A friend, Aaron Cummings, writes in response to my comments about Derrida and prodigal words: “A few days ago, you alluded to Derrida, that words run prodigal from the speaker/writer. You said that this was true of Mankind’s words, but not of God’s. It seems to me that this is true . . . . Continue Reading »
For Athanasius, creation’s multiplicity is not a defect but part of its glory. No created thing supplies all need; no single light illuminates day and night. So there are many lights. Each light is its own essence, but these essences cooperate to fill what is lacking in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Arianism is not just about Christology. It’s about theology proper. Arius said that God made His Son before the creation because the creation could not endure the “untempered hand” of the Father. It needed the Son as mediator. Athanasius sees in this a false idea . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius notes that before the incarnation humanity was under the dominion of false gods, enslaved to corruption and idolatry. The Word took flesh to deliver us from that slavery, and the form of that deliverance was an act of worship: “in this body offering Himself for all, . . . . Continue Reading »
Near the end of his fifth oration, Gregory flies off into an ecstatic review of the Spirit’s work and titles. It is in some ways standard pneumatology, but the overwhelming rhetorical flood has never been surpassed. “Christ is born; the Spirit is His Forerunner. He is baptized; . . . . Continue Reading »
Gregory’s fifth oration again: Human nature “has a unity which is only conceivable in thought; and the individuals are parted from one another very far indeed, both by time and by dispositions and by power. For we are not only compound beings, but also contrasted beings, both with . . . . Continue Reading »
From Gregory’s fifth oration, defending the divinity and consubstantiality of the Spirit: “What was Adam? A creature of God. What then was Eve? A fragment of the creature. And what was Seth? The begotten of both. Does it then seem to you that Creature . . . . Continue Reading »
In the second of his “theological orations,” Gregory Nazianzen catalogs the impenetrable mysteries of creation: “How is it,” he asks, “that the earth stands solid and unswerving? On what is it supported? What is it that props it up, and on what does that . . . . Continue Reading »
Cunningham again, arguing that a creation made by a loving Creator cannot be pure nature: “Traditionally, God’s long-term ‘involvement’ with an care for the world has been emphasized through the theological category of grace . In creating the world, God wills into . . . . Continue Reading »
In his brilliant, flawed These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) , David Cunningham notes how the doctrine of the Trinity implies retroactive causality: “At first, we might assume that a father precedes his son, both logically and . . . . Continue Reading »
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