We are again warned that, though our feed stand on the rock of salvation, we are not beyond the reach of trials. But let nothing shake our confidence. The praises of the Lord shall yet be our song.

Henry Law, Daily Prayer and Praise: The Book of Psalms Arranged for Private and Family Use, Vol. 2, 162.

If we preachers are men’s first sight and sound of a man of God, then our personal holiness and spiritual growth must be our primary vocation. If we are to effectively build sermons we ourselves must be built up day by day in our most holy faith.

“Building the Sermon” by Geoffrey Thomas in Pulpit Aflame, 162.

Christians are tempted to be like Sarai, who once said to Abram, “The LORD has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her” (Gen. 16:2). There is no shortage of the devices that men will use in their attempts to build numerically the household of God. Like Sarai’s strategy, these devices flow from a lack of faith, and they result in declension. The Son of God will build His church in His way; there is no other way.

“Building the Sermon” by Geoffrey Thomas in Pulpit Aflame, 159.

It is a solemn truth, that the path of life is through a miry road. Our steps are in pollution’s land. How, then, can our feet be undefiled! How can our garments be unsoiled! We cannot guide ourselves. Unaided, we stumble into sloughs of defilement. But all help is near. Jesus is at hand to keep us by His mighty power. Let us lean on His supporting arm at every step, and when we fall let us rise and wash our robes in His all-cleansing blood.

Henry Law, Daily Prayer and Praise: The Book of Psalms Arranged for Private and Family Use, Vol. 2, 164.

To trust in the Lord is help and victory. To trust in man is to walk on quicksand. May the Lord raise us above such folly!

Henry Law, Daily Prayer and Praise: The Book of Psalms Arranged for Private and Family Use, Vol. 2, 161.

This Psalm is brief, but who can estimate its unbounded preciousness. It was given by inspiration of God. May the Spirit us it to invigorate our grace!

Henry Law, Daily Prayer and Praise: The Book of Psalms Arranged for Private and Family Use, Vol. 2, 158.

To say that Father, Son, and Spirit are consubstantial is to affirm that each has what is necessary to count as fully and equally divine. They are not identicals, nor are they an absolute numerical unity, for at the level of persons, hypostasis, and relation, they are distinct. Plurality must always norm consubstantiality in this way. Nevertheless, the persons are not divided into distinct substances. Consubstantiality does not mean that the persons are fully distinct, individual instantiations of the same secondary substance or of a common genus. The consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Spirit is a dogmatic presupposition of the claim that the Son and Holy Spirit are the self-revelation of the Father, mediators unlike any others. Consubstantiality also follows from the trinitarian nature of Christian worship, since only God is worthy of worship but recognition and worship of God as Father requires worship of the correlative Son and Holy Spirit. Here again, consubstantiality is normed by divine plurality, for the definition of God, what it means to be God, is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no God the Father apart from the Spirit and Son, no God without his breath and reason. We must regulate the unity we affirm in proclaiming divine consubstantiality through an equal affirmation that this unity is not one that destroys the distinction in hypostases. In other words, plurality in the Godhead regulates our initial affirmation of unity, just as the unity of the divine nature will help us clarify our initial steps toward speaking of divine plurality, as we will see in the next chapter. A denial of consubstantiality is a denial of the Trinity, but an affirmation of the consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not yet a full affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 43-44.

Though the Christian faith is grounded in the belief that Christ is the ultimate revelation of the Father, I contend that Christ’s life, ministry, and teachings are intelligible only within the framework of the history of Israel recorded within the Old Testament.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 5.

In writing a work of trinitarian dogmatics, I am intending to write a systematic account of the Trinity that is normed by Scripture and shaped by centuries of polemical debates going up to the present, my purpose being to create instruction that benefits the church.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 3.

To write of the Trinity is to write of God, eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally one, unique, and indivisible . . . It is a bold endeavor that would make no headway apart from the grace of the God we seek.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 1.