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 »
In summarizing the argument of the first seven books of de Trinitate , Luigi Gioia ( The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate ) distinguishes between the “outer layer” of the opening books of de Trinitate, which concerns the mystery of the Trinity especially as . . . . Continue Reading »
A friend, Chuck Hartman, offers a Trinitarian account of economic exchange: He describes it as a perichoretic reality. Each party to the exchange benefits the other, so there is a mutual glorification in exchange. It “amens the Trinity.” He points to an analogy with the Fifth . . . . Continue Reading »
A summary of Barth’s Trinitarian theology, mostly in the form of brief questions and answers. The exercise is expositional, not critical; my answers would not be the same as Barth’s at every point. The page numbers in parenthesis below are from Church Dogmatics I.1. 1. Why does he . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Hegels Trinitarian Claim: A Critical Reflection , Dale Schlitt lays out Hegel’s effort to derive Trinitarian theology conceptually, rather than from revelation and redemptive history. In part, this is an argument about the structure of logic. For Hegel, the traiadic structure of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus promises to write a triple name on the pillars that are in the temple (Revelation 3:12). The three uses of the word ????? are the name of “My God,” the name of the city, which is New Jerusalem, and Jesus’ own new name. This has got to be a Trinitarian formula. “My . . . . Continue Reading »
“The Trinity is a mathematical absurdity in the context of a god limited in his operations to just the four dimensions of length, width, height, and time,” writes Hugh Ross ( The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God ). To avoid the . . . . Continue Reading »
Von Balthasar, not Greg Boyd, writes: “a world that is full of risks can only be created within the Son’s processio (prolonged as missio ); this shows that every ‘risk’ on God’s part is undergirded by . . . the power-less power of the divine self-giving. We cannot say . . . . Continue Reading »
Jenson writes: “Time is because the Spirit is not the Father, and beacuse both meet in the Son. Time is because God is his own origin and as such is not his goal; because God is his own goal and as such is not the ‘natural’ result of his own being as origin; because origin and . . . . Continue Reading »
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