Theology

Falling outside of the usual categories of Patristic Christological discourse, Augustine’s Christology remains a relatively neglected area of his thought. This study focuses on his understanding of the humanity of Christ as it emerged in dialogue with his anti-Pelagian conception of human freedom and Original Sin. By reinterpreting the Pelagian controversy as a Western continuation of the Origenist controversy before it, it argues that Augustine’s reading of Origen lay at the heart of his Christological response to Pelagianism. Augustine is, therefore, situated within the network of fourth- and fifth-century Western theologians concerned to defend Origen’s orthodoxy—and the orthodoxy of a broader Christian Platonism—against their opponents. Opening with a survey of scholarship in the areas of both Augustinian Christology and Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism, it proceeds by detailing Augustine’s engagement with the issues and personalities involved in both the Origenist and Pelagian controversies. Chapter 3 examines the importance of Augustine’s understanding of Christ ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom 8.3) within his anti-Pelagian works; Chapter 4 traces the dependence of this motif on Origen’s exegesis. The fifth chapter considers Augustine’s treatment of Christ’s soul in relation to his understanding of Apollinarianism. The study concludes by exploring Augustine’s handling of the origin of the soul, suggesting that the inconsistencies in his Christology can be explained by recourse to an Origenian framework, in which the soul of Christ remains sinless in the Incarnation because of its relationship to the eternal Word after the Fall of souls to embodiment

This book studies the earliest biblical reading practices of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), the greatest of the Latin Church Fathers. As a Manichee he had dismissed the Scriptures of ancient Israel as crudely written and unspiritual. But when Ambrose of Milan suggested that familiar rhetorical devices were at work in them, he began to read the Old and New Testaments together figuratively as a single Book. That breakthrough catalyzed his return to Catholicism. Augustine's earliest works searched Scripture for a philosophically oriented spiritual understanding. But when surprise ordination made him responsible for the welfare of ordinary people, Augustine became more concerned with Scripture's ongoing function in the Christian life. With help from the Apostle Paul, Augustine read the old Scriptures differently, especially certain Psalms that became words of the crucified Christ impersonating the voice of his people. His insight into Christ's “astounding exchange” provided not only a way to articulate Christian redemption but also a way to practice Christian reading. This book examines works from the first fifteen years of Augustine's Christian life in order to follow the course of his development. His reflections on the craft of hermeneutics advanced not only specifically theological reading practices but also the humane art of textual interpretation. Augustine's rationale for figurative reading in the tens of thousands of Scripture references that filled hundreds of sermons, letters, and treatises made him the most widely read commentator on the Christian Scriptures in the west for more than a thousand years.

This book investigates the relation between Creator and creation as an object of constructive theology and religious devotion in the early church. Initial chapters revisit the challenges and legacies of Greco-Roman and Hellenistic‐Jewish cosmological traditions, and the formative pre‐Nicene rules of discourse for a Christian theology of creation. Subsequent chapters engage Greek, Syriac, and Latin patristic theological interpretation of Genesis 1 and other relevant writings like the Psalms, Deutero‐Isaiah, Wisdom literature, and major New Testament texts interconnecting creation and salvation. Patristic commentators read the six‐day creation account as a “thick” prophetic narrative of the beginning and end of the world. They also developed intertextual links among diverse biblical witnesses to construct the doctrine of creation as a dramatic “script” unveiling the strategy of the triune Creator in his creative and redemptive resourcefulness. Classic issues (e.g. the nature of the “beginning”; notions of “simultaneous” creation; creation ex nihilo and ex Deo) are examined afresh, as is patristic interpretation of distinctive biblical themes. An entire chapter details patristic teaching on the concrete operations of “Christ the Creator” and the “Creator Spirit” in inaugurating the new, eschatological creation. A final chapter explores how early Christians embodied their theology of creation in actual devotional and ritual practices, including “natural contemplation,” liturgical mimesis, and the stewardship of created things. The resonant theme is that beyond cosmogony or philosophical cosmology, the engrossing cosmic theo‐drama or “drama of the divine economy” held the key to the origins and teleology of creation in early Christian understanding and experience.

“The unit of survival of human society is not human society. Its unit of survival is nature comprehensively. Our origin, ongoing life, and destiny reside here. The belonging we are born to is ecospheric and cosmic. Religions and moralities that do not account for these dimensions somewhere near their pulsing centers are now quaint and dangerous.” These lines, taken from the book, lead into the two-fold aim of this work. (1) To recast religious ethics so as to re-center the moral universe from (abstracted and disembodied) human society to the full community of life and its primal elements—earth, air, fire, water. And (2) to reconcile the deep traditions of spirituality—mysticism, sacramentalism, asceticism, prophetic/liberative practices, wisdom—with ecological ethics. Part I of the book undertakes the first aim, Part II the second. Both parts are precipitated by a planet in jeopardy at human hands, both parts are governed by the quest for Earth-honoring faith and morality, and both parts share the conviction that religious communities have indispensable resources for a robust Earth faith and ethics. Yet the millennial traditions of religions also require a conversion to Earth as they face their own ecological phase in a new geological era, the Anthropocene. All told, this is religious ethics in a new key, a song (Earth-honoring faith) of many different songs (multiple traditions) in a re-framed moral universe.

The impact of “Arminianism” upon Protestantism is undeniable, yet the theology of Jacob Arminius is not broadly known or well understood. This book seeks to provide a reliable account of this theology. Working to understand Arminius both as a Protestant scholastic and pastoral theologian, the book situates his theology within his intellectual context. Unpacking his doctrines of God and creation, the book shows not only that he is committed to a “classically theistic” understanding of the nature and attributes of God, but also that he sees this very theology—and particularly the doctrines of divine wisdom, justice, goodness, simplicity, and glory—as vitally important for understanding divine action in creation, providence, and predestination. Arminius’s controversial views of divine omniscience and predestination are explored, as are his doctrines of original sin, freedom of the will, grace, justification, sanctification, perseverance, and assurance. What emerges is a contextually sensitive and historically well-informed overview of Arminius’s theology, one that shows the heartbeat of a pastoral scholastic theologian insistent upon a proper understanding of divine greatness, glory, and goodness—and indeed of the gospel itself.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely regarded as a philosopher and theologian of the first rank, sometimes even as “America's Theologian.” This study offers a major revisionist account of his views on the relationship between God and creation, and a fresh analysis of other central issues in Edwardsian philosophical theology, such as the divine nature and attributes, the doctrine of the Trinity, and eschatology. A number of recent Edwards scholars have argued that he reconceived the doctrine of God and creation along dispositional lines—God and the world being dispositions, not substances with attributes. By contrast, this work argues that Edwards was very much a Reformed theologian standing in the tradition of scholastic and Puritan theology. He did not think of his work as a break with this tradition. Instead, he sought to revision Calvinistic theology for an early modern audience using ideas culled from philosophers like Locke, Malebranche, Newton, and the Cambridge Platonists. Ironically, he ended up with a much more exotic picture of the God-world relation than many other Reformed divines. This included his commitment to continuous creationism, occasionalism, an idiosyncratic doctrine of the Trinity that is inconsistent with divine simplicity, panentheism, and a doctrine of theosis. The upshot of this is an interpretation of Edwards's thought that does justice to his theological conservatism while also explaining how he ended up embracing novel, even unusual metaphysical views.

Karl Barth is often assumed to have been hostile to philosophy, willfully ignorant of it, or too indebted to its conclusions for his own theological good. These truisms of twentieth-century theology are challenged in this original and comprehensive account of Barth’s understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Drawing upon a range of material from Barth’s earliest writings (1909) up until interviews and roundtable discussions that took place shortly before his death (1968), this book offers a developmental account of Barth’s thoughts on philosophy and theology. Beginning with the nineteenth-century intellectual background to Barth’s earliest theology, this work presents the young and ‘liberal’ Barth’s understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy and then tracks this understanding throughout the rest of Barth’s career. While Barth never finally settled on a single, fixed account of theology and philosophy, there was still a great deal of continuity regarding this topic in Barth’s oeuvre. Looking through the lens of theology and philosophy, one can clearly see Barth’s continual indebtedness to nineteenth-century modern theology as well as his attempts and struggles to move beyond it. In addition to locating Barth’s account of theology and philosophy historically, attention is given to the specific doctrines and theological presuppositions that inform Barth’s different portrayals of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Consideration is given to how and why Barth used material from the doctrines under consideration—such as revelation, theological ethics, Christology—to talk about theology and philosophy. What emerges is a Barth not only concerned about the integrity and independence of theological discourse but also concerned that theology does not lose its necessary and salutary interactions with philosophy.

The orthodox doctrine of the incarnation affirms that Christ is both truly divine and truly human. This, however, raises the question of how these two natures can co-exist in the one, united person of Christ without undermining the integrity of either nature. Kenotic theologians address this problem by arguing that Christ ‘emptied’ himself of his divine attributes or prerogatives in order to become a human being. This book contends that a type of kenotic Christology is present in Kierkegaard's works, developed independently of the Christologies of contemporary kenotic theologians. Like many of the classic kenotic theologians of the 19th century, Kierkegaard argues that Christ underwent limitation on becoming a human being. Where he differs from his contemporaries is in emphasizing the radical nature of this limitation and in bringing out its existential consequences. The aim of Kierkegaard's Christology is not to provide a rationally satisfying theory of the incarnation, but to highlight the existential challenge with which Christ confronts each human being. Kierkegaard advances ‘existential kenoticism’, a form of kenotic Christology which extends the notion of the kenosis of Christ to the Christian believer, who is called upon to live a life of kenotic discipleship in which the believer follows Christ's example of lowly, humble, and suffering service. Kierkegaard thus shifts the problem of kenosis from the intellectual problem of working out how divinity and humanity can be united in Christ's Person to the existential problem of discipleship.

This book offers an examination of the polemical debates about the doctrine of the Trinity in seventeenth-century England, showing that this philosophical and theological re-configuration significantly impacted the politics of religion in the early modern period. Through analysis of these heated polemics, the book shows how Trinitarian God-Talk became untenable in many ecclesiastical and philosophical circles, which led to the emergence of Unitarianism. It also demonstrates that those who continued to embrace Trinitarian doctrine articulated their piety and theological perspectives in an increasingly secularized culture of discourse. Drawing on both unexplored manuscripts and well-known treatises of Continental and English provenance, the book unearths the complex layers of the polemic: from biblical exegesis to reception history of patristic authorities, from popular religious radicalism during the Civil War to Puritan spirituality, from Continental Socinians to English Anti-Trinitarians who avowed their relative independent theological identity, from the notion of the Platonic captivity of primitive Christianity to that of Plato as “Moses Atticus.” Among this book's surprising conclusions are the findings that Anti-Trinitarian sentiment arose from a Puritan ambience, in which Biblical literalism overcame rationalistic presuppositions, and that theology and philosophy were not as unconnected during this period as previously thought.

This book is an exploration of the remarkable odyssey of Thomas Aquinas in the Orthodox Christian world. It centres on the surprisingly enthusiastic welcome which Aquinas received across the theological spectrum of the late Byzantine world. By contrast with the Byzantine era, modern Orthodox readings of Aquinas have been resoundingly negative, routinely presenting Aquinas as the archetype of a specifically Western form of theology against which the Orthodox East must set its face. This study rejects such hackneyed dichotomies, arguing instead for a properly catholic or universal construal of Orthodoxy — one in which Thomas might once again find a place. In its probing of the East–West dichotomy, this book also questions the widespread juxtaposition of Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas as archetypes of opposing Greek and Latin theological traditions. Indeed, Palamas' own Byzantine scholastic inheritance and sympathy with Latin theology prepared the way for many Palamites to embrace Thomas. Close attention is also paid to those Orthodox theologians who struggled against union with Rome but remained devoted to Aquinas. The long period between the Fall of Constantinople and the Russian Revolution, conventionally written off as an era of sterility and malformation for Orthodox theology, is also viewed with a fresh perspective. Study of the reception of Thomas in this period reveals a theological sophistication and a generosity of vision that is rarely accounted for. The book radically re-thinks the history of Orthodox theology through the prism of the fascinating and largely untold story of Orthodox engagement with Aquinas.