Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 28:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: The Son And The Spirit In William Perkins’ "Exposition Of The Symbole"
Author: Austin K. Wright

The Son And The Spirit In William Perkins’ Exposition Of The Symbole

Austin K. Wright

Austin K. Wright is a PhD student in historical and theological studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He earned his Masters of Divinity and Masters of Arts in Biblical Counseling from Luther Rice Seminary, Lithonia, Georgia. He is an Upper School Latin, Theater, and Humanities teacher at Covenant Classical School, Concord, North Carolina. He is married to Marissa and they have a son, Haddon, and they are members of Oakhurst Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Desiring to make sense of one’s beliefs by retrieving wisdom from the past is not a historical anomaly, but this endeavor is experiencing a season of evangelical fascination. How should the theological developments of the past shape modern and postmodern minds about “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3)?1 Perhaps a question of greater relevance is which historical figures warrant the priority for theological retrieval?

William Perkins was a late sixteenth-century English proto-Puritan who preached, lectured, and wrote at Cambridge University during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His life began at the end of John Calvin’s and ended before John Owen and later Reformed scholastics influenced England and the Continent with their theological synthesis. Perkins was born into the immediate aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and the dawn of English Puritanism. He deserves theological attention due to his contextual influence, historical setting, and personal example of doing theology in continuity with the orthodoxy of the past. Historian Ian Breward believes Perkins is a worthy figure because he possessed “an ability to clarify and expound complex theological issues which aroused the respect of fellow scholars and a gift for relating seemingly abstruse theological teaching to

SBJT 28:1 (Spring 2024) 153

the spiritual aspirations of ordinary Christians.”2 If Breward’s reasoning is sound, then Perkins is an excellent candidate for both theological research and retrieval.

In this article, I argue that William Perkins’s Christology was biblically structured, classically informed, historically Reformed, and purposefully practical by drawing from his Exposition of the Symbole and expounding his theology of the Spirit’s work in the life of the incarnate Son.3 In 1595, Perkins published his theological commentary of the Apostles’ Creed. His exposition of these essential doctrines encapsulated his...