Christian Doctrines

Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature?

The doctrine of the Father’s begetting the Son in his divine nature, despite its credal affirmation, enjoys no clear scriptural support and threatens to introduce an objectionable ontological su...

Divine Forgiveness As Legal Pardon

I argue that divine forgiveness of sinners, bzw. sins, is more akin to legal pardon than to forgiveness as it is usually understood in human relationships. For divine forgiveness involves not merely a...

Is Penal Substitution Unjust?

Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve pun...

Is Penal Substitution Incoherent?: An Examination Of Mark Murphy's Criticisms

Some critics of the doctrine of penal substitution have alleged that the doctrine is incoherent because punishment entails an attitude of condemnation or censure towards the person punished, which imp...

A Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity

After a brief historical survey of patristic Trinitarian thought, I contrast Social and "Anti-Social" Trinitarian views. A Social Trinitarian model is then presented, according to which God is a soul ...

Trinity Monotheism Once More: A Response to Daniel Howard-Snyder

A response to Howard-Snyder's criticism of the Social Trinitarian model laid out in Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview. Exploiting insights from mereology, I offer a possible alter...

Pantheists in Spite of Themselves? Pannenberg, Clayton, and Shults on Divine Infinity

Christian theology has traditionally affirmed that God is infinite. But some contemporary theologians seem to think that this affirmation stands in tension with the Christian belief in the reality of ...

Does the Problem of Material Constitution Illuminate the Doctrine of the Trinity?

Michael Rea and Jeffery Brower have offered a provocative new model of the Trinity on the analogy of the Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. Just as a fist and a hand can be...

Flint's Radical Molinist Christology Not Radical Enough

In a pair of recent articles Thomas Flint has offered what he calls "some radical Molinist suggestions" for Christology. In the first of the pair, he argues that despite divine impeccability Christ...

Featured article

RESPONSE TO JEFF KOPERSKI