In a review of Robert Solomon’s last book ( True To Our Feelings ), Ronnie de Sousa reflects on gratitude, one of Solomon’s themes. He finds gratitude to any God rather horrifying: “For my part, having long passed the age at which most human beings who have ever lived are . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus doesn’t talk much about justification, and when He does He doesn’t sound very Pauline (Matthew 12:37). The publican is justified - apparently not by his faith but by his humility (Luke 18:14). So, Jesus doesn’t teach justification by faith? Wrong. “Yahweh . . . . Continue Reading »
What is the resurrection like? Paul says, like a tree that grows from the planted seed of our body; like the glory of a brighter star. Or this, as Hamann puts it in his London notebooks, in a comment on Genesis 2:21-23: “Adam awakes as the dead of which David says, in order to praise . . . . Continue Reading »
Sin is an ethical rather than a metaphysical problem - so says van Til, repeatedly. I know what he means: Creation is good; saved human beings are fulfilled human beings, not something other kind of being. Yet, there are questions. 1) What if we adopt a more relational metaphysics. Does . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius expounds the prayer of Jesus in John 17 as follows: “whence is this their perfecting, but that I, Your Word, having borne their body, and become man, have perfected the work, which You gave Me, O Father? And the work is perfected, because men, redeemed from sin, . . . . Continue Reading »
The notion that salvation is illumination is often criticized for being too intellectualist. Jaroslav Pelikan sums up the criticisms of Athanasius’ use of this image by saying “the impression was almost unavoidable that the enlightenment given in salvation applied primarily to the . . . . Continue Reading »
A fragment of Athanasius’ Easter Letter #22: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who took upon Him to die for us all, stretched forth His hands, not somewhere on the earth beneath, but in the air itself, in order that the salvation effected by the Cross might be shown to be for all men everywhere; . . . . Continue Reading »
What difference does the incarnation make? For Athanasius, it means (among other things, of course) that grace is worked from within humanity rather than being offered extrinsically from without, as grace was given to Adam. Redemption history is a movement from extrinsic to intrinsic grace, . . . . Continue Reading »
Soteriology is eschatology, and that means soteriology has to have an already/not yet structure. Rejecting either justification by faith or judgment according to works breaks the bond of eschatology and soteriology. Another way to say this is soteriology is about what happens in . . . . Continue Reading »
A friend called attention to this remarkable passage in Calvin’s Institutes (3.24.8): “there is a universal call, by which God, through the external preaching of the word, invites all men alike, even those for whom he designs the call to be a savor of death, and the ground of severer . . . . Continue Reading »
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