All posts by Christopher C. Schrock

About Christopher C. Schrock

I was born and educated in Indiana. I married my best-friend, Julie Lynn, in 2006. I worked for 10 years in IT & Network Operations before transitioning to Christian Ministry. Now I am a pastor in Billings, Montana.

Dogmatic Purpose of Consubstantiality

Read canonically, the New Testament gives us reason to affirm that God is solely revealed in Christ, who with the Holy Spirit, share God’s exclusive right of receiving worship. Whereas some Second Temple texts blur the line between a wide range of heavenly mediators and God, the canonical account is that there are no others who can be identified with God in this way. Though some Second Temple texts show reverence, on rare occasions nearing cultic worship, to heavenly mediators, the entirety of the New Testament liturgical practice is marked by trinitarian forms suggesting that proper worship involves Father, Son, and Spirit. Because Christ, the mediator of God, is identified with him in worship, we have laid an exegetical foundation for the doctrine of consubstantiality. Whereas angels are mediators who reveal a God that is other, meaning that they cannot rightly accept worship, the New Testament account drives us toward what modern systematicians have called God’s self-revelation and self-communication. In some sense, that is the entire dogmatic purpose of consubstantiality: demonstrating that when Jesus reveals the Father, he is also revealing his own nature.

D. GLENN BUTNER JR., TRINITARIAN DOGMATICS, 25.

Grow in Holiness

We aren’t the first Christians to live in trying times; most Christians around the world, and millions of Christians throughout history, would likely trade their circumstances for ours. The cultural upheaval we’re living through will be a means of providential grace if it leads us to think more carefully about civil society, to contend for the truth more persuasively, to commit ourselves more fully to Jesus and his church, and to grow in that holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/christian-nationalism-wolfe/

Heavenly Mediators and Christology

New Testament Christology clearly draws on personified divine attributes and exalted human figures. For example, Jesus is identified as wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1:30. Though some have been prone to downplay this as mere metaphor, Andrew Chester marshals evidence that Paul is probably drawing on wisdom tradition that the Corinthians would have accepted. Paul not only depicts Christ, like Wisdom, as the mediator of creation (1 Cor. 8:6; cf. Prov. 8:22-31; Sir. 24; Wis. 9:2), but he also identifies Jesus with the rock in Exodus 17 (1 Cor 10:4), much as Philo identifies this rock with Wisdom and the Word. John’s treatment of Jesus as the Word of God also likely draws on such personification. . . . Second Temple intermediary figures helpfully illuminate New Testament Christology.

D. GLENN BUTNER JR., TRINITARIAN DOGMATICS, 21-22.

Divine Unity / Divine Threeness

I recognize that any theologian attempting to explain the doctrine of the Trinity faces the risk of overemphasizing either the unity of the persons or their distinction, favoring oneness or threeness to the detriment of the other. I am quite aware of of this risk, so under advisement from Gregory of Nazianzus, I have adopted a strategy to mitigate this danger. Gregory writes, “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One.” Therefore, chapters will alternate between emphasis on divine unity and divine threeness.

D. GLENN BUTNER JR., TRINITARIAN DOGMATICS, 11.

Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

As endorsed at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the doctrine of analogy insists that God is different from the world that he has created but recognizes that creation bears some relation to it’s Creator. This similarity amid greater difference allows us to use human words and concepts of God yet requires that we always explain how their meaning differs when they are used of God rather than created realities. As Katherine Sonderegger remarks, Lateran IV’s insistence on a “movement frome likeness to unlikeness” is “the scholastic expression of Divine Holiness, the Lordy Act of setting Himself apart.”

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics, 8.

Trinitarian Dogmatics

Much of this book, then, will be concerned with the exegetical foundations of the doctrine of the Trinity and with an accurate historical analysis of concepts that have become fundamental to any dogmatic account of the Trinity.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics, 2.

Solemn Duty

43. Is it then a matter of indifference to what church we belong?

No; it is our solemn duty to understand the character and signs of a true church of Christ — and to adhere to that church which is found most consonant to the scriptures, in its doctrines, its ordinances, and its constitution.

Thomas Smyth, An Ecclesiastical Catechism of the Presbyterian Church; For the Use of Families, Bible-Classes, and Private Members, 26.

Realistic Expectations

42. May we expect to find any church on earth perfectly free from error?

The purest churches under heaven, are subject both to mixture and error, and therefore we must not expect in them absolute perfection.

Thomas Smyth, An Ecclesiastical Catechism of the Presbyterian Church; For the Use of Families, Bible-Classes, and Private Members, 26.

Catholic

20. Why is the church of Christ called catholic, or universal?

Because it is not confined to one nation, as it was under the Jewish economy, but consists of all those in every part of the world who believe in Christ; because its privileges are conferred equally upon all classes of men; and because it will yet embrace within it all nations and kindreds of the earth.

Thomas Smyth, An Ecclesiastical Catechism of the Presbyterian Church; For the Use of Families, Bible-Classes, and Private Members, 14.