (57:15).
4.Scripture does, however, address the question indirectly, leaving plenty of room and guidance for productive biblical mediation. The classic example is Jonathan Edwards’s 1765 treatise The End for Which God Created the World.
5.Mirabiliter condidisti, mirabilius reformasti is the elegant Latin of this prayer that goes back to at least the seventh century. It became part of the Roman mass, where it is prayed at the mixing of water into the wine.
6.Not to be confused with tipping your waiter 30 percent.
7.From an undated entry, estimated ca. 1711, in Susanna Wesley’s devotional journal. Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, ed. Charles Wallace Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 225.
8.Ibid., “Letter to Mrs. Alice Peard, Tiverton, August 5, 1737,” 173.
9.Ibid., 210 (ca. 1710).
10.A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology: Three Volumes in One (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1907), 347.
11.Thomas Manton, One Hundred and Ninety Sermons on the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm, (London: William Brown, 1842), 2:96.
12.Ibid., 98.
13.Ibid., 100.
14.Craig Musseau, “Good to Me” (Mercy/Vineyard, 1990), CCLI #313480.
15.James Denney, Lectures in Theology (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1895), 70. See the 1976 reprint (Baker) for a helpful introduction by David F. Wells to the maverick Denney.
16.Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (1746; repr. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 167.
17.Ibid., 172.
18.Robert Hawker, “The Personal Testimony of God the Father to the Person, Godhead, and Sonship of God the Son,” in A New Uniform Edition of the Works of the Rev. Robert Hawker, DD (London: Ebenezer Palmer, 1826), 3:570.
19.Ibid., 567–68.
20.Ibid., 568.
21.Ibid., 569. In the first line, Hawker has “bear” for “bare.”
22.G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, bk. 1, lines 209–24.
23.The “someone” who said this was Charles Gore in his 1891 Bampton lectures, which I do not recommend. The line is better out of context than in context, because Gore had a thoroughly kenotic christology and was more interested in the denial than in the affirmation. This is probably why B. B. Warfield quoted the line without naming his source and then amended it to “not so much inculcated as presupposed.” See Warfield’s 1915 essay “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity,” reprinted in his Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1952), 32.
24.Gerald L. Bray, “Out of the Box: The Christian Experience of God in Trinity,” in God the Holy Trinity: Reflections on Christian Faith and Practice, ed. Timothy George (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 45.
25.Thomas Traherne, Centuries (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 3.
26.William Burkitt, Expository Notes, with Practical Observations, on the New Testament (London: James Dinnis, 1832), 2:515.
27.For a brief, accessible explanation of eternal sonship and a refutation of alternative views, see John MacArthur, “Reexamining the Eternal Sonship of Christ,” at http://www.gty.org/Resources/ Articles/593.
28.The most influential statement of the case for “the fatherhood of God and the infinite value of the human soul” was by Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? (New York: Putnam’s, 1902). G. E. Ladd refutes the classic liberal case in his “God the Father” article in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, E–J, ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 511.
29. I call it “classic” partly because I could demonstrate that the early church fathers taught it consistently. For a good treatment of the evidence from the early church, see Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2005), 89–200. For my purposes in this book, it is more relevant to show that this has also been the consistent position of evangelical Protestantism, and later chapters will make this abundantly clear. But more important than either of these appeals to tradition and consensus is my claim that the view presented here is the right interpretation of Scripture.
30.John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986), 32.
31.Ibid., 33. Piper is developing ideas from Jonathan Edwards throughout this section.
32.Bill Bright, “Four Spiritual Laws,” http://www.campuscrusade.com/four_laws_online.htm.
33.Handley C. G. Moule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902), 39.
34.From A Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle of St. Peter, 149.
CHAPTER 3: SO GREAT SALVATION
1.G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Garden City, NY: Image, 1955), 1.
2.That is, 202 Greek words. Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 153.
3.The other New Testament passage that competes with Ephesians 1 for comprehensiveness and complexity is Romans 8. There too, the effect on the reader is overwhelming, and there too the contour is Trinitarian.
4.It was Eduard Norden who in 1913 called it “the most monstrous sentence conglomeration . . . I have ever met in the Greek language.” Markus Barth quoted this remark in his two-volume Anchor Bible Commentary Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 77. He went on more reverently in his commentary to “make visible the distinctness, the beauty, and the sense of the several limbs of the ‘monster.’”
5.Effective communication of the gospel always happens under this Pauline sign: “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4).
6.Notice the Father of glory; the Lord Jesus Christ; and the spirit of wisdom, revelation, and knowledge.
7.Barth, Ephesians, 34:373.
8.Counting “in him,” “in whom,” and “in the Beloved,” there are 13 occurrences here.
9.The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace, 2000), 1:46.
10.Ibid.
11.A. B. Simpson, A Larger Christian Life (New York: Christian Alliance, 1890), 119.
12.Hymns of the Christian Life (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1978), no. 54.
13.James Denney, cited in John Randolph Taylor, God Loves Like That! The Theology of James Denney (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1962), 38.
14.Adolph Saphir, The Hidden Life: Thoughts on Communion with God (New York: Carter, 1877), 1.
15.R. A. Torrey, “The Way of Salvation Made as Plain as Day,” in Revival Addresses (New York: Revell, 1903).
16.John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: Epworth Press, 1950), 829–30.
17.John Wesley, “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection,” The Works of John Wesley (New York: Harper, 1827), 8:11.
18.C. H. Spurgeon, “Salvation to the Uttermost,” A Sermon (no. 84) Delivered on Sabbath Evening, June 8, 1856, at Exeter Hall, Strand. http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0084.htm.
19.Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1998).
20.“Health and wealth” preaching of any variety (“prosperity,” “name it and claim it,” “positive confession”) is best considered a blasphemous parody of the evangelical message. These teachers use precisely the “abundance” rhetoric we are examining in this chapter but apply it to their own ends. The more noise they make about abundance and fullness, the more they are constricting the gospel.
21.J. C. Ryle, “Evangelical Religion,” Knots Untied: Being Plain Statements on Disputed Points in Religion from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman (London: William Hunt, 1885).
22.This book is available in multiple reprint editions. J. I. Packer wrote the introduction to the Christian Focus reprint. It is printed together with all Scougal’s extant writings in The Works of the Rev. Henry Scougal, ed. Don Kistler (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 2002).
23.Henry Scougal, “The Life of God in the Soul of Man [1667],” Works of the Rev. Henry Scougal, 2.
24.I invented this word, but you have my permission to use it.
25.Shirley Carter Hughson, With Christ in God: A Study of Human Destiny (London: SPCK, 1947), ix.
26.Thomas C. Oden, The Transforming Power of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 33.
27.That is, in the two sentences I have quoted. Oden’s book has much to say about grace’s conquest of sin. The work is also, by the way, markedly Trinitarian.
28.See above, p. 103.
29.Works of Thomas Goodwin, 1:46.
30.Most modern translations prefer “I am your shield, and your reward shall be very great.”
31.Dwight L. Moody, “The Eighth Chapter of Romans,” in Moody’s Last Sermons: Authorized Edition Printed from Verbatim Reports (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 43–44. This was the last formal address Moody gave, in the Auditorium at East Northfield, MA, August 12, 1899.
32.F. B. Meyer, The Exalted Christ and Our Identification with Him in His Exaltation (London: Wheeler, 1930), 34.
33.“The Glory of the Gospel,” in Works of Thomas Goodwin, 4:227–346. Goodwin says this repeatedly (238, 272, 281, 288). The sermons titled “The Glory of the Gospel” are on Col. 1:26–27, but Goodwin frequently alludes to and sometimes cites 1 Cor. 2:10.
34.Ibid., 281.
35.“Things” is not strictly present in the original Greek but is provided by the KJV to make sense of “deep” used as a plural noun; “depths of God” is the more common modern translation.
36.Paul is quoting Isa. 40:13 (as he does also in Rom. 11:34), a text which asks, Who has known the mind of Yahweh? Paul answers Isaiah’s rhetorical question with the name “Christ.” This is one of six New Testament passages where Christ and the name Yahweh are identified. See David B. Capes, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology (Tübingen: Mohr, 1992).
37.Hymns of the Christian Life, no. 1.
38.Cor ad cor loquitur (“heart speaks to heart”) as John Henry Newman’s coat of arms said.
39.John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005).
CHAPTER 4: THE SHAPE OF THE GOSPEL
1.John Owen, “Pneumatologia,” in The Works of John Owen, 24 vols. ed. William Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–53; vols. 1–16 repr. London: Banner of Truth, 1965), 3:23.
2.Most of these words in Ephesians are even built from oik- compounds, echoing the root word of oikonomia.
3.The full range of the use of the word economy makes for a fascinating study. For a useful tool that shows all its occurrences but requires no knowledge of Greek, see W. E. Vine, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1981), under the entry “dispensation” but also under “stewardship.” The word-study method is a rich way of reading the Bible, but there are certain temptations to beware of. Words are not concepts, and etymologies are not meanings. D. A. Carson’s book Exegetical Fallacies, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1996) has a helpful section, “Word-Study Fallacies” (27–65). In my use of the word oikonomia here, I have been careful to derive its meaning from Paul’s use of it and then to use the “house-law” etymology as a source of illustration. But in its theological usage, economy means “history,” not “house.”
4.Handley C. G. Moule, Outlines of Christian Theology (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902), 39. For support, Moule points to “John 1:18, 5:20, 17:24, etc.” For responsible modern commentary on Jesus’ relation to the Father in John’s Gospel, see Andreas Köstenberger and Scott Swain, Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity and John’s Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008), esp. 61–74, 111–33.
5.See Klaus Issler, “Jesus’ Example: Prototype of the Dependent, Spirit-Filled Life,” in Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology (Nashville: Broad-man, 2007), 208–9.
6.R. A. Torrey, What the Bible Teaches (New York: Revell, 1898), 287–89.
7.For a concise introduction to the doctrine of God from this point of view, see Dennis F. Kinlaw, Let’s Start with Jesus: A New Way of Doing Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), and from the same starting point but with more Trinitarian elaboration, Allen Coppedge, The God Who Is Triune: Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007).
8.Irenaeus, Haer., 4.20.1. He returns to this image in three other places: 5.1.3; 5.6:1; and 5.28.4.
9.Some of the leading ideas here, including the idea of developing two distinct vocabularies or grammars, are from A. A. Van Ruler’s essay “Structural Differences Between the Christological and Pneumatological Perspectives,” found in his book Calvinist Trinitarianism and Theocentric Politics: Essays Toward a Public Theology, trans. and ed. John Bolt (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), 27–46. A more satisfying exploration of the distinctive ministry of the Spirit can be found in Abraham Kuyper’s The Work of the Holy Spirit (1900; repr. Chattanooga, TN: AMG, 1995).
10.See John Murray’s book of this name, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, a classic of its kind.
11.Sermon 5, “Justification by Faith,” in Wesley’s 52 Standard Sermons, ed. N. Burwash (Schmul, OH: Schmul, n.d.) 45.
12.This 1657 work has been helpfully republished as Communion with the Triune God, ed. Kelly
M. Kapic and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007).
13.J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1973), 15.
14.John Flavel, The Method of Grace: In the Holy Spirit’s Applying to the Souls of Men the Eternal Redemption Contrived by the Father and Accomplished by the Son, (New York: American Tract Society, 1845), 3. The Method was originally published in the late seventeenth century. Flavel’s works have been frequently republished with a variety of changes silently inserted by editors. The edition I am quoting from here is one of the more readable modified versions. Purists will want to seek out the unexpurgated Flavel, which is more decisively Reformed and uses more technical language.
15.Theologians are careful to note that whenever we say a person of the Trinity does something, we should not say this in a way that excludes the others altogether. John Owen gives a simplified description when he says that one of the persons acts “principally, immediately, and by the way of eminency” but never exclusively, in the actions that peculiarly belong to them. See Owen, Communion with the Triune God, 104.
16.Flavel, Method, 17.
17.Ibid., 16.
18.Ibid., 19.
19.Ibid.
20. See W. H. Griffith-Thomas, “Introductory Note to the Fifth Edition,” in Marcus Rainsford, The Lord’s Prayer for Believers: Thoughts on St. John 17, the Lord’s Prayer for Believers Throughout All Time, 5th ed. (London: Thynne, 1904), n.p.
21.Some of these dialogues were published in Marcus Rainsford, The Fulness of God, and Other Addresses (London: Partridge, 1898), 236–58. This quotation is from pp. 24–44.
22.Ibid., 255–56.
23.Ibid., 257–58.
24.Owen, “Pneumatologia,” 3:23.
25.The great Nazarene theologian H. Orton Wiley inherited this language from an older tradition, but in his three-volume Christian Theology he used it with unobjectionable wisdom. “The New Testament does not sanction the thought of an economy of the Spirit apart from that of the Father and the Son except in this sense—that it is the revelation of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the final revelation of the Holy Trinity.” See his Christian Theology (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1942), 2:303ff., including the excellent quotations from William Burt Pope.
26.Robert Leighton, cited in T. F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 172.
27.Owen, “Pneumatologia,” 3:23.
28.I apologize for the highly compressed lesson on the incarnation here. For details, see my introductory chapter in Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, 1–41.
29.Austin Farrer, “Incarnation,” in The Brink of Mystery, ed. Charles C. Conti (London: SPCK, 1976), 20.
30.Ibid.
31.Lesslie Newbigin, The Relevance of Trinitarian Doctrine for Today’s Mission (Edinburgh: Edinburgh House Press, for the World Council of Churches Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, 1963), 33.
32.Ibid., 32.
33.This four-volume edition, The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (Los Angeles: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917), has been reprinted frequently, most recently by Baker in 2000.
34.What is missing is a capstone article that would assemble the relevant lines of evidence as part of the doctrine of God itself. But numerous articles are devoted to defending elements of Trinitarianism, such as biblical evidence for the deity of Christ and the Spirit. Most telling is the way Trinitarian themes are woven into articles such as Robert E. Speer’s “God in Christ the Only Revelation of The Fatherhood of God”; R. A. Torrey’s “The Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit”; and especially Erdman’s “The Holy Spirit and the Sons of God.” By now, readers of this book should not be surprised that the evangelical Trinitarianism of The Fundamentals is powerful, understated, and forgotten.
35.Erdman, “The Holy Spirit,” in Fundamentals, 2:338.
36.Ibid., 343.
37.Ibid., 338.
38.Heidelberg Catechism, q. 33.
39.From A Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle of St. Peter, The Works of Robert Leighton (London: Longmans, 1870), 3:150.
40.Ibid.
41.Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1981), 96.
42.Rainsford, The Lord’s Prayer for Believers, 160.
43.James Denney, cited in John Randolph Taylor, God Loves Like That! The Theology of James Denney (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1962), 38.
44.Adolph Saphir, The Hidden Life: Thoughts on Our Communion with God (New York: Carter and Brothers, 1877), 30. Saphir’s five cautions against dangerous tendencies in some mystic writers are very helpful.
45.John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.8.1.
46.These verses are usually quoted without attribution. When a source is given, it is usually the name Catesby Paget.
47.Packer, Knowing God, 186.
48.Ibid., 187.
49.James Buchanan, Doctrine of Justification (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground, 2006), 276.
50.Packer, Knowing God, 194.
51.Adolphe Monod, Adolphe Monod’s Farewell to His Friends and to His Church, trans. Owen Thomas (London: Banner of Truth, 1962), 114.
CHAPTER 5: INTO THE SAVING LIFE OF CHRIST
1.Billy Graham, The Holy Spirit: Activating GOD’s Power in Your Life (Waco: Word, 1978), 35–36.
2.Robert Boyd Munger, My Heart—Christ’s Home, expanded ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 3–5.
3.John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1:537.
4.“True Spirituality,” in A Christian Worldview, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, vol. 3 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1985), 264.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid., 416–17.
7.Ibid., 196.
8.Ibid., 270–71.
9.Ibid., 271.
10.Francis Schaeffer, A Christian View of the Bible as Truth, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1985), 321ff.
11.Ibid., 323.
12.Ibid., 325–26.
13.Ibid., 327.
14.Ibid., 326–27.
15.Ibid., 355.
16.Ibid., 327.
17.Ibid., 360.
18.Schaeffer, Christian Worldview, 273.
19.Schaeffer, “True Spirituality,” 275.
20.Ibid.
21.Ibid.
22.Schaeffer, A Christian View of the Bible, 362.
23.Ibid., 362–63.
24.Schaeffer, Christian Worldview, 208.
25.Ibid., 275.
26.Ibid., 269.
27.Ibid., 271.
28.Francis Schaeffer, “The Supernatural Universe,” in Christian Worldview, 264.
29.Francis Schaeffer, “Two Contents, Two Realities,” in Christian Worldview, 416–17.
30.The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery, 2000), 18.
31.Ibid., 561.
32.Marcus Rainsford, The Lord’s Prayer for Believers: Thoughts on St. John 17, the Lord’s Prayer for Believers Throughout All Time, 5th ed. (London: Thynne, 1904), 159.
33.Ibid., 161.
CHAPTER 6: HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD IN SCRIPTURE
1.Cited in Morton H. Smith, Studies in Southern Presbyterian Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1987), 224.
2.Adolph Saphir, The Hidden Life: Thoughts on Our Communion with God (New York: Carter, 1877).
3.Ibid., 92.
4.Ibid., 93.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid., 97.
8.Ibid., 123.
9.Adolph Saphir, Christ and the Scriptures (London: Morgan and Scott, 1884), 124.
10.Ibid., 124–25.
11.Ibid., 125.
12.Ibid., 128.
13.Ibid.
14.Philip Mauro, “Life in the Word,” in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (Los Angeles: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917), 144–208.
15.Ibid., 148.
16.Ibid., 151.
17.Ibid., 188.
18.Ibid., 189.
19.Ibid., 191.
20.G. Campbell Morgan, The Song Companion to the Scriptures (London: Morgan & Scott, 1911).
21.Glen G. Scorgie, “Hermeneutics and the Meditative Use of Scripture: The Case for a Baptized Imagination.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44 (June 2001): 271–84.
22.Ibid.
23.J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1984), 43.
CHAPTER 7: PRAYING WITH THE GRAIN
1.Horatius Bonar, Light and Truth: or, Bible Thoughts and Themes, The Lesser Epistles (London: James Nisbet, 1883), 44.
2.John Bunyan, “Discourse on Prayer,” in The Works of That Eminent Servant of Christ, John Bunyan (Philadelphia: Clarke, 1836), 2:81.
3.Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ (London: Nisbet, 1888), 113.
4.“The First Sinner’s Prayer in English,” with an introduction and commentary by Malcolm Yarnell, Southwestern Journal of Theology.
5.Bunyan, “Discourse in Prayer,” 85–86.
6.Oswald Chambers, “The Place of Help,” in The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery, 2000), 1049.
7.J. C. Ryle, Knots Untied: Being Plain Statements on Disputed Points in Religion from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman (London: William Hunt, 1885), 247.
8.Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer: Thoughts on Our Training for the Ministry of Intercession (New York: Revell, 1895), 132.
9.Ibid., 130–31.
10.Ibid., 131.
11.Ibid., 132.
12.Ibid., 132–33.
13.Ibid., 134.
14.Graham Cole, Engaging with the Holy Spirit: Real Questions, Practical Answers (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 64.
15.Robert E. Speer, “God in Christ the Only Revelation of the Fatherhood of God,” in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (Los Angeles: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917), 2:235–36.
16.The analogues to God the Son and God the Father are easily identified: in Narnia, they are Aslan and the Great Emperor; in the space trilogy they are Maleldil the Young and the Old One. Aside from allusions to “the Third One,” Lewis is content to leave the Holy Spirit in the deep background of his fictional worlds. A striking poetic presentation of Lewis’s Trinitarian vision of the world can be found in the hymn on the Great Dance, with which Perelandra concludes. Equal parts Austin Farrer and Charles Williams, this hymn envisions “all the patterns linked and looped together by the union of a kneeling with a sceptred love. Blessed be He!” Perelandra (New York: Collier, 1944), 217.
17.C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, rev. ed. (New York: Collier, 1952), 141.
18.Ibid., 141.
19.Ibid., 141–42.
20.Ibid., 142.
21.Ibid., 142–43.
22.Ibid., 143.
23.Lewis, who often paraphrased patristic writings without explicitly citing them, is probably intentionally echoing the language of Gregory of Nazianzus’s fifth “Theological Oration,” sec. 26. Of course he is also drawing on an ancient tradition of summarization that can be found even in the structure of the earliest creeds. For an analysis of this, see Henri de Lubac, The Christian Faith: An Essay on the Structure of the Apostles’ Creed (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 85–131.
24.Chap. 3, “Time and Beyond Time.” The discussion of the Son’s eternal generation stretches into the following chapter as well.
25.Lewis, Mere Christianity, 151.
26.Ibid., 152.
27.Ibid., 153.
28.Ibid.
29.Lewis pursues the metaphor of doctrine as a map in the introduction to Book 4, 135–40.
30.See the remarks by Stephen Williams, “Why Our Evangelism Must Be Trinitarian,” Themelios 21 (October 1995): 3, and especially his caveat, “That is not to say that in evangelism the word ‘Trinity’ must be used . . .” But the story must be told, in its full Trinitarian form.
31.Lewis, Mere Christianity, 165.
32.C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Collier, 1949), 13.
33.Owen Barfield, “The Five C. S. Lewises,” in Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis, ed. G. B. Tennyson (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 121–22.
34.“A Slip of the Tongue,” from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Harper-Collins, 2001), 187. The sermon was preached on January 29, 1956.