To drill down further, what is the shape of that theology? Specifically, how much does the doctrine that we teach and preach in our churches draw on the depth and breadth of the church? The church’s depth is measured in time, and its breadth in space. The church has a past, and it encompasses the entire world. And our theology is enriched, if also challenged, when it gleans from the historical church and the global church, argues Douglas Sweeney in his book The Substance of Our Faith: Foundations for the History of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023). (I’ll say up front that Sweeney was my doctoral mentor. I may be biased, but I will still seek to be honest and fair.)

This book is the first of two volumes treating a global history of Christian doctrine. The second volume (forthcoming) will be much larger, no doubt. This book is valuable even as a stand-alone volume, though it will surely find its completion in the volume to come. Here Sweeney treats some of the important preliminary questions one needs to wrestle with when doing historical theology.

Sweeney is irenic. He tries to think the best of people, even as he is able to distinguish carefully between various positions and to argue for a way forward. Said differently, this book does not come across as a diatribe against churches for everything they’re doing wrong, even as he still recommends clear paths ahead for teaching doctrine in churches better. He is fair to the people he considers, incisive in his analysis, and illuminating about the nature and history of the Christian theology project.

And Sweeney is particularly interested in helping churches teach their people doctrine. He argues that doctrine is for the church, “a form of church teaching intended for the shaping of daily faith and practice” (xiii). His vision encompasses a vast refinement in how we instruct people in Christian theology every Sunday, connecting them to the church across time and space. And he takes up those two themes—time and space—at length in his first two chapters.

In his first chapter, Sweeney wrestles with Jesus’s promise that he will send the Holy Spirit to his disciples and that the Spirit will lead them into all truth (John 16:13). Without this promise, Sweeney argues, we would have no history of doctrine. This promise is the grounds for the church to discuss and develop theology. It raises two questions that Sweeney addresses in this chapter: How has the Spirit led us into truth? And what is the “relative authority” of Scripture, tradition, and church leaders “in clarifying what the Spirit wants from disciples” (5)?

In sifting through these questions, Sweeney notes that much of the history of doctrine concerns what we do when Christians disagree about what the Spirit says to the churches. He captures this well when describing church history as “centripetal” and “centrifugal”:

The rest of catholic history [i.e., after the fall of Rome] could be told as a story of disciples with an old-fashioned, centripetal faith—and a passionate commitment to the ideal of unity—responding to centrifugal dynamics of success, accommodating to changes in the church as it spread, spanned the globe, and adapted to new cultures and priorities. (24)

That give-and-take in theology is what makes it so dynamic but also what makes it seem discordant between traditions or individuals. Sweeney goes on to show how the Reformers’ use of Martin Luther’s Scripture principle “accelerated the doctrinal diversity of Christendom . . . at a rate unprecedented in history” (34–35). And he weighs the far-reaching influence of John Henry Newman’s developmental views of doctrine. Ultimately, these questions about development and the meaning of the Spirit’s leading of believers into all truth are best answered as we look at the church across time. In Sweeney’s words,

The surest way forward for believers in the present is to study Christian doctrine, try to walk with the Spirit, and encircle oneself with other like-minded disciples—past and present, near and far—interpreting one’s learning in communion with the saints and checking one’s perspective against the teaching of their churches, thereby grounding one’s practice in the ripest fruit of the Spirit’s work in Scripture, tradition, and the worldwide family of God. (5)

In chapter 2, Sweeney moves from time to space. How do we best think about doctrine in light of the global spread of the church? He argues that Christianity has always been international in its makeup and considers “both the promise and the peril of more recent postcolonial, ‘non-Western Christianities’ for handing on the faith in a world more focused on diversity and self-determination than tradition” (59). He thus welcomes engagement with such groups, while avoiding the pitfall of assuming that they will be “pure” theologies simply because they are new or indigenous. This chapter is an engaging, succinct treatment of the history of the church’s growth and spread from its first days to recent times.

Sweeney underscores how global church growth is changing the face of Christianity: “The most significant development in the history of Christian doctrine in the last hundred years is the effort of these postcolonial Christians to appropriate the faith for themselves” (86). Sweeney highlights two particular impulses in this effort. First, many are seeking not to invent doctrines but merely to live out Christianity in their own culture and care for the poor. Second, some are departing from orthodoxy and following Western liberals (88–89). But he rejects the need to resort to “modern methods of liberation” (89). What we need instead is to “teach the Christian faith across both time and space” (90). The indigenization of the faith in new contexts should not be cut off from the faith’s centuries of resources. We do ourselves no favors if we only look forward for the faith in new contexts and fail to look backward. We want to avoid an “ahistorical manner of contextualizing the faith” (94).

With the first two chapters laying out the time and space elements, Sweeney turns in chapter 3 to consider theories of doctrine and the fact that Christians have “many ways of passing on the faith” (101). He discusses key figures who’ve given us theories of doctrine, from Adolf von Harnack and Jaroslav Pelikan to Alister McGrath and Kevin Vanhoozer. Sweeney defends his own definition of doctrine: “Christian doctrine is church teaching for the shaping of faith and practice” (108). With that understanding in mind, he considers the thorny question of development in doctrine—considering how we devise it and what role creeds, confessions, and catechisms should have. He offers a robust discussion of many different aspects of the history of doctrine. In the end, he makes a compelling case to draw on the history of doctrine because what we teach shapes faith and practice, and “this history affects Christian living (for better or for worse) by the worldwide people of God (whether they know it or not)” (145).

In his final chapter, Sweeney addresses how to pass on the faith with attention to space and time, drawing together both the traditional and the global. He considers some different attempts in the last century to reappropriate Christian history, from constructive theology and retrieval theology to ressourcement and free church theologies. And he goes on to suggest a better path in considering tradition.

He reminds us that “all that is has a past, and all novelty results from engagement with the past” (164)—challenging our near-sighted temptation to jettison tradition outright even as we ought to scrutinize our traditions. He pursues a view of tradition that is “more spiritual, catholic, and even providential” than the views he discusses but also “more global and diverse than the ones most common in medieval and early modern European history” (168). Sweeney challenges us by saying,

Blinkered perspectives on the beauty and benefits of Christian faith and practice throughout church history, and on the burdens and blight of “Christianity” as proffered by the most selfish members of the worldwide family of God, can impoverish and distort our identity as Christians and prospects as followers of Jesus. (169)

What does a constructive form of theology look like? Sweeney proposes an evangelical-catholic approach—“eager to present the good news of Jesus Christ with cultural ductility but careful to offer the entire feast of faith in accordance with the best of the Christian tradition” (174). In practice, this typically includes holding tenaciously to the first four ecumenical councils, viewing one’s own confession as “largely-though-not-altogether unchangeable,” and treating others in the catholic tradition with respect (176).

Given what I’ve said, it should be clear that Sweeney is foregrounding what unites us rather than what divides us (xiv), even as he seeks to do justice to our differences. This is a tricky path to walk, one that may invite the criticism of individual traditions and those committed to their denominational distinctives. Yet he treads carefully with respect and lives in the tension of honoring others in the broadest catholic tradition while still unapologetically embracing a narrower tradition. His ecumenical, irenic impulse seeks to honor Christ’s prayer that we might be one as the Son and the Father are one (John 17:11). That may make some nervous at times, yet Sweeney’s heart for the church is unmistakable, and there is much to learn here.

Sweeney offers rich fare in this book in seeking to understand how to think deeply and thoroughly about historical theology and its role in teaching church doctrine. He resists the tendencies either of cherry-picking from the past to bolster one’s view or of lamenting the past to call for changes that veer away from the tradition. He writes for all Christians and seeks to describe a way to function within a tradition while engaging with believers from all kinds of other traditions.

It is perhaps obvious that The Substance of Our Faith is essential reading for anyone interested in historical theology. But it is actually deeply valuable for anyone reflecting on Christian doctrine. This book offers correctives to our typical thinking about teaching the faith, and it’s vital for those studying systematic or global theology to remember the past—even as it’s important for those typically working in historical contexts to consider global space. And what a blessing that Sweeney refuses to give historical theology only to academics, instead calling us to learn how to teach Christian doctrine faithfully with an eye to time and space in our churches, where Sunday after Sunday believers are shaped in faith and practice through teaching.

I’ve migrated my previously posted material to this location. So if you want to catch some of my old writings—book reviews, musings, and thoughts on history—check out the archives. The last post I wrote on the blog was from January 13, 2024, on James Eglinton’s impressive biography of Herman Bavinck.

I look forward to sharing more thoughts in the days to come.

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A well-written narrative, Eglinton’s biography is marked by incisive historical analysis, extensive knowledge of Bavinck and his times, and a compelling tracing of his life and its significance. Eglinton seeks to treat his subject honestly, giving us insights into his thoughts and feelings through his letters, and his dispassionate tone lends credence to his discussion of this famous Dutch theologian. 

In this biography we find not only a theologian seeking a grand metanarrative for the modern age but also a young man pining for a girl named Amelia whom her father refused to let him marry. Here we meet a Bavinck who as a student viewed Abraham Kuyper as a kind of hero, putting up a poster of him in his college digs (80). This Bavinck floundered after finishing his dissertation, feeling listless and uncertain about what to do, having no wife and no work (102). Even as a young professor, Bavinck had a low view of his abilities (147). Readers of this volume get a sense of a truly human Bavinck in his pursuits and disappointments.

Eglinton opens up the historical background well, introducing us to Bavinck’s parents, his Seceder heritage, and the dynamics of Dutch Reformed culture at the time—not only in the Netherlands but also in the US. The Seceder suspicion of schools like Leiden and the role of periodicals for the Reformed faithful enrich our grasp of Bavinck’s decisions about where to go to school, where to pastor, and where to teach (and he didn’t always follow the expected path). Such tensions also colored his tenure at the Seceder’s Kampen Theological School. 

An interesting question is why we even talk about Bavinck today, and Eglinton notes that had he not been granted a lighter teaching load and not gotten married, he would have most likely remained a minor theologian we rarely discuss. Instead, the patterns of time at home and in the study gave him the space he needed to write and develop his larger theological program. The result was a Reformed systematic theologian of the twentieth century whose influence continues to grow in the twenty-first.

Interestingly, while Bavinck made his name mainly in theology and ethics, he also served in politics, which gave him more visibility in the eyes of the public. A lasting contribution that Bavinck made was to shape the Dutch education system, which funds educational institutions based on varied worldviews, including not only “neutral” but also Christian schools (230, 277–78). 

Bavinck’s family legacy is also of note. While he leaned toward seeing Christianity as pacifistic, developing his ideas in the context of World War I, the situation changed for his daughter and her three boys in World War II. His son-in-law and two of his grandsons lost their lives serving in the Dutch resistance against Nazi oppression.

A fascinating addition at the end of the book is Eglinton’s inclusion of Bavinck’s piece “My Journey to America” (I encourage you not to skip this appendix). It’s revealing to see how Bavinck viewed the US in 1892, which in some ways parallels American culture even today. He observed that the rocking chair is “a symbol of the restless and nervous American nature” (307). Indeed, the Americans are “all ‘go-ahead,’ everything is ‘in a hurry,’ everything is restless, everything is drive and pursuit” (308). He noted, “Work, eat, sleep—this is the substance of American life. There is no time left over for convivial friendship and conversation” (311). How true of Americans today, even if we’ve traded the rocking chair for phones, planes, and productivity apps. He admired many things about America, such as its emphasis on education and freedom and its openness to women’s participation in public affairs. Yet he also criticized its religion as superficial, its preaching dealing mostly with morals, amusing listeners, and marked by individualism. His observations—including an awe-filled visit to Niagara Falls—form an intriguing view of the US from over a century ago, which gives instructive perspective into the America of our own day.

In the end, Bavinck held that theology is “necessarily scientific and pious” (220). He branched out to promoting not just Calvinism narrowly but Christianity more broadly, largely because he saw the threat that Nietzschean philosophy posed to the modern world. Even so, Eglinton argues that contrary to popular belief, Bavinck did not ditch his Reformed beliefs in his last decade of life, even as he focused on other pressing public matters. His was a more subtle course shift in response to the threats by nihilism. And so he emphasized that “Who do you say the Christ is?” is the ”essence” of Christianity (270). Like Kuyper, he explored and focused on the gospel for “every area of life” (272). His was a significant life, and Eglinton’s Bavinck: A Critical Biography is a substantial, illuminating interpretation of Herman Bavinck and his times for today. Highly recommended.

In a day when the founding fathers of the United States either are elevated with paeans of praise or have fallen from grace among the woke, it’s hard to find balanced treatments of people like Thomas Jefferson. The fathers are so easy to criticize if you look into their lives deeply enough, and yet there is something about what they accomplished in founding a new nation on countercultural social and political principles that feeds our never-fading longing for heroes. In that light, if you’re looking for an honest treatment of a complicated figure in American history, Thomas Kidd’s Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Flesh and Spirit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022) is well worth your time.

Kidd does not aim to write a popular hagiography of Jefferson but seeks to portray him in the details of who he was and how he thought. He doesn’t shy away from his failures, even as he shows what made him so influential and significant in his day. All in all, Kidd presents Jefferson as a man of troubling contradictions.

One of the most important elements of Kidd’s biography is its attention to Jefferson’s religious interest. Ever the intellectual and bibliophile, Jefferson sought to obtain all manner of books on religion, even showing interest in an English translation of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the intertestamental period (for an introduction to the Septuagint, see Gregory Lanier and William Ross, The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters, a book published by Crossway, my employer). Jefferson famously created his own versions of the New Testament, seeking to find “the historical Jesus” before the quest for the historical Jesus became a cottage industry. 

Jefferson’s religious interest, which regularly went astray of orthodox Christianity (even though Kidd says that he considered himself a “Christian” in some sense), led him to champion religious freedom, most significantly in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which set the stage for how religious freedom would come to be defined in the new nation. This concept granted minority Christian groups the freedom to gather and worship without being imprisoned or punished, while it also stopped government money flowing to churches. It’s a fascinating irony of history that when many enemies labeled Jefferson an atheist and skeptic, Baptists in the day supported him in droves because he promoted freedom of religion, giving words to the cause in Virginia and then encouraging the movement as president. Jefferson’s curtailment of established religion thus ironically promoted religion by freeing it from governmental constraints. Perhaps most striking in Kidd’s biography is just how much the language of the Bible—even obscure passages from the Old Testament Prophets—infused the language of Jefferson the skeptic.

Jefferson’s contradictions are perhaps best seen in a few other areas of his life and thought. Ironically, this father of freedom both enslaved other humans and enslaved himself to others through debt. These two themes of slavery and debt punctuate Kidd’s biography of Jefferson, helping readers get a fairer view of the man in his failings. 

On the slavery front, Kidd shows how Jefferson believed that slavery would eventually have to end in America, and he hoped that it indeed would. At some points in his life, he supported measures to encourage its end, but more often than not, he made no action against it at all beyond philosophizing. Instead, he participated in it and benefited from it immensely. He could have used his position as a Southern aristocrat to point in a new direction, but he ultimately found that such action would demand him to go too much against the grain of his Southern culture.

And then there’s his infidelity with Sally Hemings. Jefferson’s sexual relationship with Sally Hemings again displayed the contradictions in Jefferson’s life. Despite having relations with her and fathering children by her, Jefferson publicly decried the amalgamation of the races, saying how deplorable it was. That is—to play on Kidd’s subtitle—his spirit was against it, but his flesh was not. Jefferson was echoing the sentiments of many Southern landowners who, like Jefferson, also kept their enslaved Black concubines. 

Kidd’s biography also shows how remarkably bad Jefferson was with managing money. Perhaps the root of the problem came from his expectation that a man of his social standing and position should have beautiful properties, the finest of things from Europe, and books, books, and more books. In other words, he wanted what he wanted and wasn’t going to let his budget constrain him. Selling his library to Congress after the British burned the Library of Congress, then housed in the US Capitol, in 1814 brought him some much-needed debt relief, but he torpedoed his economic state by cosigning a loan for a friend just before the Panic of 1819. Jefferson’s poor handling of money had a devastating effect on his slaves after his death, many of whom were sold to pay down his debt. His greed wreaked havoc on the lives of many in his household.

One can find all kinds of other details about Jefferson in Kidd’s biography, such as his intellectual development, his rivalry with Patrick Henry (about whom Kidd has also written a biography), his falling out with George Washington (a rift never healed before Washington’s death), his diplomatic stint in France, his presidential accomplishments (most significantly, the Louisiana Purchase) and presidential failings (especially during his second term), and his famed correspondence with John Adams. Readers will benefit from Kidd’s treatment of all these matters and more, though I especially appreciated his discussions of religion, slavery, and debt—the last of which perhaps receives insufficient attention.

I read Jon Meacham’s biography of Jefferson some years ago and found it engaging and illuminating. Meacham is a strong writer who is able to present the details of his subject with richness in a compelling way. And Meacham also recognized Jefferson’s flaws. But readers do walk away from Meacham’s book—titled with the machismo title Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power—feeling a bit more positive about Jefferson than readers of Kidd’s Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Flesh and Spirit. Yet Kidd (also a strong writer who traffics in the details of the past) makes a strong case for the historical Jefferson as a conflicted figure full of contradictions, and he helpfully brings to the surface how throughout his life he nursed a longstanding fascination with all things religious.

Jonathan Edwards is perhaps the Christian theologian who has spoken in greatest detail about the affections—with his theology of the affections captured in its mature state in Religious Affections. For a shorter consideration of the effect that our affections have on us, one can turn to the Scottish pastor Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847). Chalmers gave a lecture that has become a classic reading on the Christian life, now published by Crossway (where I work as an editor): The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. 

Chalmers takes his cue from 1 John 2:15: “Love not the world, neither the things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” From there, he focuses on our need for a new affection to replace our worldly affections. If someone keeps telling me that I need to stop doing certain immoral actions, that can feel ovewhelming and impossible if my heart still yearns for those things. But those feelings melt away when I replace them with a love for something even greater than what they offer. And that is what Jesus offers to us in the gospel. When we come to love the grander things of grace, the things of this world fade into the background and lose their sway over us.

Chalmers’s idea is captured most pithily in this statement:

We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our hearts than to keep in our hearts the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God than building ourselves up on our most holy faith.

Love of God—who offers far greater things than ever the world could conjure up—is the way to dislodge love of the world.

In one striking passage toward the end of the lecture, Chalmers paints a picture of how this new affection can expel affections for the world:
But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy island of the blest had floated by, and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories and its sounds of sweeter meolody—and he clearly saw that there a purer beauty rested upon every field and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families; and he could discern there a peace and a piety and a benevolence that put a moral gladness into every bosom and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other and with the beneficent Father of them all; and could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown; and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him—perceive you not that what was before the wilderness would become the land of invitation, and that now the world would be the wilderness?

Dislodging our hearts from the world is best done by devoting our hearts to the beauty and wonder of the society of God, the place of greatest happiness and joy. This captures the essence of Chalmers’s message, which he expands on in his Expulsive Power.

Chalmers’s Expulsive Power is just one offering in a series by Crossway titled the Crossway Short Classics. Other titles include Jonathan Edwards, Heaven Is a World of Love; Charles H. Spurgeon, Encouragement for the Depressed; and B. B. Warfield, The Emotional Life of Our Lord.

The incarnation should never cease to amaze us. So argued Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–390) when he meditated on what it meant for God to take on human flesh. What is considered by many to be foolish or outrageous is the core of Christian hope—God became one of us to raise us up to him. Gregory was one of the three great Cappadocian fathers who defended Trinitarian theology in the contentious fourth century; the other two were Basil the Great (I discuss his On the Holy Spirit here) and Gregory of Nyssa (I discuss his Life of Saint Macrina here).

Gregory of Nazianzus captures the beautiful, mysterious tension of Jesus Christ’s divinity and humanity in a passage in “Oration 29: On the Son” (from the Popular Patristics Series volume On God and Christ). Here is an extended extract:

He whom presently you scorn was once transcendent, over even you. He who is presently human was incomposite. He remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed. No “because” is required for his existence in the beginning, for what could account for the existence of God? But later he came into being because of something, namely your salvation, yours, who insult him and despise his Godhead for that very reason, because he took on your thick corporeality. Through the medium of the mind he had dealings with the flesh, being made that God on earth, which is Man: Man and God blended. They became a single whole, the stronger side predominating, in order that I might be made God to the same extent that he was made man. He was begotten—yet he was already begotten—of a woman. And yet she was a virgin. That it was from a woman makes it human, that she was a virgin makes it divine. On earth he has no father, but in heaven no mother. All this is part of his Godhead. He was carried in the womb, but acknowledged by a prophet as yet unborn himself, who leaped for joy at the presence of the Word for whose sake he had been created. He was wrapped in swaddling bands, but at the Resurrection he unloosed the swaddling bands of the grave. He was laid in a manger, but was extolled by angels, disclosed by a star and adored by Magi. Why do you take offense at what you see, instead of attending to its spiritual significance? He was exiled into Egypt, but he banished the Egyptian idols. He had no form of beauty for the Jews, but for David he was “fairer than the children of men” and on the mount he shines forth, becoming more luminous than the Sun, to reveal the future mystery.

As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God; he needed no purifying rites himself—his purpose was to hallow water. As man he was put to the test, but as God he came through victorious—yes, bids us be of good cheer, because he has conquered the world. He hungered—yet he fed thousands. He is indeed “living, heavenly bread.” He thirsted—yet he exclaimed: “Whosever thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Indeed he promised that believers would become fountains. He was tired—yet he is the “rest” of the weary and the burdened. He was overcome by heavy sleep—yet he goes lightly over the sea, rebukes winds, and relieves the drowning Peter. He pays tax—yet he uses a fish to do it; indeed he is emperor over those who demand the tax. He is called a “Samaritan, demonically possessed”—but he rescues the man who came down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves. Yes, he is recognized by demons, drives out demons, drowns deep a legion of spirits, and sees the prince of demons falling like lightning. He is stoned, yet not hit; he prays, yet he hears prayer. He weeps, yet he puts an end to weeping. He asks where Lazarus is laid—he was man; yet he raises Lazarus—he was God. He was sold, and cheap was the price—thirty pieces of silver; yet he buys back the world at the mighty cost of his own blood. A sheep, he is led to the slaughter—yet he shepherds Israel and now the whole world as well. A lamb, he is dumb—yet he is “Word,” proclaimed by “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” He is weakened, wounded—yet he cures every disease and every weakness. He is brought up to the tree and nailed to it—yet by the tree of life he restores us. Yes, he saves even a thief crucified with him; he wraps all the visible world in darkness. He is given vinegar to drink, gall to eat—and who is he? Why, one who turned water into wine, who took away the taste of bitterness, who is all sweetness and desire. He surrenders his life, yet he has power to take it again. Yes, the veil is rent, for things of heaven are being revealed, rocks split, and dead men have an earlier awakening. He dies, but he vivifies and by death destroys death. He is buried, yet he rises again. He goes down to Hades, yet he leads souls up, ascends to heaven, and will come to judge quick and dead, and to probe discussions like these. If the first set of expressions starts you going astray, the second set takes your error away.^[1]

As carefully noted in the edition from which I’ve drawn this extract, Gregory’s words are deeply rooted in Scripture. These various images are based on the biblical record of Christ’s life and the broad scriptural testimony to who he is. Jesus is no mere man. He is certainly nothing less than a full human being, but humanity joined to deity in the person of Jesus Christ yields this stunning array of seemingly contradictory characteristics of who Christ is. 

In one striking place in the New Testament, we see a juxtaposition like what Gregory weaves together in this passage. In Revelation 5, John bears witness to the coming of “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rev. 5:4), who is in the very next verse described as “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Rev. 5:5). The Son of God is both Lion and Lamb—in a mysterious joining of apparent opposites to become the sacrifice and reigning King we need to secure our forgiveness and eternal dwelling in a kingdom of peace.

This reflection of Gregory of Nazianzus in On God and Christ reminds us that the early church both took seriously the theological mystery of the hypostatic union (two natures united in the one person of Christ) and sought to edify believers in their faith in Christ. In our day we, too, can benefit from mimicking such a practice of joining doctrine and devotion.

^[1] Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 86–88.

In studying Paul’s epistles to the Thessalonians, John Calvin sheds light on the basics of Christianity. In Calvin’s commentary on 1–2 Thessalonians, he makes a few statements that capture what he believes should be the driving force in the Christian life. Significantly, it revolves around the triad of faith, hope, and love. While these Christian virtues are perhaps best remembered from Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 13, they are found elsewhere in the New Testament, notably in 1 Thessalonians. Since 1 Thessalonians is considered Paul’s first letter, we may be seeing some of his theological emphases in seminal form here. 

Calvin derives what he calls “a brief definition of Christianity” from 1 Thessalonians 1:2–3, which reads, 

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reflecting on this passage, Calvin gives his “brief definition” as follows: 

It is a faith that is living and full of vigor, so that it spares no labor when assistance is to be given to one’s neighbors. On the contrary, all the pious employ themselves diligently in offices of love and lay out their efforts so that, intent upon the hope of the manifestation of Christ, they despise everything else and, armed with endurance, rise above the wearisomeness of length of time as well as above all the temptations of the world.^[1]

Calvin sees Christianity as revolving around the three classic Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love. These virtues constitute the core of what makes up the Christian faith. 

Later in his commentary, Calvin reflects on 1 Thessalonians 3:6, specifically Timothy’s report of the Thessalonians’ “faith and love.” Again, Calvin detects a shorthand here for what should mark Christian living: 

This form of expression should be carefully observed because of the frequency with which Paul uses it. In these two words he comprehends briefly the sum of true piety. Hence all who aim at this twofold mark, as long as they do so, will not fall into error. All others wander miserably.^[2]

He continues this stream of thought in subsequent verses, particularly 1 Thessalonians 3:12, where he prays, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you.” Calvin notes, “From this we learn what the perfection of the Christian life consists of—love and pure holiness of heart, flowing from faith.”^[3]

In another place, Calvin returns to this theme by considering the armor of the Christian. Paul famously discusses the Christian’s armor at length in Ephesians 6, but again, he introduces this theme in 1 Thessalonians, particularly in 5:8: “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” 

In his comments on this verse, Calvin highlights again the place of faith, hope, and love in the Christian life, which is “like a perpetual war” because of Satan’s nonstop attacks. While in Ephesians Paul gives a fuller listing of the pieces of a Christian’s armor, here he is “content to mention just two of them—the breastplate and the helmet.” Yet even in this case, “he omits nothing that belongs to spiritual armor, for the person who is provided with faith, love, and hope will not be unarmed in any way.”^[4]

Calvin does something important for us in these reflections. He highlights the premier place of faith, hope, and love for the Christian. In these virtues we find the essence of what it means to be a Christian. And thus, the Christian benefits from reflecting on these virtues and exercising them in day-to-day life.

^[1] John Calvin, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Crossway Classic Commentaries (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999), 19.

^[2] Calvin, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 39.

^[3] Calvin, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 41.

^[4] Calvin, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 54.

Charnock explores the implications if God were not omnipotent and the implications that he is. In his wide-reaching reflections, he considers what God’s omnipotence means specifically for the incarnation. Meditating on God’s power in relation to the incarnation leads to a beautiful picture of what it meant for the omnipotent Son of God to take on weak human flesh for his creatures:

The terms of this union were infinitely distant. What greater distance can there be than between the Deity and humanity, between the Creator and a creature? Can you imagine the distance between eternity and time, Infinite Power and miserable infirmity, an immortal spirit and dying flesh, the highest Being and nothing? yet these are espoused. A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a man of perpetual sorrows: life incapable to die, joined to a body in that economy incapable to live without dying first; infinite purity, and a reputed sinner; eternal blessedness with a cursed nature, Almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, immutability and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and comprehensibility; that which cannot be comprehended, and that which can be comprehended; that which is entirely independent, and that which is totally dependent; the Creator forming all things, and the creature made, met together to a personal union; “The word made flesh” (John i. 14), the eternal Son, the “Seed of Abraham” (Heb. ii. 16). What more miraculous, than for God to become man, and man to become God? That a person possessed of all the perfections of the Godhead, should inherit all the imperfections of the manhood in one person, sin only excepted: a holiness incapable of sinning to be made sin; God blessed forever, taking the properties of human nature, and human nature admitted to a union with the properties of the Creator: the fulness of the Deity, and the emptiness of man united together (Col. ii. 9); not by a shining of the Deity upon the humanity, as the light of the sun upon the earth, but by an inhabitation or indwelling of the Deity in the humanity. Was there not need of an Infinite Power to bring together terms so far asunder, to elevate the humanity to be capable of, and disposed for, a conjunction with the Deity? If a clod of earth should be advanced to, and united with the body of the sun, such an advance would evidence itself to be a work of Almighty power: the clod hath nothing in its own nature to render it so glorious, no power to climb up to so high a dignity: how little would such a union be, to that we are speaking of! Nothing less than an Incomprehensible Power could effect what an Incomprehensible Wisdom did project in this affair.

(See this quotation and Charnock’s entire book at Gutenberg.org.)

Mention the name Robert E. Lee today, and you may meet with shouts of denunciation. The statues that bear his image around the U.S. have faced increasing scrutiny, defacing, and removal. Why is that happening particularly in today’s climate? And why has Lee, the primary military officer who led the rebellion in the American Civil War, enjoyed a typically more venerated legacy for so long? What are we to make of this general of the Army of Northern Virginia, who fought tenaciously for the Confederacy and the defense of slavery yet made decisions—especially the decision to surrender to Ulysses S. Grant rather than protract the war—that ultimately helped bring the Union back together?

Respected historian Allen C. Guelzo addresses these and many other questions in his recently published biography, Robert E. Lee: A Life (Knopf, 2021). Guelzo, Senior Research Scholar at the Council of Humanities at Princeton University, has written several books on the Civil War and Reconstruction era in America, including the Lincoln Prize–winning Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (which I reviewed here), Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (which I consider here), and Reconstruction: A Concise History. Now he has turned his gaze south to consider the life and times of Lee, and given the current context of questions swirling about Lee’s legacy, Robert E. Lee is perhaps as relevant as ever. 

I want to state at the outset that Guelzo does not write a hagiography. That isn’t his goal. Rather, his aim is to provide historical analysis, and he completes the work of historiography necessary to do this well. 

One of the helpful aspects of Guelzo’s book is his illumination of Lee’s family history, childhood, and early adult life. Growing up as the son of Revolutionary War hero “Light-horse” Harry Lee was no easy task, especially since his father turned out to be not so successful in his later years and not very present for Robert—both because of his roaming and because of his death in 1818, when Robert was only eleven. His erratic father’s illusory search for better financial investments led to a yearning in Robert for security, something that he felt nearly always eluded him. And yet, as Guelzo insightfully points out, Robert E. Lee was marked not only by a search for security but also by a search for independence, and it was this tension that explains many of the important decisions that marked his life. 

Of all the decisions Lee made, most significant for him and the history of the United States were Lee’s decisions to decline an offer to lead the army of the North, to resign his commission in the army, and to accept a commission as head of the army of Virginia—all of which happened in the course of about three days. The popular line is that Lee was committed to his state of Virginia above all. Guelzo treats this topic at length and makes a compelling argument that this popular line of thinking doesn’t do justice to several details in Lee’s life. 

Of significance is that Lee didn’t own land in Virginia and that he lived much of his adult life in army commissions in other parts of the country, including New York and Texas. Arlington was his home but only by marriage. Arlington was the home of his wife’s father, George Washington Parke Custis. Lee’s father-in-law died only shortly before the election of Lincoln, and Lee was cut out of the will. But while he himself didn’t receive anything in the estate, his children did—and Lee was made the executor of the will. His job was to ensure that the estate would be profitable enough that his children would receive an inheritance. 

Fascinatingly, Lee’s Arlington wasn’t even part of Virginia at the time of secession; it was part of Washington, DC. In his letters from that period, one can see that Lee’s ultimate devotion was to his children, protecting their future livelihoods. That was the “Virginia” he felt devoted to—that and the network of extended family to which he felt obligated. His decision was driven in large part by a desire to preserve his family’s future—a move based on a yearning for security.

As for slavery, Lee said he was opposed to the spread of the institution and claimed that he would give up all the slaves in the South if he could avoid war and maintain union. But his family came first, and that is perhaps the best driving motivation for why he devoted himself to the defense of what he considered to be a constitutionally questionable government whose aim was to perpetuate and spread the institution of chattel slavery, an institution he expected to fade away—though he did little in the way of action to bring it to an end.

So in many ways, this decision reflected the security-independence tension in his life. He sought to protect the security of his family and their future by standing with the network of extended family that provided a safety net of sorts for him and his children. Lee suffered from feelings of failure in paving an independent path throughout his life, but though he genuinely desired independence, his desire for security often held him back from taking the risks needed to pursue it.

Guelzo weaves this fascinating theme throughout his book, and he fleshes out the theme further when he suggests that Lee’s final years as the president of Washington College (later, renamed Washington and Lee University to honor him) were perhaps the time when Lee asserted his independence most forcefully. That simple observation is one piece of evidence showing that Guelzo weaves a cohesive narrative from Lee’s birth to death—and really from Lee’s ancestors to his legacy in our own day. 

In the epilogue to the book, Guelzo offers masterful analysis of the “glory” and “crime” of Lee—not only in his nineteenth-century context but also in our twenty-first-century context. His analysis reaches to the recent movements to topple Lee statues, and he considers the charge behind those efforts—white supremacy—vis-à-vis what he considers the ultimate crime of Lee—treason. And he also fruitfully explores the reasons why the former charge resonates more in our day than the latter. (You must read this section before passing judgment.)

Though reading a biography of Lee may seem counterintuitive in a day when his glory has been called into question, perhaps there is no better time to consider the life of Robert E. Lee, the contradictions of his consequential decisions, the mixed legacy he leaves behind him, and how we can understand our own day in clearer light with reflection on the meaning of the past. And as usual, Guelzo proves a gifted guide in this exploration. 

Athanasius’s On the Incarnation is a classic work of Christian literature—one that deserves to be read by all believers. It captures some of the key arguments for the Nicene understanding of the full deity and fully humanity of Christ as they were being hammered out in the contentious Arian controversy of the fourth century. 

Less known—but no less important—is the controversy of the later fourth century over the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit. A group of “Spirit fighters” waged war on the orthodox belief in the Spirit’s consubstantiality with the Father and the Son. Among those leading the defense of orthodoxy was Basil the Great, one of the three renowned Cappadocian fathers, along with Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit deserves to stand alongside Athanasius’s work as a key fourth-century text upholding orthodox Trinitarian theology. And perhaps there is no better time to revisit this work than now, when one recent study shows that “more than half of self-identified Christians in America say the Holy Spirit is not a real, living being.”

This work is made accessible in a modern English translation through the Popular Patristics Series: Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, ed. Stephen Hildebrand (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011). Hildebrand observes that, although Basil didn’t live to see it, his legacy lies in the language about the Spirit adopted in the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. 

Near the end of his book, Basil makes two striking statements about the nature of humanity and theology. First, he says, “Everyone is a theologian, even those who have stains on their souls” (120). This line captures well the fact that we all think thoughts about God, no matter how sick and sinful we may be. The question is whether we will think true thoughts about God and thus think true thoughts about the world we inhabit. 

Second, he observes, “Every man madly and stupidly thinks that it is owed to him that he rule others rather than listen to someone else” (120). How true that humans are quick to think that everyone should follow their opinion, and how slow we are to listen to others! Basil wisely observes the need for humility in our inevitable search for understanding God and our reality. 

With that in mind, what does Basil say about the Holy Spirit? In one particular passage he captures something of the beauty and diverse operations of the Spirit:

Whoever hears “spirit” cannot impress on his mind a circumscribed nature, or one subject to changes and alterations, or one at all similar to creation. Rather, he must advance to the highest heights in his thoughts and conceive of a necessary, intellectual substance that is infinite in power, unlimited in greatness, immeasurable by time or ages, and generous with the goods that it has. Everything that needs holiness turns to him. All that live virtuously desire him, as they are watered by his inspiration and assisted toward their proper and natural end. He perfects others, but himself lacks nothing. He lives, but not because he has been restored to life; rather, he is the source of life. He does not grow in strength gradually, but is complete all at once. He is established in himself and present everywhere. He is the source of holiness, an intellectual light for every rational power’s discovery of truth, supplying clarity, so to say, through himself. He is inaccessible in nature, but approachable in goodness. He fills all things with power, but only those who are worthy participate in him. He is not participated in all at once but shares his energy in “proportion to faith” (Rom 12.6). He is simple in substance, but manifold in powers. He is present as a whole to each and wholly present everywhere. He is portioned out impassibly and participated in as a whole. He is like a sunbeam whose grace is present to the one who enjoys him as if he were present to such a one alone, and still he illuminates land and sea and is mixed with the air. Just so, indeed, the Spirit is present to each one who is fit to receive him, as if he were present to him alone, and still he sends out grace that is complete and sufficient for all. (53)

This thick description of the Spirit captures a great deal about him in one compact place. And one can spend a good bit of time chewing on the ideas here. The Spirit’s grace, holiness, light, and life are what we desperately need, and we cannot hope to have them unless the Spirit truly is a divine person.

One thing that is so striking about Basil’s book is how much time he spends defending the Spirit’s deity and personhood using Scripture. He values tradition as well, but the bulk of his volume puts forth Bible passage after Bible passage to lead us to the unavoidable conclusion that we must confess the Spirit to be God. Here is a small taste of this aspect of his book:

When through his illuminating power we fix our eyes on the beauty of the image of the unseen God [stop for a moment to think about the ironic wonder of this statement!], and through the image are led up to the more than beautiful vision of the archetype, his Spirit of knowledge is somehow inseparably present. He supplies to those who love to see the truth the power to see the image in himself. He does not make the manifestation from the outside, but in himself leads to knowledge. For, as “no one knows the Father, except the Son” (Mt 11.27), so “no one is able to say Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12.3). He has not spoken through the Spirit but in the Spirit. And, “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in Spirit and truth” (Jn 4.24). As it is written, “in his light we will see light,” that is, in the illumination of the Spirit, “the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world” (Jn 1.9). And so, he shows in himself the glory of the Only-begotten and furnishes to true worshippers the knowledge of God himself. The way, then, to knowledge of God is from the one Spirit, through the one Son, to the one Father. (82–83)

Basil makes other biblical arguments, pointing, for example, to the sin against the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:31) as proof of his deity (82). He also traces out several passages to show that the Spirit’s dignity is seen through his names, works, and graces, as well as in creation (84–87). In one striking statement, he asks how the one who gives life to all being can be in need of life himself (95). And the arguments continue. 

Modern readers may quibble with Basil at times, but On the Holy Spirit offers a valuable peak into fourth-century Christianity, a meaty discourse on the biblical and theological arguments for Trinitarian orthodoxy, and an edifying reflection on the Holy Spirit, who, as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed puts it, is “the Lord and giver of life.”

The Puritan Stephen Charnock (1628–1680) is perhaps best remembered for his two-volume magnum opus The Existence and Attributes of God, which contains fourteen discourses on the subject. Despite its length, Charnock actually died before he could finish it. So he does not offer an exhaustive list of God’s attributes—which would be an impossible task for finite creatures to accomplish anyway. His work was published posthumously in 1682. 

Charnock developed this tome from a series of sermons he preached to his church. As a pastor devoted to his people’s spiritual good, he sought to preach sermons that both pointed them to the heights and complexity of God’s nature and changed their day-to-day lives. Thus, his sermons followed the common Puritan sermon form with a focus on a biblical text, on doctrine, and on application. 

In his twelfth discourse, “A Discourse upon the Goodness of God,” Charnock considered how God’s nature as good affects how we approach him in prayer. In short, God’s goodness gives us much comfort in going to God regularly in prayer because God delights to answer the prayers of his people. The excerpt below gives a small taste of how Charnock applied the attribute of God’s goodness to human life:

Here is comfort in our addresses to him. If he be a fountain and sea of goodness, he cannot be weary of doing good, no more than a fountain or sea are of flowing. All goodness delights to communicate itself. Infinite goodness hath then an infinite delight in expressing itself; it is a part of his goodness not to be weary of shewing it. He can never then be weary of being solicited for the effusions of it. If he rejoices over his people to do them good, he will rejoice in any opportunities offered to him to honour his goodness, and gladly meet with a fit object for it. He therefore delights in prayer. Never can we so delight in addressing as he doth in imparting. He delights more in our prayers than we can ourselves. Goodness is not pleased with shyness. To what purpose did his immense bounty bestow his Son upon us, but that we should be accepted both in our persons and petitions? Eph. i. 6. “His eyes are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry,” Ps. xxxiv. 15. He fixes the eye of his goodness upon them, and opens the ears of his goodness for them; he is pleased to behold them, and pleased to listen to them, as if he had no pleasure in anything else. He loves to be sought to, to give a vent to his bounty: Job xxii. 21, “Acquaint thyself with God, and thereby good shall come unto thee.” The word signifies to accustom ourselves to God. The more we accustom ourselves in speaking, the more he will accustom himself in giving. He loves not to keep his goodness close under lock and key, as men do their treasures. If we knock, he opens his exchequer. Mat. vii. 7. His goodness is as flexible to our importunities as his power is invincible by the arm of a silly worm. He thinks his liberality honoured by being applied to, and your address to be a recompence for his expense. There is no reason to fear, since he hath so kindly invited us, but he will as heartily welcome us. The nature of goodness is to compassionate and communicate, to pity and relieve, and that with a heartiness and cheerfulness. Man is weary of being often solicited, because he hath a finite, not a bottomless goodness. He gives sometimes to be rid of his suppliant, not to encourage him to a second approach. But every experience God gives us of his bounty is a motive to solicit him afresh, and a kind of obligation he hath laid upon himself to renew it, 1 Sam. xvii. 37. It is one part of his goodness that it is boundless and bottomless; we need not fear the wasting of it, nor any weariness in him to bestow it. The stock cannot be spent, and infinite kindness can never become niggardly [i.e., begrudging]; when we have enjoyed it, there is still an infinite ocean in him to refresh us, and as full streams as ever to supply us. What an encouragement have we to draw near to God! We run in our straits to those that we think have most good will, as well as power to relieve and protect us. The oftener we come to him, and the nearer we approach to him, the more of his influences we shall feel. As the nearer the sun, the more of its heat insinuates itself into us. The greatness of God, joined with his goodness, hath more reason to encourage our approach to him than our flight from him, because his greatness never goes unattended with his goodness; and if he were not so good, he would not be so great in the apprehensions of any creature. How may his goodness in the great gift of his Son encourage us to apply to him, since he hath set him as a day’s-man between himself and us, and appointed him an advocate to present our requests for us, and speed them at the throne of grace, and he never leaves till divine goodness subscribes a fiat to our believing and just petitions.^[1]

Let me make a few brief notes about Charnock’s discussion. First, notice how frequently he speaks of God’s delight—five times with that word alone. God delights in communicating himself to us. God delights in hearing from us. God never grows weary of us. 

Also, God’s goodness draws us to come to him over and over again. Unlike other people, who are limited and finite, God’s supply of good things never runs out. He has an infinite ocean of kindness to give.

Finally, the ultimate assurance we have that God is a God of goodness and that God delights to hear from us and give to us is that he has already given us his Son. The gift of Christ is the greatest display of God’s goodness to his people. And God’s goodness seen in Christ should encourage us to approach him in prayer. 

It’s worth mentioning that Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), who ministered in the century after Charnock, also preached on God’s delight in answering prayer. To read one of his sermons on the topic, see “The Most High a Prayer-Hearing God,” which is available as sermon 35 in volume 4 of the Worcester edition of Edwards’s works on Google Books. 

Also, the entirety of Charnock’s fourteen discourses on the existence and attributes of God is available at Digital Puritan. 

^[1] Stephen Charnock, “A Discourse upon God’s Goodness,” in The Existence and Attributes of God, in The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, B.D., vol. 2 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1864), 388–89.

What are we to make of such changes in our culture? It is, no doubt, tricky. Part of the reason is that everyone we might honor suffers from weaknesses, sins, and failings. There’s a reason to remove anyone’s name from a building. But fallen creatures—to use the theological term—nonetheless accomplish deeds worthy of recognition. Sifting through this messy mixture of fallen heroes presents us with legitimate challenges. 

In that light, we should acknowledge that some calls for removing names from a building are worth heeding, while others are not. Allowing the pressures from special interest groups that are currently in vogue to determine whose name stays and whose name goes is not the most objective approach.

Thankfully, esteemed American historian Allen Guelzo—a Lincoln expert—has laid out some helpful criteria for weighing whether one should remove a name or not. I’m struck by his discussion of the efforts to remove Abraham Lincoln’s name from schools for his alleged mistreatment of Native Americans. As Guelzo points out, the details of these allegations must be reviewed for a fair assessment—and in Lincoln’s case, the allegations are weak when understood in the full context of his life and the particular situation under consideration. 

For those trying to make sense of these renaming campaigns—or even those in the midst of weighing whether something should be renamed or not—I recommend Guelzo’s article “What’s in a Name?,” published at Law & Liberty. As he argues, his guide “will not automatically solve all questions or end all debates, but it will allow us to discuss the real historical issues, not the emotional and political ones, in a sober and directed fashion, in a world where retouching the past is of much less worth than writing a better present.”

“Danny is going to die.”

My cousins said this as we sat at my grandmother’s table. Danny, my 10-year-old brother, was also sitting at the table. Feeling a strong urgency to defend him, I countered, with all the persuasive argumentation of an 8-year-old, “No, he’s not!”

Danny had a brain tumor. Once he was an energetic boy who enjoyed building Legos, playing tag, and creating skits with our older sister. Now his skin was pulled taut against his bones, his body slowly wasting away.

I suspect my cousins were merely repeating what they’d heard their parents say. And I doubt they realized how their words affected me and my brother. As it turned out, my convictions concerning my brother’s outlook were not enough to keep the cancer at bay. My aunts and uncles were right. My brother did not live out the year.

Death affects us in powerful ways. Even for believers who live with the hope of resurrection life and of being reunited with Christian loved ones, death tests us as it alters our experience in this world, forcing us to continue living without someone we love, to keep living despite loss.

Read the rest at the Gospel Coalition's website.

Depression is a complicated challenge. It requires multifaceted attention to a person’s situation. But it is not a new challenge. People were dealing with it centuries ago, and the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter sought to help his congregation and other Christians find hope and peace to move forward. In his works addressing depression (or melancholy, as they called it in his day), he discusses many facets of depression—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It is still a valuable work for people seeking to walk through depression and to help others through it. 

The following excerpt from his work focuses on one particular factor often contributing to depression. He is offering suggestions for how to avoid “excessive sorrow”—a phrase he draws from 2 Corinthians 2:7: “. . . or he may be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow.” One can see 2 Corinthians 2 for more context, but it suffices here to note that Paul recognized that people could be hampered by “excessive sorrow,” which did not contribute to their spiritual well-being but rather detracted from it. 

So how to avoid “excessive sorrow”? One element was overcoming “inordinate love” of things in this world, which always fail to satisfy. Here’s what Baxter says:

Determine in yourselves more diligently than ever to overcome an inordinate love of the world. . . . The love of something precedes desire and grief over it. Whatever men love, they delight in possessing, mourn to be without, and desire to get. The will is driven by love, and no one is bothered about a lack of something he doesn’t want in the first place. 

However, the most common precipitant of intense depression is initially some temporal dissatisfaction and worry. Whether longings or trials, the fear of suffering them or a sense of the unfairness and aggravating nature of them, or perhaps falling into disgrace or contempt—any of these can induce a consuming discontent. . . .

When holy men die, their souls have a natural inclination upward. It is their love that inclines them: they love God and heaven, and holy company, and their godly friends, holy works, and mutual love, and the joyful praises of God. This spirit and love are like a fiery nature that carries them heavenward. Angels carry them not by force but as a bride to her marriage, who is borne the entire way by love. . . .

But to love something disproportionately is to turn from God. This is the dangerous malady of souls and the attitude that drags them down from heaven. . . .

Focus more on how to live by faith and hope and on the unseen promise of glory with Christ, and you will endure with patience any sufferings along the way. . . .

Consider carefully how much of a duty it is to trust God and our blessed Redeemer entirely, with both soul and body, and all we possess. . . . What is our Christianity if not a life of faith? And has your faith been reduced to this: to become obsessed with care and worry if God does not shape his providence to fit your expectations? Seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and he has promised that all other things will be given to you.

Richard Baxter^[1]

Seventeenth-century perspective can be helpful even today. And if this strikes us as an unusual approach to depression, perhaps that is all the more reason to give it consideration—for he may be pointing to something our current age is missing. 

For more on Richard Baxter’s treatment of depression, see Richard Baxter, Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life, ed. Michael S. Lundy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018). (Full disclosure: I am an editor at Crossway. But Baxter’s material, I would suggest, stands on the merits of his work that dates to the mid-seventeenth century.)

^[1] Richard Baxter, “The Resolution of Depression and Overwhelming Grief through Faith,” in Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life, ed. Michael S. Lundy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 134–38.

Allen Guelzo is a remarkable scholar of American history. He got his start studying Jonathan Edwards, with his book Edwards on the Will, and he also coedited, with Doug Sweeney, The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park. But he has since come to be known as one of the leading experts on the Civil War. I have discussed his book Gettysburg: The Last Invasion on this blog, where I consider the role of contingency for Christian historians. I have also enjoyed his book Reconstruction: A Concise History and his Great Courses lectures Mr. Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, an engaging six-hour audio presentation of Lincoln’s life. I’m intrigued to see that Guelzo is releasing a biography of Robert E. Lee in September 2021. 

I recently read what may be his most lauded project: Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, recipient of the 2000 Lincoln Prize. This is an excellent volume on the sixteenth president of the United States. Guelzo, a talented writer, makes this book an engaging read. If you want to come to know Lincoln in his context, I heartily commend this book. 

Guelzo’s aim in this volume is not a mere biography but an intellectual biography of Lincoln (24). He casts Lincoln as deeply influenced by Whig philosophy, even after breaking with the Whig party to become the Republican party’s first president, and he shows how he contrasted especially with the Jeffersonian “yeoman farmer” vision of America. Lincoln lauded opportunity for every man to make his way in the world, as he himself did, emerging from childhood poverty through backbreaking work to lawing and finally the presidency. As a Whig, Lincoln championed industriousness as well as moral rigorism, and Guelzo shows how Lincoln retained “unwavering allegiance to the Whig ideology” throughout his life—an aspect of his thought that too many Lincoln biographers have ignored or downplayed (458). 

This Whig ideology fit well with Lincoln’s antislavery sentiments and ultimately with his efforts to emancipate the slaves in the US. Blacks, he believed, should be given the freedom and opportunity to better their lives through hard work and moral rigor. 

That is not to deny the complexity of Lincoln’s approach to African Americans (which could be condescending) and to the slavery question as it intersected with what for Lincoln was the priority of preserving the union. Guelzo helpfully shows that Lincoln approached the issue of slavery gingerly in the border states because the loss of those states would have spelled disaster for the North. He only gradually moved toward immediate emancipation, and his views on slavery were nuanced even toward the end of his life as he weighed how best to bring Southern states back into the union as quickly as possible. 

Even so, Lincoln was convinced that the founding fathers had planned for slavery’s eventual extinction (238), and he took action that would propel the nation toward that goal one way or another. Despite the complexity of his thought, Lincoln’s actions on behalf of African Americans cannot and should not be denied.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the attention Guelzo gives to Lincoln’s religion. This is a natural aspect of an intellectual biography. It also bears interest to those of us historians who focus on religious history. 

Lincoln grew up in a Separate Baptist family that was strongly predestinarian—a doctrine that stuck with Lincoln throughout his life. He rejected his father’s religion and even wrote “a little Book on Infidelity” in his twenties, though his friends convinced him to burn it because of the public backlash that could have ruined his prospects (50–51). In that period of his life, Lincoln was “Enthusiastic in his infidelity,” one contemporary said (80). Lincoln continued to be a skeptic throughout his life, and he famously said, “Probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did” (155–56). 

Many wanted (and still want) to say that Lincoln became an orthodox Christian secretly toward the end of his life (445), but the evidence does not support such a conclusion, as Guelzo lays it out. For example, the friends who knew him best say that they never heard Lincoln profess faith in Jesus Christ (151, 325). Lincoln himself said, “I am not a Christian,” and he was amazed that professing Christians could defend slavery (261). After he became president, he did seem to show an increasing interest in the mystery of God and his providence, but the hopes people expressed of his conversion were “usually exaggerations” (312). Guelzo observes, “He never spoke, in the language of evangelical Christianity, of Jesus as my Savior, and his repertoire of biblical citations was more a cultural habit rather than a religious one” (313). 

Nonetheless, Lincoln’s views did shift over time. Notably, he did believe in providence, and his reflections on that doctrine became important in his assessment of the Civil War. Amazingly, he made a vow to his Maker to proceed with emancipation if the North won a military victory (341). Guelzo spends valuable time trying to reconcile Lincoln the infidel with Lincoln the emancipator driven by providence (342). His views on providence are especially intriguing and are perhaps best captured in his Second Inaugural Address (414–21), in which he inquired into “the meaning of the war” and described what Guelzo calls “the divine weighing of the republic—not just the South, but South and North together—in which the war’s losses were the wages of national sin, payable by both in life and treasure” (417). Ultimately, Lincoln appealed to God’s inscrutable providence as explaining why “this terrible war” was needed: “until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn by the sword” (418). 

The people’s response to Lincoln’s assassination and their desire to, in some ways, divinize him show how Lincoln became America’s “Redeemer President” (441). Abraham Lincoln was an intellectual who lived a fascinating and consequential life for the American nation. And Allen Guelzo’s Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President artfully captures his thought and action in Lincoln’s context in a balanced discussion with insightful historical analysis. Highly recommended.

The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards* has recently been published, a project headed by Douglas A. Sweeney and Jan Stievermann, the coeditors of the book. This volume provides a valuable foray into Edwards studies by an array of scholars, including George Marsden, Kenneth Minkema, Michael McClymond—and that’s just the contributors from the M category.

I had the privilege of participating in this project by writing the essay on sin and evil in Edwards’s theology. Here’s a snippet of the beginning of the chapter:

“There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God” (WJE22:405). This doctrine comes from Jonathan Edwards’s (1703–58) most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. With its intense, frightening imagery of the moment before an individual enters into eternity, this sermon captures many key themes in Edwards’s doctrine on sin and evil—God’s just wrath against sin, God’s sovereignty over all creatures, the precarious state of sinners in their sin, the dread of punishment that awaits unrepentant sinners, and the hope of new life in Christ. 

Sinners also highlights one of the main contexts where Edwards declared his doctrine: from the pulpit. This New England preacher developed his doctrine of sin and evil in his theological and exegetical notebooks, with entries on original sin as early as 1729 (Guelzo, 54), and his decades of reflecting on sin and evil culminated in his treatise Original Sin, which he completed before his death in March 1758 and which was published later that year. These varying contexts illuminate Edwards’s world and the people he engaged with on the topic of sin and evil. Edwards was a preacher who proclaimed this doctrine for the eternal benefit and spiritual arousal of his people. He was a pastor who sought to encourage and counsel troubled parishioners. He was a philosopher who wrestled with exegetical knots and theological conundrums as he engaged in the eighteenth century’s intellectual shifts. This essay seeks to understand what Edwards believed about sin and evil, why he held to these convictions, and how his context shaped this doctrine in his mind.

My chapter appears in part 2 of the book, one of four parts, with the following breakdown of topics:

Part 1: Edwards’s Background, Sources, and Context

• Chapter 1: Family Life, by Ava Chamberlain

• Chapter 2: Parish Ministry, by Harry S. Stout

• Chapter 3: Historical and Ecclesiastical Contexts, by George Marsden

• Chapter 4: Edwards in the Context of International Revivals and Missions, by David W. Kling

• Chapter 5: Sources of Edwards’s Thought, by Peter J. Thuesen

Part 2: Edwards’s Intellectual Labours

• Chapter 6: Ontology, by William J. Wainwright

• Chapter 7: Epistemology, by Paul Helm

• Chapter 8: The Nature of God and the Trinity, by Kyle C. Strobel

• Chapter 9: The Person of Christ, by S. Mark Hamilton

• Chapter 10: Pneumatology, by Robert W. Caldwell III

• Chapter 11: Revelation, by Stephen R. C. Nichols

• Chapter 12: Federalism and Reformed Scholasticism, by Willem van Vlastuin

• Chapter 13: Creation and Predestination, by Phillip Hussey and Michael McClymond

• Chapter 14: History, Providence, and Eschatology, by Jan Stievermann

• Chapter 15: Sin and Evil, by David P. Barshinger

• Chapter 16: Anthropology, Affections, and Free Will, by Seng-Kong Tan

• Chapter 17: Ecclesiology and Sacraments, by Rhys Bezzant

• Chapter 18: Ethics, by Elizabeth Agnew Cochran

• Chapter 19: Aesthetics, by William Dyrness and Christi Wells

• Chapter 20: Imagination and Hermeneutics, by Kathryn Reklis

• Chapter 21: The Natural Sciences and Philosophy of Nature, by Avihu Zakai

• Chapter 22: Idealism and Aetiology, by Sebastian Rehnman

Part 3: Edwards’s Religious and Social Practices

• Chapter 23: Spirituality and Devotion, by Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe

• Chapter 24: Biblical Exegesis, by Robert E. Brown

• Chapter 25: Writing and Preaching Sermons, by Kenneth P. Minkema

• Chapter 26: Education, by Esmari Potgieter

• Chapter 27: Missions, by John A. Grigg

• Chapter 28: Ministry to the Bound and Enslaved, by John Saillant

• Chapter 29: Politics and Economics, by Mark Valeri

Part 4: Edwards’s Global Reception

• Chapter 30: North America, by James P. Byrd

• Chapter 31: Britain and Europe, by Jonathan Yeager

• Chapter 32: Edwards’s Place and Importance in Anglo-American Literature, by Sandra M. Gustafson

• Chapter 33: Asia, by Dongsoo Han

• Chapter 34: Australia, by Stuart Piggin

• Chapter 35: Africa, by Adriaan C. Neele

• Chapter 36: Latin America, by Heber Carlos de Campos, Jr.

• Chapter 37: Edwards Studies Today, by Douglas A. Sweeney

For those interested in digging deeply into specific aspects of Edwards or for finding out the current state of Edwards studies, The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards* offers a storehouse of information. 

I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed James K. A. Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts even more than I had expected. I knew it would be good to get a little Augustine in my mind again, yet Smith made it more than just Augustine. This book is sort of Jack-Kerouac-meets-Saint-Augustine, which makes for an engaging and stimulating read. 

I remember reading Kerouac’s On the Road in college and didn’t expect to see that book as a springboard for diving into Augustine, but the connection works well. And the role Kerouac plays is just one way that Smith brings Augustine into conversation with modern philosophy and culture. Others brought alongside Augustine include the likes of Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida. Smith’s approach thus makes this book feel both ancient and modern. 

But it is more than that. It is deeply personal and moving. It connects to our everyday experience in profound ways because the book paints Augustine for us in living color, not as some distant holy saint. And Smith can pull this off because he focuses the book on (though doesn’t limit himself to) Augustine’s Confessions. This is both a benefit and a drawback to the work. On the latter, I think one would gain a fuller vision of Augustine with more attention to others of his works. But on the former, it is well worth plopping down and spending time in Confessions.

Confessions is, of course, a classic of Christian spirituality, and it set the stage for so much of Western theology and philosophy. In his Confessions, Augustine is engaging, and he invites readers to see their own lives through the spiritual lens by which he came to see his own life. I think that just about every Christian should read Augustine’s Confessions at some point—if not multiple points—during their earthly journeys. 

Smith proves an engaging guide to Augustine, but rather than helping us merely understand Augustine better, Smith—ever the philosopher—uses Augustine to help us understand ourselves and our God better, much as Augustine did in Confessions. If a book on an old saint like Augustine sounds dry and esoteric, On the Road with Saint Augustine is anything but that. 

As the title suggests, Smith invites us to see a journey with Augustine as part of our own journey, our own story. Augustine and Smith aid us in thinking about relationships, whether with fathers or mothers or friends or lovers. These two philosophers help us face our tendency to run and never land anywhere (contrast Kerouac). They force us to wrestle with thought, faith, and justice. Yet while Smith clearly finds great value in Augustine, he is also ready to disagree with him at times—as he does, rightly in my view, with Augustine’s negative take on human sexuality. 

As an example of his many insights into Christian living, Smith discusses ambition. Augustine admittedly struggled with ambition throughout his life. And yet ambition is a mixed bag. Ambition can drive one toward excellence and accomplishment and doing good for others. Yet it can also cripple a person because it is a bad master—even when one achieves a goal, ambition leaves one grasping for more, seeking to maintain a reputation, or questioning whether one’s achievements will last. And when one fails to reach a goal, ambition’s lashings let loose. Ambition too easily morphs into an idolatry, and it is a punishing existence. Reorienting our hearts toward God and finding rest in him frees us from the torturous slave driver of ambition and frees us to work hard and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Part of what makes this book engaging is that we get snippets of Smith’s encounters with Augustine throughout the book. His gives us a model of what it looks like to journey with Augustine through this life. As we walk in Augustine’s shoes, we have the opportunity to find a fuller life that is oriented rightly to the God who gives us rest. 

I highly recommend Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine. While Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is fascinating and an important piece of twentieth-century American literature, it doesn’t help you on your journey of life nearly as much as inviting Augustine to take a seat next to you does. In Smith’s book, you will find valuable directions from an ancient guide for navigating this world so that you are actually headed toward a satisfying destination. 

I had the privilege of participating in the publication of Carl Trueman’s latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution*, published by Crossway (where—full disclosure—I work as an editor). The book is a timely volume for explaining much about where we are in Western culture today and how the road to get here stretches back a lot farther than most of us typically think. While it feels like sexual mores have shifted at an incredibly rapid pace in recent decades, Trueman shows how the groundwork for such shifts were laid even back in the eighteenth century and how they involve much more than merely sex. 

Since I was involved in the project myself, it seems better to point readers to others who are giving the book acclaim. 

For starters, Trueman’s book received the award for best 2020 book in public theology and current events at the Gospel Coalition. The judges conclude: 

Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is perhaps the most significant analysis and evaluation of Western culture written by an evangelical during the past 50 years. Any Christian who wants to understand the social, cultural, and political convulsions that the West in general, and the United States in particular, are now experiencing should read this book. Trueman’s work is undergirded by a sound biblical, historical, and systematic theology, conversant with many of the most important primary texts and works of cultural commentary, and written in a lucid and readable style. It’s a tour de force of intellectual history that will serve the church well for generations to come.

In the foreword to the book, Rod Dreher argues that Trueman’s book is “a sophisticated survey and analysis of cultural history by a brilliant teacher who is not only an orthodox Christian but also a pastor who understands the actual needs of the flock—and who, unlike so many intellectuals, can write like a dream.” He adds, “So many Christian books seek to explain the church to the modern world. But in these pages, Carl Trueman explains modernity to the church, with depth, clarity, and force. The significance of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, arriving at this late hour, is hard to overstate.” See Dreher’s interview with Trueman at the American Conservative. 

Tim Challies says this about Trueman’s book: “As I see it, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is not only the most important book I’ve read in 2020, but also the best. I can’t recommend it too highly.”

Andrew Walker states, “In what I hope is not an overstatement, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is the most ambitious book that Crossway has ever published in the cultural-criticism genre. I cannot recommend it enough to scholars, pastors, and laypersons. As a testament to my recommendation, it will now be required reading in every relevant course I teach.”

Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self* is getting a lot of attention for a good reason—it addresses issues that are pressing in our world today. But he does so in a way that is not always intuitive to our modern culture: by looking at the subject through the lens of intellectual history. I recommend the book on many levels, but don’t take my word for it. Consider the other voices who are pointing to this volume as a crucial book for our time. 

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When I’ve had the opportunity to teach the history of religion in America, I’ve regularly used Albert Raboteau’s Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans* (Oxford University Press, 2001). I recommend it as an accessible, evenhanded historical overview of the African American religious experience in the American colonies and the United States. 

A couple of decades before publishing Canaan Land, Raboteau wrote Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South* (Oxford University Press, 1978; rev. ed., 2004), which was based on his dissertation. That book became important in opening doors to a much-neglected area of American religious history. And it still deserves attention today for its insights. 

Chief among those insights is his tracing of the transformation of African religious practices as Africans were transported to the New World. This theme is echoed throughout the book and appears in different forms. 

Early in the book, for example, Raboteau observes that the religious experience of slaves differed between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. Slaves in the southern hemisphere retained a greater degree of their African religious heritage than their counterparts in the northern hemisphere. Why was that the case? 

Interestingly, the US and Canada imported only 4.5 percent of slaves that traversed the Middle Passage, yet by the mid-twentieth century North America held 31.1 percent of those of African descent in the New World. So while North America imported fewer slaves proportionately than places in South America and the Caribbean, Blacks grew in larger numbers in the US and Canada (89–92). So, as Raboteau says it, “the bulk of the slave population in North America was native-born” (92), which allowed them to be influenced more by the white population, with which they had more frequent contact. Factors like these (as well as others) account for different slave religious experiences in the northern and southern hemispheres. 

As he focuses on religious experience particularly in the US, Raboteau notes how slaves adapted Christianity to fit with their own African heritage. Sometimes this appeared in a more syncretistic fashion, but in many other cases—especially in the US—it meant that they adopted orthodox Christian theology and belief as their own and translated it into their experience, retaining elements of African religion, particularly forms of dancing and singing. 

Another key theme of the book is the tension between slaveholding and Christianization. In an earlier post, I spotlighted Frederick Douglass’s Narrative* of his life, in which he highlights the hypocrisy of Christian slaveholding. In Slave Religion*, Raboteau shows how this hypocrisy manifested itself in several specific ways. 

Many justified their slaveholding with the notion that it would be good for the slaves, since it would enable masters to give their slaves true religion. But that theory was hard to uphold in practice, and many resisted the evangelization of their slaves for fear that it would lead them to desire freedom. Such thinking is rife with irony! Slaveholders seemed to intuitively understand the freedom offered in the gospel, which was in conflict with their own act of slaveholding. 

Marriages between slaves became a surprising source of tension in Southern churches. What better institution to inculcate among slave converts than marriage, which celebrates God’s unifying of husband and wife as one? Marriage itself is identified by Paul as a picture of Christ’s union with the church, a theological mystery of great depth. And it also provided a way out of sexual sin, upholding Christian morality. And yet hypocrisy was rampant among slaveholders professing to be Christian on this very issue. 

For one, too many masters failed to uphold Christian morality, crossing the line of marital fidelity by having sexual relations with their female slaves. Beyond that, the idea of marriage until death parts a couple was tenuous at best in a society that allowed slaveholders to sell their slaves at any moment, which would essentially end a slave marriage. And the churches then had to deal with the question whether slaves who had remarried after either being sold away or having their spouse sold away could be admitted to the church as members in good standing. That the churches sought to navigate this system without confronting the double standard that slavery had created underscores the deep hypocrisy of those involved in it. 

Amazingly, despite the hypocrisy of their slaveowners, African Americans embraced Christianity in remarkable numbers. And as they did so, they rejected elements of their white masters’ religion and made it their own. As Raboteau points out, as seen especially in the spirituals, “Christianity was fitted by the slave community to its own particular experience. At the same time the symbols, myths, and values of Judeo-Christian tradition helped form the slave community’s image of itself” (213). 

In his 2004 afterword to the revised edition of Slave Religion*, Raboteau observes that slaves redeemed a religion that their masters profaned. And he suggests that slave Christians should be viewed as martyrs and confessors much like the martyrs of the early church and that their prayer meetings should be understood as nineteenth-century equivalents of the early church catacombs. 

I think these comparisons are helpful on a couple of levels. First, they rightly weave African American Christians into the longstanding history and experience of the church from its earliest days—which is right where they belong. And second, it helps us better perceive their contributions to the church and their testimony to the gospel, for, as Raboteau notes, engaging in religion was often viewed as an act of rebellion by masters (305). And yet many stood firm in preaching the gospel despite opposition. 

If one is looking for a nice overview of the African American religious experience, Raboteau’s Canaan Land* is a valuable resource. For a more detailed and focused treatment of the antebellum religious experience of slaves, it remains illuminating to explore Raboteau’s Slave Religion*. Thanks go to Albert Raboteau for guiding us in understanding this important area of American Christian history.

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