Unexpected Ally: Thomas Aquinas – An Excerpt from Grace Alone
In today’s excerpt from Grace Alone–Salvation as a Gift of God, Carl Trueman, professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, gives us the background and context of Thomas Aquinas, the unexpected friend of grace alone.
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If the reception of Augustine’s theology of grace was subject to some confusion in the West, there were still some theologians whose teaching maintained his clear emphasis on God’s sovereignty and priority. Among these the most preeminent was Thomas Aquinas.
Most Protestants, if they have heard of Thomas Aquinas, probably regard him with some degree of suspicion. He is, after all, the great theologian of Roman Catholicism who provided the most elaborate and compelling arguments for many Roman Catholic distinctives such as transubstantiation. For many…
Locating Atonement in Dogmatic Theology with Aquinas and von Balthasar
The doctrine of atonement has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. In this modern Quest for the Historic Atonement, some have called on the church to embrace a community of atonement theories; others have questioned whether God killing Jesus on the cross is “cosmic child abuse.”
A new edited volume by Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders, Locating Atonement, transcends these discussions about typology and combinations. Taking the conversation in a fresh, innovative direction, it asks:
How does the redemptive work of Christ relate to other load-bearing structures in dogmatic theology? (14)
The trajectory of this book is synthetic, in that it examines the relationship between this doctrine and other spheres of dogmatic theology. Two of the twelve essays engaging this question exemplify…
Extracurricular Activities 4.4.15— Psalms for Easter, Thomistic Protestants, & Shedd’s Trinitarianism
Michael Bird On Preaching the Psalms this Easter
How did the early preach about Jesus if they did not have a New Testament? The obvious answer is that they must have preached from the Old Testament! Of course, it wasn’t ‘old’ to them, it was the only Scripture they knew, the Law, the Prophets, and Writings were God’s Word to Israel. Even so, how do you preach Jesus’ cross and resurrection if you don’t have the Gospel of St. Mark, St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, the epistle to the Hebrews, of the Revelation of St. John the Divine? Well, they did it, by and large, by going through the Psalms!
As one reads through the New Testament, it becomes clear that the authors detected in the Psalms various pattern and images which reminded them of Jesus, specifically, who he…