Who Is Athanasius of Alexandria?

Today, we tend to take the doctrine of the Trinity for granted at some level—that is, we assume that it’s self-evident that Jesus, the Word of God, is fully God in all the ways God the Father is, likewise the Holy Spirit, but there’s still only one God, in the greatest, most beautiful mystery of our faith. But when we start thinking about the details, a lot of us are fuzzy. What does consubstantial even mean? How can three persons have a single essence? Or be a single essence? Some even ask, what does all this abstruse theological reasoning have...

Matthew Hoskin

Episode 39: Worship in the Early Church (feat. Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin)

Michael A. G. Haykin • Johnny Markin • Rob Brockman

Episode 41: Augustine’s Confessions – Rest for Our Restless Hearts (Book I)

Wyatt Graham • Ian Clary

Three Reasons to Read the Letters of John Newton

Sean Sheeran

Another Decade of God’s Faithfulness at Church of the Messiah

George Sinclair

Hermenegild: The Story of an Unfamiliar Martyr

Benjamin Wheaton

In 579 Hermenegild son of King Leuvigild of Spain rebelled against his father and set up his own kingdom in the south, centred on the city of Seville. Hermenegild had just converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity; his father however remained Arian. Leuvigild was displeased by his son’s conversion, for political reasons as much as for religious ones: his Arianism made him in a religious sense the enemy of the neighbouring Nicene kingdoms (Francia, Galicia and the Eastern Empire). This difference of creed did not usually prevent him from making agreements and alliances with these Nicene neighbours, but it did...

Hermenegild: The Story of an Unfamiliar Martyr

Benjamin Wheaton

3 Ways Athanasius Can Help Us Read Our Bibles

Wyatt Graham

Athanasius of Alexandria (d. AD 373) stood firm in the Scriptures by affirming the divinity of the Father and Son. Others followed the theological trajectory set out by the priest Arius (AD 256–336), who said the Father created the Son. For the Arians, the Son was created before all beings. And with him as a sort of instrument, the Father created the universe. That would not do. Athanasius remained steadfast in his conviction that the Son was truly divine. He was not simply the greatest of created beings; he was the proper Word of the Father. He was consubstantial with...

3 Ways Athanasius Can Help Us Read Our Bibles

Wyatt Graham

“Where is the God of Marston Moor and Naseby?”

Michael A. G. Haykin

Learning the craft of writing church history involves learning a number of different, but related skills: chronological humility, self-awareness of various interpretative horizons, a close attention to tradition and thus a listening ear, a fascination with people and a delight in asking questions, a devotion to the Lord of history and his people, to name a few. Being aware of horizons Consider the awareness of horizons: this is a basic skill that needs to be taught from the outset and to which one must return again and again. There is the horizon of the historical fact/event/person/text—the historical context in which...

“Where is the God of Marston Moor and Naseby?”

Michael A. G. Haykin

How Thomas Cranmer Helped Shape Particular Baptist Piety

Michael A. G. Haykin

As a Calvinistic Baptist I owe a significant debt to early Anglicanism. My seventeenth-century forebears learned much of their Reformed theology from Reformed ministers in the Church of England and it was in the heart of that body that they were nurtured on the spirituality of the Reformation. And in the earliest days of that state Church no figure exercised as great an influence as Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), the first Reformed Archbishop of Canterbury.[1] Kenneth Brownell, an American who is pastoring in London, England, has argued that Thomas Cranmer’s influence on the English-speaking Protestant world has been greater than any...