In his Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God , Jenson ponders why Barth’s Trinitarian theology so often seems to collapse into a binity: “the inner-divine community of the Father and the Son is, explicitly [in Barth], ‘two-sided.’” Since the Spirit is the . . . . Continue Reading »
Timothy Gorringe ( A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption ) summarizes Barth’s idea of “divine spatiality”: “God’s ‘eminent spatiality’ . . . grounds our own created spatiality. Space, in other words, is not something . . . . Continue Reading »
The Cappadocians described the personal distinctions within God by reference to “relations of origin.” Father, Son, and Spirit are what they are from eternity past. Pannenberg, Moltmann, Jenson all want to reverse this: Father, Son, and Spirit are what they are in eternity future. . . . . Continue Reading »
In the current issue of The Heythrop Journal , Brian Trainor analyzes the uses of Trinitarian theology among evangelical egalitarians and among evangelical “conservatives.” He finds both wanting, and offers some fresh reflections in an effort to break the impasse. He charges . . . . Continue Reading »
Mark McIntosh, as he often does, puts the well-known very well ( Mysteries of Faith (New Church’s Teaching Series) ): For early Christians “the Trinity was not a divine game of peek-a-boo in which a playful deity peeps out at them from behind different masks (now the ancient fellow with . . . . Continue Reading »
Luigi Gioia ( The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate ) explains the inseparability of intellect and will in Augustine’s epistemology: “something is recorded by our sensorial activity; this sensation awakens in us a desire to know its cause and to appreciate its . . . . Continue Reading »
Anatolios again: He argues that Augustine’s psychological analogies for the Trinity (memory, intellect, will in one mind, eg) do not represent a retreat from an inter-personal model of the Trinity. He acknowledges that the love of lovers gives a “sight” of the life of the Trinity. . . . . Continue Reading »
Anatolios again, on Augustine’s “analogy of love” from Book 8 of de Trinitate . Contrary to some interpreters, “this trinity of love is not simply a self-standing structure that ‘pictures’ the divine Trinity.” Anatolios insists instead that “it . . . . Continue Reading »
Anything by Khaled Anatolios is an event, worthy of deep and careful reading. From my initial perusal, his recent Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine is no exception; on the contrary, it has the feel of a masterpiece. Nobody knows Athanasius as Anatolios does, and . . . . Continue Reading »
“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power,” sing the twenty-four elders and four living creatures in the heavenly throne room (Revelation 4:11). The reason the Lord is worthy of glory, honor, and power is that He created all things (a chiastic clause: . . . . Continue Reading »
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