Theology

This work proposes a new reading of Christian theology. Examining theological warrants, philosophical debates over the structures of arguments, and the role of beauty in intellectual structures, it suggests theology is inherently systematic, its systematicity reflecting its two subjects, ‘God and other things as they are related to God’ (Aquinas). The roles of the warrants (scripture, tradition, and reason) are re‐evaluated, showing their necessary interdependence. Debates in philosophical epistemology are also examined; these have conventionally contrasted foundationalism and coherentism. A contemporary consensus has emerged, however, of a chastened foundationalism or hybrid foundationalism‐coherentism, in light of which, arguments are understood both as reasoning from foundational propositions and as gaining plausibility from the coherence of claims. Theological arguments also exhibit a dual structure, with propositions underwritten by their dependence on both scripture and tradition and by their coherence in integrated webs, or systems. Theology is therefore shown to be systematic in its fundamental structure. The systematicity of theology is a function of its subject matter, ‘God and other things as they are related to God’. Both the two chief subjects of theology (God and humanity) and theology itself are characterized by rationality and relationality. Theology is therefore doubly mimetic, reflecting its subject matter in its structures of reasoning. The order and harmony of those structures however have an aesthetic appeal and potentially attract because of their beauty, rather than their truth. Theological aesthetics is surveyed, asking whether the beauty of systematic structures counts for or against their truth.

In present-day America, the topic of certitude is much debated. On one side, commentators like Charles Krauthammer urge us to achieve “moral clarity”. On the other, those like George Will contend that the greatest present threat to civilization is an excess of certitude. This book points out that Europe in the 16th century was preoccupied with similar concerns. Both the desire for certainty, especially religious certainty, and warnings against certainty permeated this earlier era. The book analyzes the pervading questions about certitude and doubt in the terms and contexts of a wide variety of thinkers during this time of competing truths. The Protestant Reformation was the wellspring of this debate, which expressed itself in terms of questions about salvation, authority, the rise of skepticism, the outbreak of religious violence, the discernment of spirits, and the ambiguous relationship between appearance and reality. Repeatedly, the book says, we find the recurring fear of deception. It examines the history of theological polemics and debates as well as other genres to shed light on the progress of this controversy. Among the texts the book draws on are Montaigne's Essays, the mystical writings of Teresa of Avila, the diary, letters, and treatises of St. Ignatius, and the dramas of Shakespeare. The result is not a book about theology, but rather a book about the way in which the concern with certitude determined the theology, polemics, and literature of the age.

This book explores the dynamics of the Spirit and Son in the economy of salvation. It offers an interpretation of Barth and Origen around this theme, bringing them into a formative dialogue for a constructive theology of universal salvation. Examining Barth's doctrine of election and Origen's understanding of apokatastasis, the book proposes that a proper understanding of the eternal salvific plan of God in the person of Jesus Christ points towards universal salvation. However, salvation is not achieved through a general principle or rule; it is achieved through the very particularity of the Son in whom all humanity is saved. Further place for human particularity is established through the economy of the Spirit. Origen and Barth's economic pneumatologies indicate the reverse dynamic to that of their interpretation of the Son's economy: while the particularity of the Son has universal effects for all particulars, the universality of the Spirit particularizes that universal in individuals and communities in the present. However, this is in a manner which avoids a binary separation of Christians (as the saved) from all other humans (as the damned); instead, Christians are led into the ever greater depths of God, in a manner which allows God's Spirit to be present in diverse ways with humans and human communities in their temporal particularities. This dynamic of Spirit and Son in salvation allows for the place of faith, ongoing history, and community within a soteriological schema which offers a universal hope of salvation in Christ.

Divine simplicity is the idea that, as the ultimate principle of the universe, God must be a non‐composite unity not made up of parts or diverse attributes. The idea was appropriated by early Christian theologians from non‐Christian philosophy and played a pivotal role in the development of Christian thought. Andrew Radde‐Gallwitz charts the progress of the idea of divine simplicity from the second through the fourth centuries, with particular attention to Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, two of the most subtle writers on this topic, both instrumental in the construction of the Trinitarian doctrine proclaimed as orthodox at the Council of Constantinople in 381. He demonstrates that divine simplicity was not a philosophical appendage awkwardly attached to the early Christian doctrine of God, but a notion that enabled Christians to articulate the consistency of God as portrayed in their scriptures. Basil and Gregory offered a unique construal of simplicity in responding to their principal doctrinal opponent, Eunomius of Cyzicus. Challenging accepted interpretations of Cappadocian brothers and the standard account of divine simplicity in recent philosophical literature, Radde‐Gallwitz argues that Basil and Gregory's achievement in transforming ideas inherited from the non‐Christian philosophy of their time has an ongoing relevance for Christian theological epistemology today.

This book argues that the central concept of Bonhoeffer’s early theology, ‘person’, positions his thought in relationship to his own Lutheran tradition as well as the two most important post‐First World War theologies, Karl Barth’s dialectical theology and Karl Holl’s Luther interpretation. Barth convinces Bonhoeffer that theology must understand revelation as originating outside the human self in God’s freedom. But whereas Barth understands revelation as the act of an eternal divine subject, Bonhoeffer treats revelation as the act and being of the historical person of Jesus Christ. On the basis of this person‐concept of revelation, Bonhoeffer rejects Barth’s dialectical thought, designed to respect the distinction between God and world, for a hermeneutic way of thinking that begins with the reconciliation of God and world in the person of Christ. Here Bonhoeffer mines a Lutheran understanding of the incarnation as God’s unreserved entry into history, and the person of Christ as the resulting historical reconciliation of opposites. This also distinguishes Bonhoeffer’s Lutheranism from that of Karl Holl, one of Bonhoeffer’s teachers in Berlin, whose location of justification in the conscience renders the presence of Christ superfluous. Against this, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the present person of Christ as the precondition of justification. Through these critical conversations, Bonhoeffer develops the features of his person‐theology—a person‐concept of revelation and a hermeneutical way of thinking—which remain constant despite the sometimes radical changes in his thought.

Through close readings of a number of classic texts, this book develops the thesis that classic Christian theology is thoroughly shaped by pastoral and moral purposes. The book's aim is to show contemporary theologians how to teach the faith in a morally constructive fashion, transcending the current destructive opposition between ‘academic’ and ‘pastoral’ theology.

Calvin at the Centre explores the impact of various ideas on the thought of John Calvin and also that of later theologians who were influenced by him. The book therefore calls into question the attitude that Calvin's views are purely biblical and unaffected by the particular intellectual circumstances in which he lived. It also provides reason for thinking that the relation between Calvin and Calvinism is more complex than is commonly believed. The focus is on philosophical ideas as they find a place within Calvin's theology, and the chapters are organized to reflect this, dealing in turn with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues. So the book follows the general outlook of the author's John Calvin's Ideas (OUP: 2004), but extends its scope and range. The emphasis is upon the coincidence of ideas between Calvin and other thinkers, rather than offering a historical account of how that influence came about. So, for example, there is a study of the extent to which Calvin's view of the atonement is Anselmic in its character, and how Calvin's view was treated in later discussions of the atonement in Puritanism. But the question of the exact ways in which Anselm's ideas came to Calvin's notice is left to one side. Among the topics treated are: the knowledge of God and of ourselves, Scripture and reason, the visibility of God, providence and predestination, Calvin and compatibilism, and the intermediate state

For much of his career as a Reformer, John Calvin was involved in trinitarian controversy. Not only did these controversies span his career, but his opponents ranged across the spectrum of theological approaches — from staunch traditionalists to radical antitrinitarians. Remarkably, the heart of Calvin's argument, and the heart of others' criticism, remained the same throughout: Calvin claimed that the only-begotten Son of the Father is also, as the one true God, ‘of himself’. This book investigates the various Reformation and post-Reformation responses to Calvin's affirmation of the Son's aseity (or essential self-existence), a significant episode in the history of theology that is often ignored or misunderstood. Calvin neither rejected eternal generation, nor merely toed the line of classical exposition. As such, these debates turned on the crucial pivot between simple unity and ordered plurality — the relationship between the processions and consubstantiality — at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity. This book's aim is to explain the historical significance and explore the theological implications of Calvin's complex solidarity with the classical tradition in his approach to thinking and speaking of the Triune God. It contends that Calvin's approach, rather than an alternative to classical trinitarianism, is actually more consistent with this tradition's fundamental commitments regarding the ineffable generation of God from God than its own received exposition.