Donald Fairbairn’s Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers is superb in many respects. He shows the intimate connection between theology proper and soteriology (theology and economy) in the church fathers and urges contemporary Christians to learn . . . . Continue Reading »
Isaiah says more about the uniqueness of God than any other Old Testament writer (especially Isaiah 43-45). Why did Yahweh wait so long to say this? Did he perhaps have to set up empires, deliver His people into exile, and then send them back before He could persuade the world that there was One . . . . Continue Reading »
Gregory of Nazianzus again. He argues that “unbegotten-begotten” point to personal characteristics rather than substance, what Augustine later distinguishes with “substance” and “relation.” In the course of the argument, he makes two puzzling provocative . . . . Continue Reading »
Gregory of Nazianzus has this clever little argument for the equality of Father and Son in the Third Theological Oration. He responds to the Arian argument that Augustine also deals with: a) God is simple, and has no accidents; b) therefore, every statement about God speaks of substance; c) since . . . . Continue Reading »
The more seriously one takes the evangelical claim that God suffers the condemnation of humanity in Jesus, “the stronger becomes the temptation to approximate to the view of a contradiction and conflict in God Himself.” So says Barth. Yet Barth with equal vehemence rejects the notion of . . . . Continue Reading »
With deceptive simplicity, Eberhard Jungel ( God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth ) neatly captures why Barth considers the doctrine of election to be the gospel: “God’s being-in-act becomes manifest in the temporal history of . . . . Continue Reading »
Barth says or implies that human language is “in itself” inadequate to the task of bearing God’s revelation. It has to be commandeered in order to become the vehicle of revelation. Language “can only be the language of the world” though we must have confidence that . . . . Continue Reading »
Barth’s doctrine of election feels incarnational because it is the determination of the Son to be the incarnate Son. Traditional Reformed dogmatics always insisted, as Richard Muller has shown, always election in Christ. But, again, the fact that in electing the elect in Christ God the Son . . . . Continue Reading »
Traditional Reformed dogmaticians place the decree of election in the doctrine of God. So does Barth. But they do it very differently. The difference, if I might be allowed a simplistic caricature, is in the question of whether election is a determination of creation or also a determination of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Back to Christian Smith’s Bible Made Impossible, The: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture : Smith’s argument against Biblicism rests on the “pervasive interpretive pluralism” evident among evangelical Biblicists. Despite their claim to understand . . . . Continue Reading »
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