Posts by Lance English
Why We Retrieve Thomas Aquinas: Credo Alliance with Swain, Sanders, Barrett, Fesko
You’ve most likely been told that Thomas Aquinas is off limits, a theologian who will corrupt Protestants and turn them into Roman Catholics. And yet, Protestant history tells a different story: many of our Protestant forefathers did not merely retrieve Aquinas but thought of him as part of the same tradition they belonged to in…
Read MoreLectio Divina: A Shepherd’s Guide
Most of my work is centered around college students. I have worked directly with 18-22 year olds for the past thirteen years. There has been notable differences as the generation has shifted from the youngest Millennials to the oldest of Generation Z. Yet, one thing that has remained constant is their inexperience of how to…
Read MoreLife in the Goldfish Bowl
One of the challenges that pastors and their families face is life in the goldfish bowl. In many other vocations a person can go to work, do his job, come home, and his home life and family stay out of view. My father worked for a tech giant for 37 years and I can count…
Read MorePodcast Throwback: Can we be Reformed and Scholastic?
Reformed and Scholastic are often considered antithetical to one another, as if the use of the scholastic method or the retrieval of its philosophy and theology is a betrayal of the Reformation. Such a popular narrative is more fiction than fact, a convenient caricature that misrepresents the Reformed heritage of the sixteenth through the eighteenth…
Read MoreLonging for God Himself
Lectio divina literally means “divine reading” or we might say that it is a kind of “holy reading,” a reading of the Christian Scriptures that accords with their “divine character,” to borrow a phrase from Hans Boersma.[1] These days the phrase is bandied about in such a way that it gives the appearance that lectio…
Read MoreHow Classical Theism Has Shaped My Spiritual Life
My first contact with theology was in the home. I grew up in what had been a Communist country until 1989, in Oradea, on Romania’s Western frontier with Hungary. My father, a chemical engineer by training, had taught himself English and theology. Ordained as a Baptist minister on the eve of the Romanian revolution, he…
Read MoreNever Preach to One Person
When I first entered the pastorate I told myself never to preach to any one person in the congregation, and it seems like Providence confirmed this decision time and time again. I would be in the throes of my weekly sermon preparation and as my message would develop, I would begin to think, “Oh! This…
Read MoreNew Credo Podcast! Classical Theology Panel Discussion – Trueman, DeYoung, Dolezal, Barrett
Why is Classical theology so important for the life and soul of the local church? This special episode of the Credo Podcast is from the 2023 Center for Classical Theology Panel Discussion moderated by Timothy Gatewood and featuring Carl Trueman, Kevin DeYoung, James Dolezal, and Matthew Barrett. The conversation revolves around the future of classical…
Read MoreClassical Theology Panel Discussion – Trueman, DeYoung, Dolezal, Barrett
Why is Classical theology so important for the life and soul of the local church? This special episode of the Credo Podcast is from the 2023 Center for Classical Theology Panel Discussion moderated by Timothy Gatewood and featuring Carl Trueman, Kevin DeYoung, James Dolezal, and Matthew Barrett. The conversation revolves around the future of classical…
Read MoreThe Intersection Between Our Lives and Biblical History
Now and again, some people ask me to mount an “apology” for, and explanation of, what many call “figural reading” of Scripture – an approach I have written about and been identified with. My main point, in response, is that I don’t really have to mount a defense, because figural reading is unavoidable for the…
Read MoreEpiphany and the Circumcision of Christ: The whole life of Christ in my Systematic Theology
The following update on Matthew Barrett’s Systematic Theology comes from his regular newsletter: subscribe here. January is such a cold, dark month, at least if you live in the Midwest. But if you are learning from the church calendar, January is a month brimming with light because the Savior has been “manifested.” ‘Tis the season…
Read MoreDivine Simplicity Defended
This conversation featuring Owen Anderson and Credo Fellow, James Dolezal covers the doctrine of God, general revelation, the pre-Socratic materialists, Plato, Aristotle, mysticism, the beatific vision, doxology, and answers to common objections about divine simplicity. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
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