Introduction Hebrews 12.28 prescribes that Christian worship be grateful, awe-filled, and reverent. Hebrews 12.29 describes why Christian worship should be so: “our God is a consuming fire.” In the preceding post, we paused to consider the significance of this imagery and concluded that it presents God to us as a holy wonder, unprecedented and incomparable in his transcendent […]
“Our God is a consuming fire” (part two)
Introduction According to Nicholas Wolterstorff, worship is the “Godward acknowledgement of God’s unsurpassable greatness . . . whose attitudinal stance toward God is awed, reverential, and grateful adoration.” As we saw in our last post, this definition aptly summarizes the vision of worship set forth in Hebrews 12.28-29. As we also saw, the foundation for this vision […]
“Our God is a consuming fire” (part one)
In his book, The God We Worship, Nicholas Wolterstorff defines worship as the “Godward acknowledgement of God’s unsurpassable greatness . . . whose attitudinal stance toward God is awed, reverential, and grateful adoration.” According to Wolterstorff, worship is “Godward” in its orientation. In our everyday lives “we are oriented toward tasks, toward our neighbors, [and] toward […]
On happiness: a theological outline
I. Christian theology addresses the topic of happiness by addressing, first, the being and works of “the happy God” (1 Tim 1.11; 6.15) and, second, the happiness of the people whose God is the Lord (Ps 33.12). II. God is happy because he possesses infinite riches of being, wisdom, goodness, and power in and of himself […]
The sufficiency of God
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Cor 9.8). The doctrine of divine sufficiency is a glorious doctrine, whose rays extend far into the domain of Christian usefulness and consolation. In his […]
Defending the Covenant of Redemption: Part 3
Adapted from Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, ed., Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic (Baker Academic, 2016). As I noted in my first post, some recent Reformed theologians worry that the covenant of redemption potentially undermines orthodox trinitarianism. Thus, Karl Barth asks, “Can we really think of the first and second persons […]
