The God of the Bible is Lord of history. He shows who He is in what He does for His people. In the Old Covenant, Yahweh was the God of the patriarchs, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and finally the God who brought Israel back from exile. Ask a Jew, Whom do you worship? and he would . . . . Continue Reading »
Patristic trinitarian theology has been seen as a symptom of the radical Hellization of the church. Barth recognized that the opposite is true: The formulations of the Trinity were designed to preserve the biblical confession that God is a personal Lord. He says, “it follows from the . . . . Continue Reading »
In a recent book on the “suffering of the impassible God,” Paul Gavrilyuk defends the patristic consensus that God is impassible, focusing on the ways that the church struggled to maintain the tension of the incarnation between the God who is impassible and the suffering Jesus who is . . . . Continue Reading »
Milbank finds Augustine’s theory of signs unsatisfactory, since signs are there only to “recall res ” and “finally to recall spiritual res in the soul, where Christ speaks, wordlessly.” At the same time, he finds a “counter-failing tendency” in . . . . Continue Reading »
Hegel’s erotic Trinity seeks the other out of need and lack, an indeterminacy that the other determines. What, however, if we think of the Triune love as arising from plentitude rather than lack? One immediate result is that the other is affirmed: “is this not what agapeic love does: . . . . Continue Reading »
Desmond suggests that when Hegel defines God as love, he has in mind God as erotic love, and God specifically as needy erotic love: “For Hegel . . . the movement up and the movement down seem not to be two different movements, but two expressions of a singular movement of eternally circular . . . . Continue Reading »
In a brilliant chapter of his book on Hegel’s God, William Desmond asks whether Hegel can count to two. He wonders if Hegel is capable of accounting “for the true otherness of creation as temporal and not as eternal?” More, “Let God’s self-movement be eternal, but the . . . . Continue Reading »
In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can know . . . . Continue Reading »
Cavadini suggests that Augustine’s theory of the inner word is a theory of cultural production, formation, and transformation. First, Augustine’s theory opens space for the person’s transcendence of culture, a space that allows for critique and transformation. But this . . . . Continue Reading »
Colin Gunton has cited Augustine’s doctrine of the “inner word” as a sign of his preference for abstract over the material/concrete. John Cavadini (Theological Studies 1997) responds: “Augustine’s distinctions, between the presignified and the signified, are evidence . . . . Continue Reading »
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