Lewis Ayres begins his consideration of the four points of departure in his Nicaea and Its Legacy by looking at the circumstances which obtained in the church from the time of Arius until the Council of Nicaea in 325 (15-20). To recap, Ayres will proceed through a consideration of the standard treatment of the fourth century Trinitarian controversy (repeat after me, “conTROversy” not “controVERsy”) which ties the whole brouhaha to the fully-formed theology of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius and his followers. This will be followed by a look at the theology of the church father Origen, an examination of the exegesis developing between the time of Origen and late fourth century, and finally Ayres will develop themes from the first three points of departure demonstrating the “variety of theological trajectories existing in tension at the beginning of the fourth century” (15).

Traditionally, it has been understood that Arius took umbrage with the teaching of his bishop, Alexander. Alexander taught that the Father and the Son always existed from eternity, suggesting the eternal generation of the Son. Arius is said to have objected to this teaching since it implied two foundational principles of the universe rather than one. Arius is said to hold that the Son was inferior to the Father, being as Ayres notes, a created “derivative copy of some of the Father’s attributes” (16). Whatever we ultimately make of the historical accuracy of this all-too-brief description, it remains true that as explicated here, Alexander is sound and Arius is defective. Whether this summary is adequate will become clear as we move along. Typically, in summaries of church history this is the picture we get. Ayres is trying to overturn this facile reading with a thicker contextually sensitive, historically accurate, and theologically nuanced consideration of matters.

This begs the question of how much distortion occurs when we seek to simplify inherently complex matters? Is it possible to bring clarity without distortion? All thinking involves a certain level of selectivity and abstraction. If it didn’t we would be faced with a blooming, buzzing chaos or with bare chronologies which are about as exciting as reams and reams of statistics (with all due respect to all you statisticians out there). In philosophical terms I am talking about the one and many problem. We work hard to wrestle the facts of history into a coherent plan. The voluminous events, persons, and circumstances are the many and our attempted explanation is the one. This is not in itself problematic as this is how God has made us to think. There is a unified plan according to God and his Word. The question is whether we treat the facts of history as bits of silly putty malleable to our template (read procrustean bed) or, to use another metaphor, do we try to shoehorn historical data? Our explanation should arise from the facts of history. Of course this is talking in general terms and I have not considered the sovereignty of God over the whole process and his speaking into our world and into our historiographical method. Huh? God who created the world in which we live and who has created us in his image and who has sent his Son into the world to save us and sent his Spirit to apply the Son’s redemption to us and spoken into this world has something to say about history and truth-telling, etc. Christian historiography at the very least ought to be concerned to uphold the ninth commandment. It is possible to break the ninth commandment with how we do history. We ought to aim for truth.

All of this is to remind us that we should allow the evidence left from the past to speak on its own terms within the context of a biblical and Reformed world and life view (ooh, did I use that nasty Kantian word “worldview”?). Our commitment to orthodoxy does not per se determine what in fact various historical individuals said or did. That is a matter of historical investigation and making sense of what is left to us to conclude from the evidence. Our Reformed Christian theological commitment (er, …worldview) provides biblical parameters (for instance, there is such a thing as the supernatural) but it is possible that things get mixed up or misunderstood or simplified or distorted over time.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch Ayres points out that there were other issues that may have been at play beyond the purely Trinitarian. Among these was the rise of monarchical episcopacy. That is, the church in Alexandria was moving from the bishop as primus inter pares among a college of presbyters to being sole absolute authority within a diocese (15). The conflict between Arius and Alexander may betray elements of this movement. We need not fear the reality of politics within the church as if this is something new. Politics played its role in the OT church as well and this fact does not undermine the sovereignty of God, nor does it necessarily sully theological formulations. It can, but does not necessarily do so. Politics has been defined as the organization of our common life. That is, any group of people will have to organize themselves around certain agreed-upon principles. So all groups involve politics in this general sense. The question is, is the politics seen in the history of the church godly or corrupt?

Ayres highlights the complexity of the situation in the early church.

Alexander and the Alexandrian clergy condemned Arius after he refused to sign a confession of faith presented by Alexander. Over the next few years Arius gained support from some bishops in Palestine, Syria, and North Africa, especially Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine and Eusebius of Nicomedia, near Constantinople. Many of his supporters appear to have greatly valued the teaching of Lucian of Antioch, a priest and teacher in Antioch martyred in 312 and some were Lucian’s students. Although these supporters may have been wary of some aspects of Arius’ theology—especially his insistence on the unknowability of the Father—they joined in opposition to Alexander. For all of them Alexander’s theology seemed to compromise the unity of God and the unique status of the Father. Two small councils, one in Bithynia, the other in Palestine, vindicated Arius, and Alexander may have refused a conciliatory approach from Arius as involving insufficient concession. For some of this period Arius seems to have left (or been expelled from) Alexandria and travelled to seek support; eventually he returned and openly opposed Alexander (17).

There is such a thing as oversimplification and over-complication. These are two extremes to avoid. As we work through theological controversies we need to learn to live with complexity whether we personally like it or not. We might like things to be neat and tidy and wrapped with pretty paper and tied up with a nice bow. But that is rarely how God works. Maturity involves learning to live with our heroes, warts and all, as the Bible does. The Bible presents the saints in all their colorful glory. Only Jesus was sinless.

Emperor Constantine even got in on the action, writing to Alexander and Arius, telling them to cease and desist doctrinal bickering (18). After a series of meetings and communications, a council met at Nicaea in 325 which produced a statement

asserting that the Son is generated from the Father himself in an ineffable manner and that the transcendence and ineffability of this generation forbid us from speaking of the Son as in any way like the creation. The text distinguishes the language of the Son’s ‘generation’ from language used about the ‘creation’ of the cosmos (18).

The so-called Nicene Creed that was produced stated the following

We believe in one God, Father Almighty Maker of all things, seen and unseen; and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten as only begotten of the Father, that is of the being of the Father (ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός), God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father, through whom all things came into existence, both things in heaven and things on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and became man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, and is coming to judge the living and the dead…But those who say ‘there was a time when he did not exist’, and ‘before being begotten he did not exist’, and that he came into being from non-existence, or who allege that the Son of God is from another hypostasis or ousia (ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας), or is alterable or changeable, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns (19).

As Ayres points out, this formulation, later modified at Constantinople, did not end the theological controversy swirling around Arius. Arius was a problem, but his teaching did not arise de novo. Arius claimed that Alexander had distorted the theology taught in the catechesis of the Alexandrian church (20). There may be more than a scintilla of truth about this.

Those who assume that this narrative of Arius and his conflict with Alexander is the most important point of departure for the fourth-century controversies interpret the events after Nicaea by narrating the emergence of an Arian conspiracy to keep alive his theology, to oppose Athanasius, and to contend against Nicaea and its theology. In fact, little evidence for any Arian conspiracy can be found. In these confusing events around and after Nicaea, we see the need to consider not simply Arius and his fortunes but the wider context within which that particular controversy occurred. If we are to make useful judgements about Nicaea’s creed and about how the Christian community viewed the conflict over Arius, we need to understand the theological options available in the 300–25 period. For example, the initial opponents of Arius present him as distorting the Church’s traditional faith; Arius argues, however, that Alexander’s theology changes and distorts the traditional catechetical teaching in Alexandria. We can only assess these claims by understanding the wider context within which those claims were made. Indeed, through exploring this context we will find pre-existing deep theological tensions at the beginning of the fourth century. Controversy over Arius was the spark that ignited a fire waiting to happen, and the origins of the dispute do not lie simply in the beliefs of one thinker, but in existing tensions that formed his background (20, emphasis mine).

As far as I can tell, the orthodoxy of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is not being called into question. It just turns out that the path to its formulation was more convoluted than we have traditionally thought. That’s OK. God is sovereign over the meandering historical process. One does not have to choose between a cardboard version of events on the one hand and the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code-like conniving on the other. What Ayres is attempting to get at is a more adequate and hopefully more accurate description of the path the church took to get at the truth of orthodox Trinitarian theology. I am not saying that Ayres would agree with my assessment here. He is a Roman Catholic lay theologian and church historian and has to come to grips with how this topsy-turvy pathway squares with his church’s view of the relationship of Scripture and tradition and how tradition unfolds in history (we touched on this in an earlier post and will come back to this later on).

God does not need us sprucing up the messiness of church history. If church history is convoluted and complex, so be it. Redemptive history as revealed in Scripture was not exactly a straight-line development from Genesis to Revelation. If biblical history was filled with twists and turns and our heroes were not typically flawless, why do we think our heroes of church history would be? Does not that expectation fail to square with the grace of the gospel and our own experience of the faith? Another way of putting this is to say that the church is being sanctified in the process of theological development as are the individual heroes of the faith. Richard Muller has argued (in his co-authored book with James Bradley on church history methodology) that our theology does not determine whether someone somewhere at some time in the past said such and such. Our theology can provide, as I have already intimated in this post, parameters or guiderails for historical research, but it cannot determine in advance or a priori the historical particulars as such. That requires historical investigation.

History is in God’s hands and we can be sure he is guiding his church through the travails of wrestling with Scripture and the ups and downs of theological development. Scripture is infallible and inerrant. Theological development is not necessarily either. To use the language of the Reformed Scholastics, our theology is ectypal, not archetypal. Our theology is also in via. We are pilgrims on the way to the eternal city. By God’s grace we will arrive at the new heavens and new earth to dwell eternally with the Triune God and the saints and angels. Between our Lord’s ascension and our eternal felicity there have been and will no doubt continue to be a few bumps in the theological road.

A New but Classic Text

We are reading through Lewis Ayres’s Nicaea and its Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2004). Our goal is to read this relatively new but still classic text on the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy with intelligence and understanding. The impetus for our pilgrimage is the recent broadly Reformed internecine conflict on the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father in the Trinity (in se or ad intra). While this is the occasion for choosing this text as our first book it will not inordinantly control our reading. We will sometimes move through the book at a snail’s pace and sometimes at breakneck speed (well, maybe).

In the last post we had a brief overview of the book so that we can now delve into the text with abandon. There is no better place than to begin at the beginning. That is, there is no better place once we have read the back of the book cover and the inside flaps, have perused the contents pages, looked at the bibliography and indices (ok, indexes too!). Once we have fanned the pages to get a sense of the whole we can begin.

Point of Departure

The first chapter is titled “points of departure” (11-40) and we will be covering the first five pages (Lane Tipton is my hero!). In this section Ayres wants to line out what he is doing and how he is doing it differently than others who have gone before. This is such an important concern that Ayres devotes the first ten chapters of the book to getting the historical and theological context right. It is not simply that the controversy was a matter of Arius being bad and Nicaea setting the record straight for all time. That is simplistic and not at all helpful. Real history is more complex or complicated than that. This is not to suggest, as far as I can tell, that Arius was somehow a good guy. But the author wants us to get to know all the textures and strands that go into the fabric of the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy. This matters to us because we Reformed folk are catholic in the best sense of that lower-case word.

The context I was speaking of is what Ayres calls a “theological culture” (12). He tells us that this theological culture was a combination of doctrinal propositions and strategies for using the doctrines. We could say that the controversy drove the church to develop a theological grammar. That is, the church developed a way of talking about the Triune God through the rough and tumble of theological debate. Ayres puts it this way:

It is now a commonplace that these disputes cannot simply be understood as the product of the Church’s struggle against a heretic and his followers grounded in a clear Nicene doctrine established in the controversy’s earliest stages. Rather, this controversy is a complex affair in which tensions between pre-existing theological traditions intensified as a result of dispute over Arius, and over events following the Council of Nicaea. The conflict that resulted eventually led to the emergence of a series of what I will term pro-Nicene theologies interpreting the Council of Nicaea in ways that provided a persuasive solution to the conflicts of the century (11-12).

Real History is Complex

By stressing the complexity of the era Ayres seeks to consider not only the myriad differences between various theologians and theological parties, but also what ways of thinking and what propositions they may share in common (13). This seems to me to be a basic historiographic necessity. In order to properly interpret and understand a document from another era we must seek to understand as best we can both the uses of language (especially if we detect technical terms) and the historical setting. Expressions can become settled at a later time that are more fluid at an earlier time and we err when we read the later more settled meaning back into the more fluid usage if that is the case. A more recent example would be the use of the words regeneration and sanctification in the Reformers and post-Reformation eras. As best as I can tell from my own reading of John Calvin and some of the scholastics, these words overlap considerably and do not have the later settled significances we are accustomed to. Calvin can speak of sanctification occurring before justification. That may be the result of his twofold blessing understanding of the benefits of redemption and it can be the result of sanctification being used here in a sense that covers what we now refer to as regeneration. This sense is sometimes conveyed in the expression “sanctification begun.” And regeneration can be thought of in terms of an ongoing lifelong work of the Holy Spirit. So you see a fluidity in technical terms that are more settled in our time. Sensitivity to this difference and development is a must when reading older texts.

Here is Ayres’s summary of the traditional understanding of the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy:

Many summary accounts present the Arian controversy as a dispute over whether or not Christ was divine, initially provoked by a priest called Arius whose teaching angered his bishop, Alexander of Alexandria. Eventually, this traditional account tells us, the controversy extended throughout the century—even after the decisive statements of the Council of Nicaea—because a conspiracy of Arians against the Nicene tradition represented particularly by Athanasius perpetuated Arius’ views. Even when the century is understood as one of evolution in doctrine, scholars continue to talk as if there were a clear continuity among non-Nicene theologians by deploying such labels as Arians, semi-Arians, and neo-Arians. Such presentations are misleading in two very important ways (13).

Organicism

Before we look at Ayres’s reasons for suggesting the traditional account is misleading, I want to note what he is getting at. Ayres is saying that this controversy was not about settled theological parties simply warring with one another. There was movement, misunderstanding, and conventional ways of thinking and formulating doctrine that fluctuated. It was not a matter of development as neat straight-lined progress. Is Ayres dissenting from the view advocated by John Henry Cardinal Newman in his essay on the development of doctrine and elsewhere? These comments toward the end of the book suggest this may be partially so:

Over the last two hundred years these questions have been faced through a variety of theories of doctrinal development. The emergence of these theories is in many ways another part of the story of modern theology’s appropriation of Hegelianism and Romanticism. This can be seen most clearly in the ways that such theories have tended to use ‘vitalist’ metaphors likening the development of doctrine to the growth of an organism. It is frequently noticed, of course, that the theories of development seen in the nineteenth-century Tübingen school and in such figures as John Henry Newman are attempts to hold together the reality of growing attention to historical development with the need to show the continuity of Christian teaching in a Catholic context. Those theories that were not broadly vitalist in this way (especially Thomist models from the first half of the twentieth century) have tended to work on a rationalist model in which the earliest deposit of Christian faith was seen as the foundation for the developed faith of later centuries, broader propositional content being slowly deduced from logical principles. In liberal Protestant contexts development could of course much more easily be seen as a basic story of departure from an original kernel or the carrying of that kernel through history with various accretions (426).

Ayres is not dealing merely with the nature of developmentalism (organicism in 19^th century terminology) in that it was often viewed as the movement from the acorn to the oak tree. Ayres, as a Roman Catholic, desires to hold together a historical sensibility and a trust in sacred texts and their interpretation by revered theologians and biblical scholars. These are not questions limited to Roman Catholics with their views of the relation of Scripture to tradition which we as Protestant Reformed folk would dissent from. The question of the nature of doctrinal development and the relationship of Scripture to tradition is a live issue for us as well. I am not sure we need to set the logical deduction of doctrine by good and necessary consequence from Scripture against a robust recognition of the complex nature of the historical development of doctrine. How else would one be able to assess whether historical changes in doctrine are in fact advances and not backtracks or other kinds of errors? I doubt Ayres would advocate the pitting of reason against historical understanding unless he assumes rationalism and/or historicism. That is, rationalism is the idea that the human mind can determine all reality without divine revelation. Sir Arthur Eddington once said “what my net can’t catch ain’t fish.” That is unvarnished rationalism. Historicism is the view that all of reality can be reduced to the historical setting in which some text was written. It tends to be anti-supernatural and there is no room for divine activity. History is the record of human activity only. Ayres is clearly critical of the influence of Hegel on historiography. That is certainly salient. Hegel (and Romanticism more generally) viewed everything (so it seems) through the lens of gradualism/developmentalism/evolutionism. We will return to this when we come to the end of the book. Just remember that this is one of Ayres’s concerns throughout the book. Historical development is often a two steps forward, one step back kind of experience (or more realistically, a one step forward and two steps back reality).

Back to the two reasons why the neat and clean view of doctrinal development as applied to the fourth-century Trinitarian conflict is misleading. The first reason this approach is misleading is that it treats the Arians as a cohesive party (13). As Ayres points out, many painted with the label Arian protested their ignorance of his writings. These theologians may have shared common characteristics unrelated to any connection with Arius. We shall see. The second reason why the organicist reading of doctrinal development errs with regard to this controversy is that it was not a simple dispute over whether Christ was divine (14). There were different ways of understanding this question and it is arguable whether this was even a major question in the overall controversy. So says Ayres.

Theological Grammar

Ayres offers a helpful definition of grammar: “a set of rules or principles intrinsic to theological discourse, whether or not they are formally articulated” (14). This is a key to properly assessing the meaning and significance of a historical text or artifact. One example of this is that there was the possibility of understanding degrees of deity. A theologian might argue for the Son as God but not as “true God” (14). Sensitivity to these realities makes our investigation more realistic and accurate. We ought to aim for accuracy in understanding texts. I do not buy into the postmodern reader response theory approach to handling texts. Texts have authors and authors intend to communicate something. This is not to ignore the fact that sometimes human authors fail to adequately convey their meaning. Sometimes traditions of misunderstanding arise and gain hegemony. Scripture is free of the failure to communicate because of divine inspiration (this says nothing about adequate spiritual receptivity as that is a different matter).

Going Forward

Ayres sets out to discuss the origins of the Trinitarian dispute along the following lines which will be unpacked over the next several posts: (1) Ayres will consider events involving Arius up to the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325. (2) Ayres will then consider the theological legacy of the church father Origen. (3) Then Ayres will examine the exegesis between the time of Origen and the late fourth century. Finally, (4) Ayres will look at the varieties of theological trajectories existing in “tension” when the fourth century commenced (15). Ayres wants to relativize the importance of the first point (the traditional interpretation) along the following lines:

One of my goals in offering this fourth point of departure is to relativize the first: the controversy surrounding Arius was an epiphenomenon of widespread existing tensions and understanding those tensions is essential to understanding how the controversy developed in the decades that followed (15).

Perhaps another way to say this is to say Arius has become a convenient catch-all symbol of the tensions that existed in the church of the fourth century. The tensions were apparently there whether Arius had happened upon the stage of history. Or we might say that Arius reflected theological sensibilities already in place or in development before his time.

This will be a very interesting study. I hope you all are able to follow along. As I said on another occasion, this is a dense book. We are dealing with texts written in an age other than our own (yes, Charlie Dennison, I know we live in the same redemptive historical age as the fourth-century church fathers!) and it is easy to gloss (and here I have absorbed the special meaning of the word “gloss” held by one of my august seminary professors who shall remain nameless-to gloss a text is to read it in a facile manner) texts from another culture and language and historical context.

In my next post I will begin to look at the four points outlined above.

I dedicate this post to my most favorite Christian blogger of all time—Lane G. Tipton.

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (played so well by Ralph Fiennes in the movie Quiz Show) argue in their very useful How to Read a Book that we ought to read above our present level of familiarity and understanding. We can say that we ought to challenge ourselves mentally. In my personal goal to shed excess weight I have taken up walking and working out at the gym. In both cases I need to push myself beyond my comfort level but I need to do it wisely and constructively. I need to take baby steps. After all, it has been 34 years since I did serious weight lifting. So slow and easy wins the race. I need to exert myself without injuring myself.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about before we begin our study of pro-Nicene theology. Thirty years ago I purchased Carl F. H. Henry’s six-volume magnum opus God, Revelation, and Authority as originally published by Word. This challenging work on Christian epistemology is a classic in evangelical literature even though so-called post-conservative evangelicals have panned its emphasis on propositional revelation (Carl Trueman positively reviewed the Crossway republication of this set in Themelios I believe and Gregory Thornbury of the King’s College in NYC has written and is writing about Henry’s contribution to theology). I bought it in its original hardback format with each volume’s dust jacket being a different color (red, green, plum, brown, etc). I was certainly out of my depth as I read this set. I worked hard not to get too bogged down in minute details but to just read through to the end and go back when I had completed a volume unless I found myself completely flummoxed. In the end, I persevered but I did write to Dr. Henry and one of my many prized possessions is a hand-written note from him that I received back in 1986. He was kind and answered my queries with patience.

Now to the business at hand. I want us to read wisely and constructively through Lewis Ayres’s Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Ayres is a lay Catholic theologian who is professor of Catholic and historical theology at Durham University in the UK. Published in 2004 by Oxford University Press, this volume contains 16 chapters in three sections. Section one, “towards a controversy,” section two, “the emergence of pro-Nicene theology,” and section three, “understanding pro-Nicene theology.”

I think for us to be intelligent constructive, confessional Reformed Christians, we need to wrestle with the catholic heritage of the Reformed church that stands behind the Westminster Standards (and other Reformed symbols). We cannot offer constructive formulations of hallowed doctrines if we do not know the heritage well and reading Ayres will assist us as we seek to understand how the church wrestled with Scripture (with the doctrinal standard being at the time the “analogy of faith” that provided a concise summary of the Christian faith) as it came to grips with the implications and ramifications of the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit along with the Father. We will learn about the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus who always thought of the three when he thought of the one and the one when he thought of the three…) and about Augustine of Hippo. We will learn about the Arian controversy (there once was a time when the Son was not…) and how that nearly destroyed the church.

One thing I want to touch upon now is the fact that Ayres destroys the commonly accepted division between the eastern and western church in terms of its doctrinal development. The east is assumed, for instance to underplay the doctrine of divine simplicity. This is believed to be so because the east is considered the source of the so-called social model of Trinitarian theology. On the other hand, the west, dependent as it is upon Augustine’s psychological model of the Trinity, builds its Trinitarian theology upon a finely articulated doctrine of divine simplicity which some seem to think vitiates a true Trinitarianism. The social model, crassly formulated, treats the three persons of the Trinity as a committee of three who manifest harmony but not ontological unity. The psychological model tends toward Sabellianism/modalism because it treats the three persons of the Godhead as mind, intellect, and will and stresses the divine unity (or another of Augustine’s multiple analogies in his De Trinitate) and so the three are understood only as functions and not as real persons. Ayres points out that this is neither historically nor theologically true on either side of the aisle. The truth is both more complex and less divided.

Next week we will begin delving into section one, “towards a controversy,” with the first chapter, “points of departure.” I look forward to seeing you then.

I love to read. I have been doing it for years. I cannot claim to read with pen in hand in the way Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) did so many years ago. Edwards puts me to shame. But I do love to read whether it be the printed page, on my tablet, phone, notebook, or desktop. I love to read different kinds of things: systematic theology, biblical theology and exegesis, apologetics, analytical theology and other forms of philosophical theology, church history and historical theology, practical theology, political theory, political and military history, philosophy, science, contemporary events, and sometimes novels and other kinds of literature. When I was a kid I even used to read Mad, Crazy, and Cracked Magazines! I also used to read American Heritage, Civil War Times Illustrated, American History Illustrated, and British History Illustrated. I made time for Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and National Geographic. I used to read all these kinds of things and more while listening to Elvis Presley and other early rockers and country music. I have even been known to read about my favorite singers and music. I used to walk to the public library in the days before the world wide web to read the latest issue of Billboard magazine to check on the most recent rankings of albums and singles on various charts. All of this is to tell you I am not normal. Like Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I have been a bibliophile for as long as I can remember.

All of this is to say that I enjoy reading a lot. If left to myself I would rather read a good book than do almost anything else. Of course I am hardly ever left to myself these days. I have a beautiful wife and two wonderful adult daughters. We have a dog. I work out at the gym (yes, I do!) and I enjoy walking too. My great joy and privilege is serving the Lord Jesus Christ in his church by preaching and teaching and counseling and providing governance of his church with my fellow ministers and elders. Reading is a prerequisite for pretty much all that I do. Recently I have been reading to members of my congregation during visitation. This has been a blessing to me and for those to whom I read. It keeps the mind active and it blesses and strengthens our spirits.

A New Blog Series

It occurred to me that it might be enjoyable to invite you all along with me as I journey through various books and journal/magazine articles. I am not looking to write reviews per se. I do that elsewhere, and even here at the Reformed Forum site. I have in mind a series in which I critically interact with what I read and display my thought processes. The series is called Criterion. The name was provided by Cris Dickason, my friend and fellow presbyter of the OPC’s Presbytery of Philadelphia.

Given the current Trinitarian controversy raging in Reformed complementarian circles, I thought I might begin this series with two substantial books on the topic by Patristics expert Lewis Ayres. In a post I wrote for Reformation21 I recommended these books. The first deals with the development of Pro-Nicene theology and is called Nicaea and Its Legacy published by Oxford University Press in 2006. This is a fairly dense and thorough study of the theological development of Trinitarian theology leading into and coming out of the council of Nicaea (AD 325) with its emphasis on the co-equal nature of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The second related book is Augustine and the Trinity published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. Augustine is credited with creating the so-called “psychological model” of the Trinity that has figured so significantly in Trinitarian theological development in the western church.

My purposes in starting with these two books are to introduce some of you to (1) excellent historical and theological literature; (2) to get us to wrestle with significant material in the Patristic (i.e., early church fathers) writings. I recommend we read the church fathers through the lens of the Reformers as Baptist church historian Michael Haykin has suggested in his little volume Rediscovering the Church Fathers. (3) I also want us to ascertain a sound methodology for reading with understanding. As Christians we read the Bible and all other literature under the supervision of the Holy Spirit. We need to read conscious of this reality and our dependence upon the Triune God for all our reading. Finally, (4) I want us to develop the ability to think Christianly and theologically.

My goal is to post a blog entry at least once a week. Mark this and hold my toes to the fire. I look forward to our reading journey together.