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Category Archive: Theology - Pneumatology

Pentecost and public life - May 29, 2007
The folks at First Things have posted a Pentecost meditation of mine on their web site: http://www.firstthings.com....

Marriage Sermon - May 19, 2007
At His ascension, Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, was exalted into heavenly glory where John saw Him "having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth." At Pentecost, which...

Notes on the Holy Spirit - May 10, 2007
The Church calendar climaxes with Pentecost, before moving into the "off-season" of Trinity. Proper time moves through redemptive history: The Father sends the Son to be incarnate at Advent and Christmas; the Son lives, dies, rises again, and ascends; and...

Exhortation, Pentecost - May 15, 2005
Love, Augustine said, is always triadic, always involves three: the lover, the one beloved, and the love itself. God is love, and this means, Augustine reasoned, that in God there is a Lover, a Beloved, and Love itself. He believed...

Sermon outline, Pentecost Sunday - May 09, 2005
INTRODUCTION Pentecost is a new beginning, when the Spirit that hovered over the waters of the first creation forms the church into a new creation (Genesis 1:2). Pentecost is also a reversal of Babel, as the nations divided by tongues...

Spirit and Human Integrity - May 03, 2005
In a speech delivered on April 29 to the Fulcrum Conference at Islington, NT Wright notes that the Spirit comes to bring God's future into the present, and that the Spirit also binds together heaven and earth. This reminds me...

Thick Description - February 24, 2005
Peter Vermigli offers this charming and helpful comment on the definition of faith as "substance" (Greek, hypostasis) in Hebrews 11:1: The word "is derived from the verb hyphistamai, which signifies 'to sustain, receive, not to yield to one rushing blindly.'...

Filoque - January 29, 2005
Barth has some excellent things to say about the Filioque (CD 1.1, 477ff): 1) He notes that Greek theologians as late as the 5th century explicitly affirmed the filioque. 2) He argues compellingly that the original form of the creed...

Spirit and Substance - January 29, 2005
Calvin intriguingly says that the Spirit is the power of persistence and growth and life in creation: not merely the agent for the formation of things, but for their persistence. Spirit ensures the temporal endurance of the creature. As Barth...

Third Article and Grace - January 29, 2005
Barth argues that the Third Article of the Creed had to be finished before the church could truly wrestle with the doctrine of grace: �It is logical that this doctrine [of the Spirit] had to be the last stage in...

Regeneration - December 09, 2004
Calvin uses "regeneration" to describe the process of mortification and vivification by which the sinner is renewed in the image of God. This differs from the sense the word has in later Reformed writers. Melanchthon (Apology for the Augsburg Confession)...

Exhortation, First Advent - November 28, 2004
In this morning�s sermon, we will be looking at the role of the Spirit in the incarnation of Jesus, in the redemption achieved by Christ, and in the life of the Trinity. One way to summarize the point is that...

Necessity of Works? - April 26, 2004
Who wrote this? "opera sunt necessaria ad salutem, sed non causant salutem, quia fides sola dat vitam" (works are necessary to salvation, yet they do not cause salvation, for faith alone gives life). Norman Shepherd would be a good guess,...

Ferguson on the Spirit - April 01, 2004
I've been using Sinclair Ferguson's book on the Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996) for several years in my theology class, and each time I review it in preparation for class I'm reminded of what a wonderful book it is. Ferguson is...

Images of Divine Things - October 03, 2003
A few quotations from Edwards' "Images of Divine Things" (1728): "When we travail up an hill 'tis against our natural tendency and inclination, which perpetually is to descent; and therefore we can't go on ascending without labor and difficulty. But...

On the Holy Spirit - August 28, 2003
Teaching on Basil's treatise On the Holy Spirit this year, I was impressed again with this wonderful treatise. Some quotations, from the St Vladimir's edition: On the cosmic role of the Spirit: All things thirsting for holiness turn to Him;...

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