There is a certain honesty in the title I Believe. Help My Unbelief! that immediately signals both the ambition and the vulnerability of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s book. Borrowed from the anguished prayer of the father in Mark 9:24, the phrase functions not merely as a rhetorical hook but as a hermeneutical key for the entire project. What follows is neither a defensive apologetic nor a diluted catechism. Instead, Kärkkäinen offers a theologically confident yet dialogically open exposition of Christian doctrine for readers who inhabit a world shaped by religious plurality, scientific rationality, and pervasive secular suspicion.

Kärkkäinen is uniquely positioned to undertake such a task. A long-standing professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, he is widely known for his five-volume Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, a massive academic achievement that few theologians would dare to condense. This book is precisely that condensation, though “simplification” would be the wrong word. What is offered here is rather a careful transposition: the intellectual architecture of a major constructive project rendered in a register accessible to pastors, students, and reflective believers without forfeiting conceptual rigor.

The introduction sets the tone by refusing the false dichotomy between faith and knowledge. Kärkkäinen rejects both naïve fideism and scientistic dismissal, proposing instead a chastened epistemology influenced by Michael Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowledge. Belief, he argues, is neither blind assent nor empirical certainty but a reasoned trust that remains open to testing, critique, and growth. This epistemic humility becomes a recurring virtue throughout the book and helps explain its unusual generosity toward secular interlocutors and other religious traditions alike.

Chapter 1, on revelation, is among the strongest in the volume. Kärkkäinen navigates the post-Enlightenment crisis of authority by articulating revelation as trinitarian, incarnational, and historically mediated. His treatment of Scripture as “God’s Word in human words” avoids both fundamentalist inerrancy and reductionist liberalism, framing inspiration instead as divine–human synergy. Particularly noteworthy is the comparative engagement with Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist accounts of revelation. Revelation here is not domesticated; it remains scandalous, yet intelligible.

Chapter 2 turns to the doctrine of God, where Kärkkäinen’s ecumenical breadth and conceptual discipline are on full display. Rather than beginning with abstract metaphysical attributes, he situates Christian talk of God within the lived realities of religious plurality and philosophical contestation. Classical trinitarian theology is presented not as an inherited formula in need of defense, but as Christianity’s most daring and constructive proposal about ultimate reality: that God’s being is irreducibly relational, communicative, and self-giving.

What gives this chapter its distinctive force is the sustained comparative engagement. Jewish covenantal monotheism, Islamic tawḥīd, and Buddhist non-theism are treated not as foils but as serious theological interlocutors. Kärkkäinen responds to Islamic critiques of the Trinity not defensively but by clarifying how, in Christian theology, relationality does not dilute divine unity but intensifies it. Likewise, his engagement with Buddhist critiques of personal theism exposes how deeply Christian claims about God are bound to incarnation, history, and relational love rather than metaphysical abstraction.

In Chapter 3, creation is explored in sustained conversation with the natural sciences. Kärkkäinen affirms evolutionary accounts without surrendering theological claims about divine purpose, goodness, and providence. Creation is not treated as a closed past event but as an ongoing, Spirit-sustained reality. The chapter’s refusal to pit faith against science gives it particular resonance for readers formed by contemporary cosmology.

Chapter 4 addresses theological anthropology, asking what it means to be human in light of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and cultural diversity. Kärkkäinen’s insistence on the imago Dei as relational and dynamic allows him to integrate scientific insights while retaining moral and theological depth. His engagement with Buddhist and Hindu views of the self is especially illuminating, clarifying both points of convergence and irreducible difference.

Christology, the focus of Chapter 5, is treated with careful balance. Kärkkäinen affirms classical Chalcedonian orthodoxy while exploring how Christ can be meaningfully confessed in religiously plural contexts. He resists both relativism and triumphalism, presenting Christ as uniquely revelatory and salvific without reducing other religious figures to mere negations. The chapter models a Christology confident enough to listen and humble enough to learn.

Chapter 6 deepens this trajectory by interpreting reconciliation through a plurality of atonement motifs rather than a single controlling theory. This integrative approach reflects both biblical diversity and pastoral sensitivity, particularly in a global context marked by violence, injustice, and historical trauma.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, explored in Chapter 7, bears the marks of Kärkkäinen’s Pentecostal formation without becoming sectarian. The Spirit is presented as active not only in the church but in creation, culture, and beyond ecclesial boundaries. This expansive pneumatology reinforces the book’s overarching vision of a God who remains dynamically engaged with the world.

Chapter 8 addresses salvation with notable restraint. Kärkkäinen maps the theological options regarding exclusivity, inclusivity, and hope without forcing premature resolution. Salvation remains decisively grounded in Christ, yet its ultimate scope is entrusted to divine mercy rather than theological anxiety.

Ecclesiology, the subject of Chapter 9, is framed in explicitly public and pneumatological terms and speaks with particular force to ongoing conversations in Pentecostal public theology. The church is not imagined as a protected enclave nor as a moral lobby, but as a Spirit-constituted communion whose very existence is itself a form of public witness. Kärkkäinen resists both withdrawal and domination, articulating instead a vision of the church as porous yet identifiable, hospitable yet disciplined — a communio sanctorum sent into the world without being absorbed by it. Particularly significant is his engagement with secularism and post-secularity, where the church is called neither to nostalgia for Christendom nor to anxious relevance-seeking, but to patient, Spirit-led presence. For Pentecostal readers attentive to the public implications of ecclesiology, this chapter offers a compelling reminder that charismatic vitality and communal formation belong together.

The brief epilogue returns to the book’s governing prayer. Faith, Kärkkäinen reminds us, is always accompanied by questions, and theology at its best does not silence them but teaches believers how to live with them faithfully.

In an age marked by polarized certainties and shallow dismissals, Kärkkäinen offers something quieter and more demanding: a theology that believes deeply, listens carefully, and hopes patiently — refusing to confuse faith with the absence of questions. That may be this book’s most timely gift.

Reviewed by Ciprian Gheorghe-Luca

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/9781725276673/i-believe-help-my-unbelief/

Giulio Maspero’s book Rethinking the Filioque with the Greek Fathers addresses the seemingly perennial theological debate that has divided Christendom for a thousand years through a close reading of the development of trinitarian doctrine in the early Church. For those unfamiliar with the filioque controversy, a brief overview will help set the stage for Maspero’s book. “Filioque” is a Latin phrase that means “and the Son.” It was first added to the third heading of the Niceno-Constantinoplitan Creed (“I believe in the Holy Spirit…who proceeds from the Father and the Son”) at the regional Council of Toledo held in 589 and later adopted by the Western Latin-speaking Church under the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff. Greek-speaking Christians saw this as problematic both ecclesiastically and theologically. Ecclesiastically, they saw it as an illegitimate addition to the Creed without ecumenical consent. It would be like a single state in the US making a change to the US Constitution and declaring that all the other states had to accept the change whether they liked it or not. Theologically, Greek-speaking authors thought that the addition of the filioque compromised the unity of God, which was seen to be found in the Father as the sole cause of the Trinity, by adding a second cause within the Godhead. Two causes meant there were two Gods. Ultimately, this became one of the issues that led to the schism between East and West Christendom in 1054 that has never been healed.

Maspero’s book is not an attempt to address all the issues of the Filioque. The history is long and this ground has been covered by others, such as A. Edward Siecienski’s excellent historical survey The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford University Press, 2010). Any reader interested in Maspero’s book should read Siecienski’s book first to familiarize themselves with the history. Instead, Maspero focuses on giving a nuanced historical reading of the development of filioque within the development of trinitarian doctrine in the early church from Origen (c 185-254) to Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395). At each stage, Maspero is careful to explain how these authors were addressing specific issues in their own time and how that affected their articulation of Trinitarian doctrine.

For example, Origen (the subject of chapter 1) was addressing both Stoic materialism and Gnostic cosmology when he made a sharp distinction between God and creation but kept an ordered hierarchy within the Trinity such that the Father was more truly God than the Son, and the Son more God than the Holy Spirit. This Logos-theology (as he calls it) resulted in two models of the Trinity: the linear model (Father → Logos → Pneuma) and the triangular model ( Logos ← Father → Pneuma). These were never resolved in Origen and led to the Arian controversy at the beginning of the fourth century. Maspero then traces (chapters 2 and 3) how these two models worked themselves out in the fourth century in authors like Epiphanius, Pseudo-Athanasius, Athanasius, Eusebius of Caesarea and Marcellus of Ancyra. While Athanasius’s nature (physis)-theology approach might have helped address the Arian debates over the status of the Son, it was insufficient to answer the so-called Pneumatomachians (=Spirit Fighters) who affirmed the divinity of the Son but denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. It is this debate seen in authors like Gregory of Nazianzus and especially Gregory of Nyssa (chapters 4 and 5) that Maspero focuses on as the immediate context for the development of the Greek filioque.

I think this is a particularly important contribution not only to debates about the filioque but also to general discussions about the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century. Too often the Pneumatomachian controversy is an appendix to the Arian controversy. “Once the Arian controversy was solved,” so the story typically goes, “there were some weird people who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit but that was an anomaly and everybody just moved on until the Christological controversies of the fifth century.” Instead, Maspero argues that the Pneumatomachian controversy highlighted a gap in the nature (physis) model that made the Pneumatomachian position a comprehensible position to hold. It is in their response to the Pneumatomachians that Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa shifted from the question of nature to the question of relation that allowed them to sufficiently answer the Pneumatomachian objections: the identity of the Son and Spirit is distinguished by a difference in the way they relate to the Father (Son is begotten; Spirit proceeds). More so, the Spirit, argued the two Gregories, is metaphysically placed in between the Father and the Son such that the Father can remain cause while admitting an active role of the Son in the procession of the Holy Spirit.

Maspero then tests his hypothesis by comparing these Greek developments with the Syrian theological tradition (chapter 6). Here Maspero once again demonstrates historical nuance in attending to the linguistic difficulties in translating concepts developed in a Greek-speaking context into a Syrian one. Namely, Gregory of Nazianzus was able to distinguish procession as a general category (proion) from the specific relation of the Spirit to the Father (ekporeutōs). Not only does the Syrian Church’s adaptation of the Creed in 410 explicitly say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son—as well as being present in their own nascent theologians such as Ephrem the Syrian—but Syriac translations of the Cappadocians use filioque-type language to express Gregory’s terminological distinction that was unavailable to them in Syriac. When placed in the highly technical Trinitarian debates of the fourth century, it becomes clear that this evidence isn’t merely the result of translation, but of conceptual pressure arising from the Pneumatomachian debates at the end of the fourth century.

The rest of the book is a comparison between what Maspero has discovered in the Greek (and Syrian) Fathers, with the theological developments in the West, specifically Augustine. Augustine, as the most important Latin-speaking theologian, is usually charged with being the source of the filioque. In chapter 7, Maspero addresses the issue of the so-called “psychological analogy” of the Trinity which plays an important part in Augustine’s De Trinitate. Was this a cause of the filioque? Maspero argues that it was not because he also has discovered a similar, though not identical, psychological analogy at work in Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and the seventh-century theologian Anastasius of Sinai (which he argues is independent of Augustine’s influence). Secondly, in chapter 8, Maspero takes a close look at the metaphysical differences between Augustine and the Cappadocians. While he thinks that Augustine is at a conceptual disadvantage compared to the Greek-speaking East—specifically on the ontological status of relation—Maspero shows how Augustine is driven by similar conceptual pressures (a shared theological grammar) as Gregory of Nyssa to affirm a role of the Son in the procession of the Spirit.

Maspero finally concludes with a summary of his argument and an ecumenical proposal: affirm a Greek understanding of the active (but not causal) role of the Son in the procession of the Holy Spirit.

Maspero has written a nuanced and highly technical, historical, and theological investigation of the “Greek Filioque”. While he gives helpful summaries of his argument along the way to mark the trail he is blazing, this is still an admittedly difficult book and requires a slow and careful reading. Those unfamiliar with scholarship on the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century would do well to read Lewis Ayres’s Nicaea and Its Legacy or Mark DelCogliano’s introduction and translation of Basil of Caesarea’s Against Eunomius. Nevertheless, this is an important and necessary book for three reasons. First, Maspero demonstrates how to do historical theology well. Historical theology isn’t just appealing to what theologians of the past have said, but why they said it. Second, I think Maspero does an excellent job of showing how biblical exegesis was an integral part of these debates. These early Christians weren’t just philosophizing or engaging in abstract conceptual arguments for their own sake. Their reflections arise out of their close reading of the Bible to address the needs of their time. While we might not always understand the nuances of their exegesis, we should walk away from Maspero’s book appreciating just how important the Bible was for them in these debates. Third, remembering the role the filioque played in the division of 1054, Maspero’s work is an important contribution to healing those rifts so that we, as Jesus prayed, might be one.

Reviewed by Ryan Clevenger

Publisher’s page: https://www.eerdmans.com/9781467466417/rethinking-the-filioque-with-the-greek-fathers/

The title of this book may be initially off-putting to some, as though the author is proposing a view of the Holy Spirit akin to what is known as “adoptionist Christology.” But in the foreword, Matthew Bates makes it clear this is not the case: “While the revelation of the divinity of the Spirit (as part of the Christian doctrine of God) has an origin in time, nevertheless the Spirit’s divinity is not constrained by time or by our process of discovery” (xi). So, the book is not about the Spirit becoming God, as though there “was a time when he was not” God, but about how the Spirit came to be understood as being God.

The author, Kyle Hughes, apart from being an ordained deacon in the Anglican Church in North America, is also chair of the history department at Whitfield Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. He brings both a doctrinal lens and a historian’s perspective to this topic.

Chapter one, “The Problem of the Holy Spirit,” starts off by tackling some of the difficulties raised by the ways the Spirit is portrayed in Scripture. While the Father and Son are consistently portrayed in personal terms, phrases that depict the Spirit being “poured out” on people, or “filling” them, seem to suggest an inanimate substance rather than a personal being (3). Hughes then outlines how this historical study will not simply summarize the dogmatic teachings of various church fathers, but dive into how the early church’s methods of biblical interpretation that informed their declarations about the Godhead. Hughes proposes that the development of pneumatology in the first few centuries of the Christian era was based first on ideas being grounded in Scripture, while also including the church’s lived experiences of the Holy Spirit in light of Scripture.

Chapter three deals with “The Spirit and Christian Identity.” In discussing how the increasingly Gentile church came to see itself as no longer simply a messianic Jewish sect, Hughes looks at the Epistle of Barnabas and the writings of Justin Martyr. Barnabas argues that not only did the Spirit inspire the writers of the Ole Testament to look forward to Christ, but the Spirit himself looked forward to Christ, which is a personal activity rather than that of an impersonal force (42). Hughes points out that Justin wrote about the ongoing presence of the charisms in the second century, in the lives of both male and female believers, which means that the Montanists and other charismatic groups in the early church were not as innovative as some versions of history would assume (48-49). Justin also argued that just as the central Old Testament figures had gifts of the Spirit, the presence of these gifts among Christians showed that God’s Spirit was now upon them and had departed from the Jewish people as a group, indicating that the Christians had properly recognized the arrival of the Messiah.

The fifth chapter, “The Spirit and the Divine Economy,” examines Iranaeus’ presentation of the Spirit as the one who gives life, prepares believers for eternal life, reveals God across all of Scripture, and realizes the risen Christ’s presence in redeemed individuals (80-81). The work of Tertullian is further examined as well, discussing how his battle against modalistic monarchianism led to the development of trinitarian language, with Tertullian showing how that activities of the Father, Son, and Spirit are carried out by three divine Persons, and not simply one God playing three roles (85). The author also points out that Tertullian’s particular language sets up a problem for later trinitarian theologians, that of subordinationism (87). Novatian’s contribution of the eternal distinction of the Son from the Father is discussed (92), as is Origen’s articulation of the eternal existence of the Spirit with the Father and the Son (95).

I found this book to be very helpful in understanding the development over time of the doctrines we learn today in basic Christian discipleship classes and courses of systematic theology. The church’s teaching on the divine personhood of the Spirit—and thereby of the Trinity—did not descend fully-formed from heaven on golden tablets but was hammered out over the centuries through theological reflection on Scripture in the midst of the Spirit’s working among believers. I highly recommend Hughes’ volume to students of historical theology, as well as to anyone who desires to know more about “how we got here.”

Reviewed by Brian Roden

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/9781532693748/how-the-spirit-became-god/

This is the second volume in Kärkkäinen’s five-volume series developing a constructive Christian theology. Constructive theologies differ from systematic theologies by their use of a coherentist model of truth (in contrast to a foundationalist model of truth) and their fuller engagement with different faith traditions both within Christianity as well as without. The guiding assumption for constructive theologies is that other faith traditions contain information about God because God, whether through common grace or the direct work of the Holy Spirit, connects, influences, or reveals himself to people throughout the world. By engaging other traditions, theologians purposely avoid the solipsism and biases inherent to their own context and are challenged to think of new ways to understand and articulate their faith. The result of reflective thought on this process is the creation of a theology that is both contemporary and comprehensive.

Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 360 pages, ISBN 9780802837493.

Justified in the Spirit is a sophisticated attempt to do what its title suggests: to find an increased role for the Spirit within the Christian doctrine of justification. The book represents a bringing together of a number of different perspectives—including those that derive primarily from centuries of tradition, along with more recent insights from biblical scholarship. The book moves through discussions of the shape of soteriology within different streams of tradition (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentecostal, etc.), and combines these with significant contributions from well known theologians. Although Macchia is a theologian himself, he pays more attention to the fruits of New Testament scholars than many other theologians working today.

One of the book’s main arguments is summed up on p. 53: “Participation in Christ is first and primarily a pneumatological reality as believers are caught up in the communion of the Spirit with Christ and, through Christ with the heavenly Father.” This sentence says a lot. One of the book’s main aims seems to be to forge links between aspects of soteriology and Trinitarian language.

Many of the main features, it must be said, are indicative of the age in which this book was written: it is certainly vogue to be “broadly Trinitarian, ecclesiological, and eschatological” (a description found on the back cover). While there may a proper place to be “Trinitarian”, the way in which that call has been handled in recent years has been a little over the top, as it sometimes seems as if one’s handling of any given doctrine can somehow be graded on how great a role it assigns to each member of the Trinity. It is almost as though theologians are afraid to leave out one of the members of the Trinity in any given discussion, even when the topic (e.g. hermeneutics) does not have a natural bearing on the doctrine of the Trinity. This danger seems to be somewhat greater among Pentecostals, as some appear to have a strong desire to bring the Spirit into doctrines in which the Spirit arguably does not belong.

Frank D. Macchia

Does Macchia do that here? It is difficult to say. His discussion is at all places carefully researched, and his arguments are never fleeting or forced. Although he never gives the keys (so to speak) to NT scholarship, he does listen to it intently and with a genuine openness. And yet the question remains whether Macchia accomplishes a pneumatological orientation of the doctrine of justification simply by construing “justification” more broadly than others do, by allowing it to include (rather than lead to) the fruit of the spirit-filled life. The same could be said of how Macchia achieves his heightened emphasis on the role of the spirit-filled community. Both of these concerns naturally belong within a theology, but are they really a part of justification per se? Macchia evidently disagrees with the habit of identifying “justification” with a forensic aspect of salvation, and identifying the other aspects of salvation with other terms. Yet he writes as if the term “justification” must apply to all aspects of salvation—including justification per se, sanctification, and redemption. (See esp. pp. 204–5.) Macchia is not alone in this, but it is still unfortunate that he does not explain why he takes this approach.

As appearing in The Pneuma Review Winter 2007

Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 289 pages.

This book should be in every theological library. Stanley Grenz (1950-2005) offers a splendid account of the story of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. The lucidly written volume is destined to become a standard textbook in colleges and universities. At the same time, it also holds great promise to revive the popular understanding of the Christian God as one god in three persons. Rediscovering the Triune God addresses both historians and theologians and contributes a highly valuable review of both contexts to what the back cover calls “the contemporary revolution in Trinitarian thought.”

The book surveys the development of a renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity during the twentieth century. More precisely, Grenz focuses on the time period marked by the publication of Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, in 1919, which is frequently seen as the initial impulse for the renewal of trinitarian thought, and by the publication of T. F. Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God, in 1996, which Grenz considers the last comprehensive theology of the triune God of the twentieth century. As a result, Grenz presents the reader with a list of eleven theologians who he considers the most significant contributors to the revival of trinitarian thought. Each of these voices comes from theological giants whose work has influenced much of the layout of the theological landscape since World War I. This list of trendsetters marks the framework for the entire book.

The overview is ordered topically, and the eleven theologians are grouped together in four chapters that follow the historical development of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. In addition, the first chapter provides a historical basis for the overall theological discussion and sketches out “The Eclipse of Trinitarian Theology,” especially in the West, before the renaissance of the doctrine. The subsequent four chapters tell the story of the rediscovery of trinitarian thought by means of an unexpectedly brief list of central themes: the restoration of the trinitarian center (Chapter 2), the focus on the Trinity in history (Chapter 3), the idea of trinitarian relationality (Chapter 4), and the rediscovery of the immanent Trinity (Chapter 5). A brief epilogue concludes the book.