August 2011
1 post
July 2011
2 posts
“Idealism has no appreciation of movement. The movement of the dialectic of mind...”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study in the Sociology of the Church, DBW, vol. I, trans. R. Krauss and N. Lukens, ed. J. von Soosten, C. Green (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1998), 49.
June 2011
9 posts
Wolfhart Pannenberg on Barth's Revelatory...
In the first volume of his Systematic Theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg accuses Barth of failing to relocate the most basic elements of his theology from the anthropocentric soil that nurtured the roots of Protestant Liberalism. What makes Pannenberg’s critique so mind-blowing is the doctrinal loci that he names as the source of Barth’s...
2011 Karl Barth Conference Journal: Day 1
Tonight was the opening night for the 2011 Karl Barth Conference co-sponsored by Princeton Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies and the Thomistic Institute of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House Studies in Washington D.C. The conference title follows its unique subject matter and implicitly speaks to its direction and concerns, Thomas Aquinas and Karl...
Marilynne Robinson's Princeton Lecture: American...
Marilynne Robinson’s Abraham Kuyper lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary is available for free download at the Seminary website. The lecture is entitled: Open Wide Thy Hand: Moses and the Origins of American Liberalism.
Marilynne Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Her novel Gilead received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, and her follow-up novel Home received the...
“I seem to always be missing the ‘creed’ that the fundamentalists...”
– A good-hearted and wise friend.
Resurrection as the Real . . . (and you can get...
“If Paul—quite apart from his general opposition to the idea that faith has a ‘wage’—cannot subordinate hope to the imaginary of a retribution, it is because resurrection has no meaning independently of the universal character of its operation. As soon as it is a question of contingency and grace, all fixing of divisions or distributions is forbidden:...
Ascension Art: Early sci-fi has nothing on this
In one of those massive tomes comprising the Church Dogmatics, Barth remarks that of all the grandeur and pathos Christian art has bequeathed to the world, one particularly fatal flaw was made. Despite countless efforts, Christian art has positively failed to produce an acceptable ascension scene. At least, he says, we all get a good laugh out of it. I would go a step further. Some depictions...
May 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Barth, 1924: The Resurrection of the Dead
Here’s Barth on resurrected life in 1924 from his commentary of 1 Corinthians entitled Resurrection of the Dead. In his reading of Paul, Barth grounds the resurrection of the human being in the central reality and revelation of meaningful existence — the resurrection of the man Jesus Christ (even here Barth has yet to speak of resurrection largely in terms of salvation history, though...
4 tags
Bonhoeffer: The Christian Life for the World
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the following in his Ethics while working with the resistance movement undercover in the Abwehr. I believe they should give us pause before ascribing the death of Osama bin Laden or any of our responses to it to Bonhoeffer’s legacy. “Radicalism always arises from a conscious or unconscious hatred of what exists. Christian radicalism, whether it would flee the...
4 tags
Barth, Election, and James Cone
Earlier this semester, I wrote a very short paper on the Barth’s doctrine of election as a possible resource for liberation theologies. In the past, liberation theologians (namely, James Cone) have spent the majority of their energies mining Barth’s 1921 Romans and early doctrine of revelation in CD I.1 for resources. While in A Black Liberation of Theology Cone does mention that...
April 2011
8 posts
5 tags
Covenant as the Presupposition of Scripture
The notion that election is the ground and activity of God speaking is pretty intuitive. Because of this, it is often taken for granted in the Reformed theology. In taking it for granted, we are in danger of taking Scripture for granted or worse, neglecting its place as God’s word. As such, I think Heppe’s quote on the matter is worth sharing. Note: Though the overwhelming majority of...
4 tags
Rob Bell, "Functional Universalism," and the...
When Rob Bell’s Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who Every Lived came out, the far right evangelicals directed all of their constructive attention to pouring Bell into a particular heretical mold and leaving him there to dry. In part, the move was political. If Bell could be declared guilty by association with Origen, “Liberal Protestants” (a...
3 tags
Talking about Death with Jesus: Some Off-the-Cuff...
I. Christian talk about death must have Jesus Christ as its subject. It cannot stray to the right or left to form a concept or reflection independent of his person without ceasing to be Christian talk about death. ”[Jesus’] divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1.3). This also includes within it everything the world needs for here and now...
2 tags
David Kelsey's Warfield Lectures: Lecture 6,...
Dr. Kelsey concluded the 2011 Warfield lectures with the final register of God’s power—the power of God to reconcile estranged creatures to Godself and one another. It is the second of the explicitly christological registers, the other one being the God’s power faithfully expressing in eschatological consummation. Between God’s relating in creaturely blessing and eschatological consummation...
2 tags
David Kelsey's 2011 Warfield Lectures: Lecture 5,...
Lecture:
In lecture five, Dr. Kelsey spoke of God’s power in light of one of the three predominant canonical narratives used thus far to ground his doctrine of God: eschatological consummation. As both God who creatively blesses ex nihilo and the God who blesses all that is not God once again through the separate yet related blessing of eschatological consummation, God grants us very particular...
2 tags
David Kelsey's Warfield Lectures: Lecture 2, "In...
Lecture: Dr. Kelsey followed up on his first lecture by suggesting that the best theology is doxology, praise to God for God’s utter singularity, self-sufficiency, and glory—the glory intrinsic to God’s inward being. Here is where our lecture title comes in. The creative “ground” from which the most appropriate doctrine of God emerges is a praise-ful, canonical reading of the narratives of Holy...
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David Kelsey’s 2011 Warfield Lectures: "Glory,...
Goood Mooooorning Vietnam! This past week, Princeton Theological Seminary hosted the annual (kind of) Warfield Lectures, named so in honor of Annie Kinkead Warfield, the wife of the last of the great Old Princeton theologians Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. The lectures are most often given by a highly esteemed and dedicated intellectual in the field of theology/biblical studies. Past presenters...
6 tags
Tom Waits, Green Grass, and a Good Death
“Green Grass” by Tom Waits Lay you head where My heart used to be Hold the earth above me Lay down in the green grass Remember when you loved me Come closer don’t be shy Stand beneath a rainy sky The moon is over the rise Think of me as a train goes by Clear the thistles and brambles Whistle didn’t he ramble Now there’s a bubble of me And its floating in thee Stand...
March 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Jeopardize your Theology not God's Activity
I’m sitting here writing a paper on Barth’s doctrines of election and reconciliation, drinking coffee, and listening to OtR/Linford’s piano music. It’s a good time for sharing one of my favorite quotes from the Church Dogmatics. “It is in full unity with Himself that [God] is also — and especially and above all — in Christ, that He becomes a creature, man,...
5 tags
Church-as-polis OR Church-as-mission
“[In thinking of the church as polis] there is the danger of intensifying the Christian community’s concern for its own interior identity overagainst [sic] the world. This danger is especially present where the theme of the church as a counter-model to the larger society is emphasized. For in order to remain structurally ‘counter’ to the world, yet still...
5 tags
Announcing the 2011 Barth Conference!
THOMAS AQUINAS AND KARL BARTH: AN UNOFFICIAL PROTESTANT-CATHOLIC DIALOGUE Be sure to check out the 2011 Karl Barth Conference this summer, June 19-22, at Princeton Theological Seminary. The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Barth Studies at PTS and the Thomistic Institute of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at...
February 2011
7 posts
3 tags
"For I wish that I myself were accursed. . ."
Excerpts from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Dare We Hope and a little reflection....
3 tags
Intentions and Intentional Limits in Calvin's...
1.4 Leave Alone the Tension or Leave Calvin: Helm and Ventriloquism Paul Helm is sometimes considered one of the foremost analytical philosophical theologians in the world … at least in the world of Reformed and Evangelical orthodoxy. He is also something of an interpreter of John Calvin’s theology, having published four known books on the reformer to date. Perhaps the book that really put...
5 tags
Bultmann: the Eschatological and the Ethical...
From Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament: ”The unity of the eschatological and the ethical message of Jesus may be so stated: Fulfilment of God’s will is the condition for participation in the salvation of His Reign. Only “condition” in that statement must not be taken in the external sense of an arbitrarily set task, in place of which some other could have been...
4 tags
Intentions and Intentional Limits in Calvin's...
1.2 The Will(s) of God, the Existence of Evil, and Intentional Silence The Oxford/UNC Chapel Hill philosophical theologian Marilyn McCord Adams has recently done extensive work on theodicy and the goodness of God, particularly concerning pernicious natural and situational evils — evils that seem to be circumstantial and arbitrary. I don’t have her work before me (namely, Christ and...
3 tags
Intentions and Intentional Limits in Calvin's...
1. Calvin’s Self-Limitation and Pastoral Intention in His Doctrine of Cosmological Providence. 1.1 A General Overview of Calvin’s Cosmological Providence (As an introductory remark, it should be noted that I take Richard Muller’s assertion about the relationship between cosmological and soteriological providence in the ’59 Institutes to be true. I agree that, for Calvin,...
3 tags
Intentions and Intentional Limits in Calvin's...
I recently had a “discussion” (as much as a facebook wall-post exchange can count as a discussion) with a friend on the nature of Calvin’s doctrine of providence and the way in which evil configures into God’s care and sustenance of the universe. This discussion was provoked by a pastoral tweet comment of typical reformed evangelical fare: “Christian, absolutely...
2 tags
In Anticipation . . .
… of the first day of the Karl Barth course:...
January 2011
9 posts
1 tag
The Theological Culture of Fear and The Potential...
This week is a down week here at Princeton Seminary. Fall Short term assignments had to be turned in by 12pm and a near week long ‘break’ has been inagurated. Down time doesn’t mean time away from theology, of course, but rather time for personal theological interests, goals, and reflection. For me, this means time to run through David Kelsey’s theological anthropology,...
6 tags
Eucharistic Sacrifice, Synergism, and Another Look...
Staying true to the Reformation principles of the centrality and completeness of Christ’s historic sacrifice, Torrance states, “Just because [the work of Christ] is complete already we cannot think in terms of an extension of the incarnation, but only of an eschatological ‘repetitition’ of the incarnation … which is the doctrine enshrined in the sacrament of holy communion” (Incarnation,...
6 tags
Eucharistic Sacrifice, Synergism, and Another Look...
As a final look at Hunsinger’s book, it seems to me that the root cause beneath the innumerable problems for Eucharistic sharing is synergism, namely the role of merit in insuring and propagating salvation in Roman Catholic soteriology and Eucharistic theology. Though I am not certain how far Hunsinger would follow this, here’s an interepretation of his book that seeks to make that...
5 tags
Hunsinger, Enemy-love, & The Lord's Supper
”[T]he centrality of the Nicene eucharist carries missional implications. Where the gospel is rightly preached, and then rightly embodied in the eucharist, the mission imparted to the church is necessarily one of reconciliation and peace. Because it is God’s enemies who are the objects of God’s love — “while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the...
2 tags
"The Church after Google": PTR (Fall 2010)
The fall 2010 Princeton Theological Review is now available on the web for (pdf) download. Be sure to check out Travis Pickell’s “Thou Hast Given Me a Body: Theological Anthropology and the Virtual Church,” and “Theo-blogging and the Future of Academic Theology,” co-authored by Princeton Seminary Ph.D. candidates Travis McMaken and David Congdon. As an aside,...
4 tags
Transubstantiation and Inerrancy: Pneumatological...
By way of analogy, Prof. Bruce McCormack often links Verbal Plenary Inspiration (VPI) with the conceptual framework of Apollinarian Christology. As a necessary consequence of the VPI model, there is a kind of vacation of the human intellect and an indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the place of the nous. The ‘character’ and historicity of the human individual is retained, but content of...
4 tags
Spring '11 Classes and Thoughts on the Eucharist
After many modifications (and much cajoling by particular people), I have finally settled on my Spring 2011 course schedule: (Spring Long) 1. Intro. to NT Studies (Profs. Clifton Black and George Parsenios) 2. Pastoral Care and the Life Cycle (Prof. Donald Capps) 3. Speech Comm. II (Prof. Jeffrey Frymire) 4. Karl Barth (Prof. George Hunsinger) (Spring Short) 1. Women and Cultural Interpretation in...
5 tags
Barth and the Dangerous Business of God-talk
“In dogmatics,” Barth claims, “the Church has to measure its talk about God by the standard of its own being, i.e., of divine revelation. Its talk about God, however, is that of the intrinsically godless reason of man which is inimical to belief” (CD I/1; 28). Here Barth draws out parameters for doing dogmatic theology in distinction from E. Brunner’s eristic...
4 tags
Calvin on Christ as the Goal of Scripture
John 5.39 - “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me.” ——————————————————————————————“We learn from this passage that...
December 2010
4 posts
4 tags
Where Glory is Manifested.
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’” — Luke 2.13-14 (NRSV) “We have always to remember that God’s glory really consists in His self-giving, and that this has its centre and meaning of God’s Son, Jesus...
3 tags
Tanner & Competitive Incarnation
Been reading through Kathryn Tanner’s Jesus, Humanity and Trinity the past couple of days, and I am not so sure her Christology is entirely in keeping with her attempt to overcome non-competitive relations between God and humanity (and thus human and human). Tanner sees Christology as the point of inception for both her trinitarian theology and theological anthropology. “The key to...
2 tags
Over the Rhine, the Coming God, and Other Things
.The new OtR release “The Long Surrender” came out in advance this week. Instant download and first-class shipping. What an early present in this present anxiety-riddled time of final exam preparation! I think I pre-empted a Christmas gift from a favorite cousin and his wife, but I don’t think I can be sorry for that right now. I’ve only given it a quick three times over,...
2 tags
What is Glorious About God?
Perhaps one of the most frustrating theological hobbyhorses of conservative American evangelicals results from the projection of capitilistic visions of glory and grandeur into the nature of God. What is glorious about God? Type in the catch-phrase “we exist to glorify God by making disciples of all nations” into google and see how many evangelical churches claim this shibboleth as...
October 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Jüngel: The Speaking God and the Hearing Church
“[T]o desribe the action of the church as a word-event rather than as an opus allows us to make a more appropriate distinction between the divine acting subject and the human acting subject. For in accordance with its very raison d’etre, the church is primordially defined as the hearing church… Since the church comes into being as the hearing church and only by hearing becomes...
3 tags
Ecclesio-centricity or Ecclesio-eccentricity: Nate...
Here you can find an excellent interview of Nathan Kerr by Halden Doerge about his new(er), somewhat controversial book Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission. (And, yes, visit the other hyperlinks as well). Nate also has some insightful comments about the dangers intrinsic to the idea of a Christian University as well as new directions in his constructive theological...
2 tags
Barth and Shallow Ecumenism
At work this afternoon, I was doing the usual run through of Band 1 of the Bibliographie Karl Barth when I stumbled upon this fascinating little letter written by Barth in 1928 to an editor of an ecumenically concerned, quarterly magazine the “Student World.” The editor had requested Barth write an article on the theme “The Christ of Faith.” Here is Barth’s response....
