Khaled Anatolios points out in his Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine that Athanasius charges that the Arians cannot truly honor God as Creator. The reasoning is: “If the Word is Creator and the Word is extrinsice to the divine essence, then the creative . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus says, “I am the arche and telos ” (Revelation 21:6). “Beginning and end” is too colorless, too geometric. Jesus is not the two points at either end of a line segment. Better to render this more “dynamically” and “organically” (forgive the hurrah . . . . Continue Reading »
My friend, Ralph Smith, has published several excellent books on the Trinity ( Paradox and Truth: Rethinking Van Til on the Trinity ; Eternal Covenant: How the Trinity Reshapes Covenant Theology ; and Trinity & Reality: An Introduction to the Christian Faith ), and most recently has written a . . . . Continue Reading »
When Panikkar writes, “neither the name Father nor the name God is the proper name of the Absolute. They are simply the names by which we designate him . . . . independently of us, in himself and for himself, what is He? Ultimately such a question does not even make sense . . . . God’s . . . . Continue Reading »
There are problems all over the place in Panikkar’s Trinitarian theology, but there are some lovely, profound passages, like this: “A non-trinitarian God cannot ‘mingle’ much less unite himself with Man without destroying himself. He would have to remain aloof, isolated. No . . . . Continue Reading »
Why did Jesus refer to the Father as “my God”? Perhaps to head off reasoning such as this (Panikkar, The Trinity and the religious experience of man;: Icon-person-mystery ): “God is only God for the creature and with reference to it. God is not ‘God’ for himself. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Like all Trinitarian theologians, Jenson is finally ecstatic: “Our enjoyment of God is that we are taken into the triune singing. Perhaps we may say that we are allowed to double the parts. And here too we must insist on concreteness. That the proclamation and prayer of the church regularly . . . . Continue Reading »
In the first volume of his Systematic Theology , Jenson notes that the reason why the church has been “lured” by impassibility is the conviction, which Jenson emphatically affirms” that God is “not subjected to created time’s contingencies” and that no . . . . Continue Reading »
Jeremy Begbie has pointed out that, though a physical phenomena, music has different spatial qualities than solid objects. Music is present in a place, but it’s not localized in a way a visually perceptible object is. I can give my attention to listening to the sound, but I can’t say . . . . Continue Reading »
Jenson has a neat summary and response to the Palamite distinction between energies and essence. Gregory, he notes, aimed to defend “Byzantine monastic teaching that the sanctified truly participate in God; that grace is not a mere matter of God’s effects upon us or our knowledge of and . . . . Continue Reading »
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