Systematic Theology

A favorite hymn we sing at church is Walter Smith’s “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” where the congregation beautifully confesses that “We blossom and flourish as leaves on a tree, and wither and perish, but naught changeth Thee.” My heart soars in adoration as we sing that last clause, “but...
Tony Arsenal
The world is, at its very core, divided. There are divisions between races, between nations, between political parties, and on and on it goes. Even within our own selves we are divided. We desire to do good, but our flesh drives us to do evil. God is not like this. God is not divided. The doctrine...
In our last post we considered Paul’s warning to believers in the Galatian churches, ‘If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another’ (Ga 5.15). And we noted that, sadly, this warning needs to be repeated to every church in every generation. The family of God...
The answer to Hamlet’s famous question “To be or not to be?” is simple for God. God can only “be.” He is “I am,” meaning He exists infinitely and independent of anything, without beginning or end, as the source and sustainer of all things. There has never been a time where God has not existed in...
Doctrinal Introduction: Perseverance of the Saints Jonathan and James have a chat about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The Christian race isn’t always easy, which sometimes may cause us to wonder whether we’ll finish well. What assurance do we have that our running is not in vain...
Thanks to Dr. Scott Swain , President of Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando for his recent contribution to the current conversation / debate / fight over the doctrine of man, or biblical anthropology. Given the new controversies surrounding issues like gender and sexuality, some sober well...
B. B. Warfield – Not a Solitary Theologian Due to a need for brevity, many articles on Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) focus on his theology and his devotion to his wife, whose illness kept the couple close to home. Because of this, he is often seen as a solitary man leading an...
There are many ways to think about God's attributes. They can be divided between those that affirm something about God and those that deny something about God, those that are communicable to creatures ( i.e. can exist in or be communicated to them somehow) and those that are incommunicable, and...
Is the conversation about God's attributes "old fashioned" and "western"? Regarding systematic theology, one often encounters the critique that the logical ordering of various topics is "western" or "Greek" or "academic"--all of which are really meant as synonyms for "bad" and "wrongheaded."...
Many years ago, at one of the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, Allan Fisher gave me (a poor doctoral student at the time) one of the best gifts that an aspiring student of theology could ever receive: a copy of Francis Turretin's three-volume Institutes of Elenctic Theology...