No time for blogging today but here’s a few things to check out:
Anna Madsen, The Theology of the Cross in Historical Perspective (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2007. ix + 269 pages. ISBN: 978-1-59752-835-1. Review copy courtesy of Wipf and Stock.
It is encouraging to see a growing stream of books dedicated to engaging with the work of Jürgen Moltmann. I have just finished reading Anna Madsen’s ambitious study The Theology of the Cross in Historical Perspective (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2007), part of the young ‘Distinguished Dissertations in Christian Theology’ series that Wipf and Stock are co-sponsoring with the journal Word and World: Theology for Christian Ministry and with the Christian Theological Research Fellowship (CTRF). In this book, this Assistant Professor of Religion at Augustana College in South Dakota (USA) traces the currents of a theology of the cross in St Paul, Luther, von Loewenich, Kitamori and Moltmann, before turning our gaze towards Feminist and Liberationist evaluations and applications of a theologia crucis.
On Luther, the author reminds us that we miss the whole catalyst for the German monks’ revolutionary theological advance when we divorce his theologia crucis from the context of the Church’s appeal for alms in the form of indulgences. The issue, she claims, is that God can not be ‘bought off’.
She explores the twentieth century’s witnessing of a variety of theologies of the cross, some of which, ironically, actually call for the cross itself to be discarded on the grounds that it symbolises (and glorifies) not hope but only violence. The tired divine child-abuse paradigms are briefly discussed. Conversely, Madsen observes that there remain those who insist that in the face of unparalleled and devastating poverty, destruction, abuse, exploitation and suffering, the cross provides the only interpretive tool which theology can offer. Specifically, the cross becomes the symbol to announce God’s full identification with the sufferers and God’s condemnation of the privileged. An adequate critique of this liberationist reading is not forthcoming in this volume.
The section on Moltmann (pp. 181-207) serves as a particularly helpful introduction to Moltmann’s theology as a whole, especially for those unfamiliar with the work of this creative and Reformed theologian. That it is explored in the context of a theological tradition from Paul through Luther et al makes it all the more helpful, for, as Madsen notes, no matter how much Moltmann’s theology of the cross consciously attends to life post-Auschwitz and more consciously extends justification as that which leads to justice-seeking, it remains fundamentally dependent upon Luther’s.
Madsen’s study argues that while there is no uniform theology of the cross, ‘Paul’s approach provides the soundest and most comprehensive’ vista, not least because his is a theology most elucidated not in isolation from but rather vis-à-vis the resurrection. Paul’s theology of the cross is, therefore, (while its various tones and emphases were always determined by its context) that which always concerns the removal of boundaries – both horizontal and vertical. Still, Madsen concludes, the theology of the cross remains that which announces that ‘God is found in death … in the death of sin, of suffering, of uncertainty’, and is marked by service, and is that which assures the people of God that God is present. It is therefore a theology of grace, of freedom and trust. Moreover, without a theology of the cross, she insists, it is unclear what the Church is called to be and to preach.
I warmly commend Madsen’s study as an accessible contribution to a topic at the heart of Christian good news, and as a valuable introduction to work by von Loewenich and Forde (On Being a Theologian of the Cross remains, to my mind, one of the best introductions to Luther’s theology available, alongside Randall Zachman’s The Assurance of Faith, with which, oddly, Madsen fails to engage), Moltmann and Sölle, Sobrino and Gutierrez. It is a clearly-written and pastorally-aware study … and it’s got a beautiful cover!
Back to Moltmann studies: Alongside Madsen’s study, I also have on my desk another book that engages with Moltmann’s thought: Tim Chester’s, Mission and the Coming of God: Eschatology, the Trinity and Mission in the Theology of Jürgen Moltmann (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006). I’m hoping to read and post a review of it sometime soon(ish). Also, Ashgate recently announced that 2009 will witness the arrival of Timothy Harvie’s book, Jürgen Moltmann’s Ethics of Hope: Eschatological Possibilities for Moral Action (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009). Paternoster too are planning to publish Nik Ansell’s insightful study, The Annihilation of Hell: Universal Salvation and the Redemption of Time in the Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann.
Again, it’s encouraging to see these studies appearing. Moltmann’s work deserves the attention, and critical evaluation.
Mike Higton, SCM Core Text: Christian Doctrine. London: SCM Press, 2008. xi + 413pp. £22.99.
While the finest of Christian dogmatics employs the grammar of praxis, proposition and imagination, much of what passes for ‘orthodoxy’ privileges proposition and is (to varying degrees) suspicious of those attempts to faithfully make sense of life encountered and interpreted in a specific time and space biography, drawing upon God’s action corporately experienced, and upon the narratives and metaphors that inform Christian imagination. As invaluable as propositions are, they ought not be, according to Mike Higton, ‘extricated from the Christian lives and imaginations’ (p. 73) that provide the context for comprehending and evaluating all things in light of that one determining Word of God who has taken on flesh and who, in the Spirit, is dancing created humanity into participation in God’s life in the world. It is this grand narrative that stirs Higton’s theological project in Christian Doctrine (part of the SCM Core Text series), and provides the matrix through which he seeks to assist readers to make sense of life as individuals and communities in relation to each other, and in relation to God.
Knowing and loving God, Higton presses, is more akin to knowing, loving and sharing identity with a piece of music – it is to resonate with, and to participate in, even to become an aspect of, God’s eternally-playing melody – than it is to ‘grasp fully, define and explain’ (p. 57) the otherwise unknowable God. Such knowledge is interruptive, transformative and self-involving, drawing a responsive participant into – to be ‘caught up … grasped by’ (p. 57) – the same love and justice that is God’s life and which God has revealed to the world in Jesus of Nazareth and made real by the invading, transforming and overwhelming Spirit who draws human persons to Christ, ‘impels and enables participation’ in God’s kingdom, and who produces a response ‘consistent with the claim that God is love’ (p. 255). While ‘imagining how the immanent life of God functions is not our business’ (p. 99), Higton is confident that what God makes known in the economy is the ‘dance’ of God’s own immanent life – God’s one endless threefold way; that is why, according to the author, God can be trusted and known. ‘The economy is enough‘ (p. 102). As Higton repeatedly reminds, the triune God who is love ‘all the way down’ is ‘immanently Christlike’ (p. 71):
[To] learn to speak appropriately about God’s immanent life is to learn to see the human being Jesus – a graspable, knowable, historical, economic reality – as the coming to the world of the ineffable, eternal Son; it is to learn to see the Father who appears in one’s economic imaginations and words as the coming to the world of the eternal, ineffable Father; it is to learn to see the shakings and stirrings of the Spirit’s historical, economic work as the coming to the world of the ineffable Spirit. It is to learn to see the whole patterned drama of the economy, into which Christians believe all are called, as the opening up to the world of God’s own immanent life’. (pp. 101-2)
Christian Doctrine emerges out of a certificate course in theology that Higton teaches at Exeter, and is targeted at second- and third-year undergraduate students. Resisting all attempts to merely download the tradition, Higton seeks to encourage the critical making, breaking and remaking of sense that is all around us, and to do so with careful attentiveness to the transforming light of the Christian story – at the heart of which is God’s love and justice.
The book consists of two parts: The first, ‘Life in God’ (pp. 1-166), explores with startling clarity questions of epistemology, the indivisible relationship between knowing and loving (here he draws upon Exodus 3:13-17 and 1 John 4:7-21), God-talk, God’s trinitarian economy, and God’s human life. On the latter, Higton draws upon depictions of Jesus in painting and film, contrasting Piero della Francesca’s Baptism with Antonello da Messina’s Le Christ à la colonne, and two parts of Matthias Grünewald’s Eisenheim Altarpiece. The author presses that triune love made flesh – that is, one ‘utterly human, unreservedly and unadulteratedly human’ (p. 130) – is ‘God’s way of loving the world’ (p. 124), and belief in which occasions rearrangement and transformation of every area of one’s life and every aspect of one’s world. The book’s first part concludes with a chapter on pneumatology, on the enlivening Spirit who sustains, animates and enlivens all life, who draws out and nurtures skills, wisdom and justice, who erupts against idolatry, injustice, darkness, estrangement and oppression, and who patterns human persons for their deeper share in ‘unfragmented communion’ (p. 161) in God’s life through a ‘journey of learning and unlearning’ (p. 152) while working to complete and perfect creation. ‘It is the Spirit’s work to draw what might otherwise be a cacophonic disunity into symphony. The Spirit worked to transcribe God’s music for playing on the human instrument of Jesus of Nazareth; the Spirit now works to orchestrate that theme for an ensemble of billions’ (p. 161)).
Part Two, ‘Life in the World’ (pp. 167-404), seeks to unpack the implications of God’s threefold action for our assessment of creation, providence and freedom, eschatology, suffering, love, theodicy, harmartiology and soteriology, and the four traditional ecclesiological marks. The discussion on the Church’s sacramental activities (pp. 314-24) deserves careful reading. Higton presses that the two sacraments ‘don’t simply say something about what the Church is, but are part of the process by which the Church actually becomes what it should be’ (p. 316), and is ‘redescribed’ (p. 321). In the two final chapters, Higton identifies some popular lenses – ‘settlements’ – that are often employed to interpret the Bible’s message(s), before offering his own proposal, what he names ‘trinitarian settlement’ which, he suggests, understands the core narrative of Holy Scripture as concerned with a journey into the triune life itself; the Bible being read not as a ‘moral handbook’ (p. 379), but ‘around Jesus’, ‘in the Spirit’ (which means at least read ecumenically, in conversation with the tradition, in openness to previously excluded voices, and in hope), and ‘on the way to the Father’ (pp. 376-400). Throughout, Higton is concerned to relate central Christian doctrines to the experienced realities of human being, resolute to show how such doctrines affect how one conceives, interprets and lives with everything else, all the while pressing that the ‘world is called to the fulfilment of its creatureliness, not the abandonment of it’ (p. 182).
There are a number of underlying commitments that find expression in Christian Doctrine. I will name four: (i) a deep commitment to Trinitarian theology: ‘The word “God” simply refers to the reality that Christians come to know, and whose life they come to share, as they find themselves, in the Spirit, caught up in the Son’s love of the Father and the Father’s sending of the Son’ (p. 90). Higton is suspicious of those attempts to describe the triune life along social trinitarian lines (see pp. 96-101) because, he argues, such steer too close to positing ‘three realities that share the same defining characteristics’ (p. 97). He suggests that such attempts threaten (at least temporarily) to lose sight of the particularity of the persons and that if trinitarian theologians are serious about the nature of community, they must ground their theology not in a general account of personhood and relationality, but in reflection of the life specifically of the three Persons. ‘Talk about the Trinity’, he insists, ‘should not ever be something different from the Bible’s talk about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’ (p. 100). Moreover, Higton rightly rejects throughout all attempts to think about, talk about or imagine God by way of going behind the economy and beginning with a set of abstract propositions (see pp. 97-9); (ii) that the goal of human life is theosis – being drawn in time and space to share in the love and justice which is God’s life; (iii) an unashamed commitment to helping those within and without the Church to value and ‘do’ theology; and (iv) that theological realities ought to inform all aspects of life in the world.
Presumably, because of the classroom context out of which this material arose, it is at times unnecessarily repetitious. This makes the volume longer than it needs to be. Also, the chapters are qualitatively uneven; I found chapters 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 13 to be the strongest. Another reservation is that whereas Higton situates his theology in a covenantal context, there is very little discussion of the place of law in his exploration of central Christian doctrines. Moreover, while the ‘not-yet’ of holiness is properly explored, the author’s discussion on the Church’s mark of holiness inadequately explores the Church’s faithful confession of its ontological life as the ‘set-apart’ of God, and the divine election by virtue of which the Church is already holy. Also, occasionally (e.g. p. 177) Higton expresses a somewhat more panentheistic vision of reality that some readers may feel moves beyond that witnessed to in Scripture, even though he is careful throughout to distinguish – while not separating – divine transcendence from divine immanence, and to not conflate creation into divinity.
These shortcomings aside, Christian Doctrine is a lucid introduction to the subject, and it is encouraging to see a work targeted at mid-level undergraduate students. Pastorally sensitive, receptive of the tradition, accessibly written, and inviting of conversation, Higton attractively resists over-presuming on his claims and he models an unashamed agnosticism on matters where less sober minds might push for sight (see, for example, his treatment on the parousia on pages 218-21). Exegetically informed, Higton patterns a theological commitment which requires that one approach Scripture expectantly and vulnerably, prepared to be ‘unsettled, overthrown and remade’ (p. 400). The book’s structure, and that of each chapter, serves the reiteration of key teaching points, each of which are also helpfully illustrated with well-chosen examples from life, Scripture and/or the arts. The inclusion throughout of carefully-chosen exercises, discussion starters and suggestions for additional reading well compliments each section. A useful complement to recent introductions by Migliore, McGrath, Ford and Gunton, Christian Doctrine is a constructive introductory volume for the student, and a helpful model for the teacher – an all-too-rare combination.
[NB: A version of this review has been submitted to IJST]
Regular readers of this blog have no doubt noticed my interest in Church history. While the seed for this interest was planted decades ago, it has sprouted more rapidly in recent years as I have focused my attention on one of Church history’s outstanding figures, PT Forsyth. One of the real joys of doing a PhD is being introduced to so many new names and so much unfamiliar literature. For me, this has principally been Victorian/Edwardian nonconformist theologians from Britain.
Having enjoyed these introductions so much, I thought it might be a good idea to (from time to time) share some biographical material on, and quotes from, various theologians that I come across that are of particular interest. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography will be a principal source. The series will include posts on:
(If there’s a biography that you’d particularly like to see included, let me know … and why).
Note: Additional dictionary content from The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography can be obtained free in the UK from public libraries thanks to a national deal with the MLA.
‘… we have been given a perennially valid paradigm for theology in our Christ-centered trinitarian confession of faith, expressed in the classic ecumenical creeds of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon. When things seem to be falling apart in theology and church practice, then I would propose that we reclaim once again the strong name of the Trinity, because there we find a continuing framework of Christian identity, transcending the discontinuities and oscillations of history and culture’. – Carl E. Braaten, ‘The Cultural Captivity of Theology: An Evangelical Catholic Perspective’ (a paper presented at The Inaugural Margaret McKinnon Memorial Lecture on Christianity and Culture, Nepean Presbytery of the Uniting Church in Australia, Melbourne, 1997), 20.
‘… to deny the filioque is ultimately to subvert the homoousion, for such a denial allows no relational, and so no unifying, interplay between the Son and the Holy Spirit as together they come forth from the Father’. – Thomas G. Weinandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 137.
Reading Ray Anderson is always good for the soul, the head, and the hands. He writes as one who is simultaneously clinician and patient – pointing ever away from himself to Christ as both God’s Act of reconciliation and God’s Word of revelation. Like all good theologians, Anderson does his theology apostle-like; that is, daily at the coalface with people in their doubt, grief, death, guilt and repentance. Not one word of the NT came from the pen of a cloistered cleric! NT theology was hammered out not from articles and commentaries and academic conferences but on the anvil of existential need, seeking at every turn to bring every situation under the scrutiny and grace, not of Scripture, but of Jesus Christ, mindful of the fact that Jesus did not come to preach the Gospel (or the Bible) so much as he came to make a Gospel to preach. Ray Anderson continues in this tradition … and that’s one reason why I love reading him.
Anyway, here’s a few sentences from his great introductory essay on practical theology:
‘What makes theology practical is not the fitting of orthopedic devices to theoretical concepts in order to make them walk. Rather, theology occurs as a divine partner joins us on our walk, stimulating our reflection and inspiring us to recognize the living Word, as happened to the two walking on the road to Emmaus on the first Easter (Lk 24) … At the center of the discussion of the nature of practical theology is the issue of the relation of theory to praxis. If theory precedes and determines practice, then practice tends to be concerned primarily with methods, techniques and strategies for ministry, lacking theological substance. If practice takes priority over theory, ministry tends to be based on pragmatic results rather than prophetic revelation … Barth, from the beginning, resisted all attempts to portray theory and praxis in opposition to one another, In his early Church Dogmatics he described any distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” as a “primal lie, which has to be resisted in principal”. The understanding of Christ as the light of life can be understood only as a “theory which has its origin and goal in praxis”‘. – Ray S. Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis (Downers Grove: IVP, 2001), 12, 14, 15.
We had not thought about it.
We were born. We lived to die.
All the while we lived we did not think.
When the casket came
We followed to the graveyard,
Solemn and thoughtful, still not knowing,
Not knowing why we were created,
Indeed, why anything had come to be.
Some of us remembered the country schoolyard,
Also the classroom, the teacher,
And the daily business of life.
In the afternoons we went home,
Played time and life along with the family,
Returning to the school next day.
These were the only things we knew,
And these without reflection.
So it has always been. Time comes and goes;
Sometimes a vagrant thought tickles the mind
And puzzles the otherwise restful innerness
That hiddenness of our being
Where thought perhaps both comes and goes,
And things are as always wereand will be.
What, then, is all this speculation
Concerning creation?
CreationI think it must be this,
Though our teachers never told us so,
So busy they were being busy, or so
Busy being indolent and unspeculative
Creation, I say, is a most powerful mystery,
Troubling the thought processes, puzzling us.
We know not what it is. All we know
Is that we’re here, though they tell me
Philosophers deny this fact, saying,
‘Man is insubstantial unreality,
A thought he’s had,
A figment of his mind’.
What’s a figment if but then
No proof of anything is possible?
Sometimes a moment comes
An hour perhapswhen dullness dies,
New thoughts come wheeling on the wing,
Invading the untutored innerness,
And then we wakeif but for a moment,
A dazzling comprehension comes.
We wake and start, we puzzled stare,
We think the thoughts we never thought before.
That schoolyard bare, that afternoon,
The evening passed, the meal consumed,
And sleep againthese suddenly
Take form and motion, in the air
Bright thoughts bring flash and sparkle,
And we begin to think
Creation is the thought of mind.
‘Why are we here?’ we ask,
‘And how and what is here, and there?
What’s it forall of thisand all for what?
Why anything and everything?’
‘Morons’, you say we are. Morons we are.
We know so little who know so much,
And all’s away, and little grasped.
No one can say the word ‘Create!’
And really understand its truth,
Its fact and being, all its form and life.
If this we learnthis much for now
Perhaps we’re on the way to it,
To knowing and to seeing it,
To feeling and to being it. You say,
‘Oh, here we are, so quit it quick
This foolish quest of knowing,
Finding out, round and about
The fact of this creation’.
We cannot quit who know it not.
We know we’re here, but how and why,
And why it is that we must die,
Are speculations rife and oft
From time’s beginningso we hear.
The fact is this, the truth is this,
That we must know, and when we do
Creation’s truth will dazzle all,
And we’ll begin to hear
What God is saying to His world,
His dull and hazy, lazy world.
– Geoffrey C. Bingham, ‘Creation’, in Creation and the Liberating Glory (Blackwood: New Creation Publications, 2004), 259–61.
Every now and then (particularly for those of us who are committed to reading work from previous centuries) one comes across words that are as quotable and as edifying as – though shorter than – the title of the book from where they came. One example:
‘The Doctrine of the universal Extent of Christ’s Death doth yield a clear Ground and an infallible Evidence for the strongest Faith, so as to remove all doubting, and to fill the Heart with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’ These words were written by James Fraser of Brae in his A TREATISE on JUSTIFYING FAITH, Wherein is opened the GROUND of BELIEVING, or the Sinners sufficient Warrant to take hold of what is offered in the everlasting GOSPEL. Together with an APPENDIX concerning, the OBJECT of CHRIST’S DEATH, unfolding the dangerous and various pernicious Errors that hath been vented about it (Edinburgh: William Gray, 1749), 201. While lengthy titles like this are no friend of those working on a tight word limit, you just gotta love ‘em all the same!
Unlike that crippling and anxiety-producing theology of federal Calvinism which finally bids believers to turn towards themselves (and their works) for assurance, James Fraser of Brae (like Calvin and Knox before him) entreats us to look to Christ alone as the objective mirror of our election in whose incarnate person and atoning work we know liberating assurance, all doubting is removed, and hearts are filled ‘with joy unspeakable‘. Nearly 200 years later, that same evangelical Gospel would erupt from the lips and pen of another Scot, PT Forsyth:
Now for this tremendous certainty there is no other foundation than the historical revelation and salvation in Christ as the eternal and comprehensive object of God’s loving will and choice, the Captain of the elect. We have not sufficient ground outside that for believing or trusting such a God. We cannot start with a view of God reached on speculative or other similar grounds, and then use Christ as a mere means for confirming it or giving it practical effect. That would mean a certainty higher than Christ’s, and the superfluity of Christ when the end had been reached. Which is not the Christian Gospel, be that Gospel right or wrong. In that Gospel our final certainty can never be detached from what Christ did, what He is and does for eternity. The eternal election is in Christ, “Mine elect in whom My soul delighteth”; and only in Christ does faith at every stage realise it. Hence it has been well pointed out that we must not preach election to produce the certainty of Christian faith, but preach Christ and faith in Him to give us the certainty of our election. (The Principle of Authority, 353)
‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God’. (John 6:68-69)
Reno Lauro is a Texan mate of mine who is also writing a PhD at St Andrews University. Recently, Reno created a 5-min low-budget film, Last Rites, for a competition for The Doorpost Film Project.
The finalists are elected by judges (50%) and ratings of individual viewers (50%), so it would be great if you could watch the film and, if you like it, rate it favorably.
My comment: ‘Lauro instantly and faithfully draws us into a narrative – and meta-narrative – than has been going on long before the film starts, or ends. A snapshot of the kingdom … in 5 minutes! Brilliant!’
To Prof. Jürgen Moltmann
Bonn
Basel, Bethesda Hospital, 17 November 1964
Dear Colleague,
It was most kind of you to have a copy of your Theologie dei Hoffnung sent to me. During my stay in the hospital, which is to end the day after tomorrow, I had the leisure to read it all at once and assimilate the basic contents. It is time for me to express my thanks not only for the attention shown to me but also for the instruction and stimulation I received from reading your work. May I say a couple of words about the impression it made on me? I have been looking for decades-I was looking even in the twenties-for the child of peace and promise, namely the man of the next generation who would not just accept or reject what I intended and did in theology but who would go beyond it positively in an independent conception, improving it at every point in a renewed form. I took up and studied your book with this expectation, and at beginning of my reading I seriously asked myself whether Jürgen Moltmann, who, as far as I recalled, was as yet unknown to me personally, might not be the man. I have in fact been impressed not only by your varied scholarship but also by the spiritual force and systematic power that characterize your book. This attempt, as I foresaw, had to be ventured one day, and the critical insights you have brought on both the right and left hand must and will carry the discussion further. It is to be hoped that note will be taken of you in all circles. I am glad to see how you deal with some earlier efforts to portray me and to note what you say about the present state of knowledge concerning me.
But, dear Dr. Moltmann, I do not find in your Theology of Hope what is really needed today to refine C.D. and my own theological thrust. I will not hold it against you, as Gollwitzer does, that your book gives us no concrete guidance on ethics in this sphere, determined and bordered by the eschaton. Nor does it seem any more important to me that one looks in vain for a concrete eschatology, i.e., for an elucidation of such concepts as coming again, resurrection of the dead, eternal life etc. You obviously did not intend to write an eschatology, but only the prolegomena to one and to the corresponding ethics. My own concern relates to the unilateral way in which you subsume all theology in eschatology, going beyond Blumhardt, Overbeck, and Schweitzer in this regard. To put it pointedly, does your theology of hope really differ at all from the baptized principle of hope of Mr. Bloch? What disturbs me is that for you theology becomes so much a matter of principle (eschatological principle). You know that I too was once on the edge of moving in this direction, but I refrained from doing so and have thus come under the fire of your criticism in my later development. Would it not be wise to accept the doctrine of the immanent trinity of God? You may thereby achieve the freedom of three-dimensional thinking which the eschata have and retain their whole weight while the same and not just a provisional) honor can still be shown to the kingdoms of nature and grace. Have my concepts of the threefold time [C.D. III, 2, §47.1) and threefold parousia of Jesus Christ [C.D. IV, 3, §69.4) made so little impact on you that you do not even give them critical consideration? But salvation does not come from C.D. (I started out here when reading your book) but from knowledge of the “eternally rich God” with whom I thought I should deal (problematically enough). If you will pardon me, your God seems to me to be rather a pauper. Very definitely, then, I cannot see in you that child of peace and promise. But why should you not become that child? Why should you not outgrow the inspired onesidedness of this first attempt in later works? You have the stuff (and I congratulate you on this) from which may come a great dogmatician who can give further help to the church and the world …
With friendly greetings, renewed thanks, and all good wishes for future,
Yours,
Karl Barth
– Karl Barth, Letters 1961–1968 (trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 174–6.
Professor David Fergusson (Professor of Divinity, The University of Edinburgh) will deliver the 2008 Gifford Lectures on the topic ‘Religion and Its Recent Critics’. The program for the 2008 Gifford Lectures is available here, and it looks impressive.
Tuesday 8 April
The new atheism: historical roots and contemporary context.
Thursday 10 April
The implausibility of religious belief: claims and counter-claims.
Tuesday 15 April
The genesis of religion: can Darwinism explain it away?
Wednesday 16 April
Religion, morality and art: invention or discovery?
Tuesday 22 April
Is religion bad for our health? Saints, martyrs and terrorists.
Thursday 24 April
Sacred texts: how should we treat them?
Sounds like something in there for everyone. The lectures will be held at the Sir Charles Wilson Lecture Theatre, University Avenue/Gibson Street, Glasgow @ 18.00. They are free and open to the public. Registration to Clare Laidlaw (0141 330 4978)
One of the more exciting things about studying at St Mary’s College (University of St Andrews) is the rich interaction between biblical studies students and their dogmatic theology comrades. There may be lots of other smells around St Mary’s College, but there is little here that smells of ‘keeping the disciplines separate’. Some of my colleagues have now started a blog called Scripture and Theology in order to facilitate discussion beyond metropolis of St Andrews. It is well worth checking out.
Here’s a taster from Luke Tallon on Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1:
God did not create his creatures to live in the colorless borderland of the evening, but in the glorious light of the breaking dawn “when the creature is drawn to the praise and love of the Creator.” With this language Augustine certainly foreshadows the twilight following the fall and the rising of the glorified Son, but Augustine also has in view the progressive development of creation under the command of the creator. Thus, Augustine provides two comforts to his audience. First, just as God in his activity in the six days of creation moved towards the goal of the Sabbath, so too God is moving creation history to a climactic “seventh day” (note: towards the fulfillment, not the abolition of creation). Whether we see this in the morning light or it is hidden from us in the colorlessness of evening, this providential movement is happening. Second, although the twilight still lingers, the darkness will never come, and in God’s own time he will usher in an eternal morning. Thus, Augustine reminds us that it is both natural and right to yearn for the morning (cf. Ben Harper’s “Morning Yearning”).
Dan has posted An Open Letter to Jürgen Moltmann.
Baxter Kruger shares a sermon On the Death of Jesus.
Jim Gordon draws our attention to Dora Greenwell who co-wrote a book on prayer with PT Forsyth, and offers a fine reflection on Holy Saturday.
Byron shares a great affirmation of materiality from Rowan Williams’ pen.
Travis has posted a review of Paul Nimmo’s Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision.
The recent Balthasar Blog Conference has been helpfully summarised by David Congdon and I’ve just noticed that my mate Jon Mackenzie (who has all but disappeared from blogdom) will be kick starting the second Karl Barth Blog Conference in early June.
David Congdon’s contribution to the Balthasar Blog Conference is a stellar must-read critique of von Balthasar’s pseudo-universalism. He writes:
This is the basis for a true “hermeneutics of hope”: the person of Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, who reconciled the world to God. When we begin with christological hope, we can preserve anthropological existentialism; but when we begin with anthropological existentialism, we will never truly reach christological hope.
And for your listening pleasure …
Listen to John Dickson talk about historical Jesus research in this podcast.
Graeme Goldsworthy shares a talk on The necessity and validity of Biblical Theology, Graeme Goldsworthy at SBTS.
Paul Davies reflects on the question ‘Could the universe have been other than what it is?’ in this podcast entitled The Cosmic Jackpot.
And barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside QC gives the ninth Manning Clark lecture in which he speaks about anti-terror laws, children in detention, and compensation for the stolen generations.
I am excited to report that Logos Bible Software have announced that they are finally ready to proceed with their long-awaited fully integrated electronic edition Karl Barth’s 14-volume Church Dogmatics, after having received the required final approval from the publisher. And there’s more:
‘Behind this delay is some very exciting news! The issue that was holding up production was whether we’d be producing the current edition or the forthcoming new edition. We are thrilled to let you know that the Logos edition will be the new edition! What’s new with the new edition? It offers the classic translation of T. F. Torrance, G. Bromiley and others, revised by a team of leading experts from the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. The text is presented in a new, user friendly format. Greek and Latin passages are now given in English translation alongside the original to make the work more accessible for students without a working knowledge of the ancient languages. Simply hover over or click the asterisk after any untranslated text to see its translation’.
Additionally, they’ve also made available 2 volumes of secondary literature in their Studies in Karl Barth Collection: Sung Wook Chung’s Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences, and Regarding Karl Barth by Trevor Hart.
More information here.
The Apostle John concluded his first epistle with the warning, ‘… keep yourselves from idols’ (1 John 5:21). This word to the Christian community in general extends to those who seek to undertake the specific task of Christian dogmatics. It is a reminder that we must resist at every point the temptation of becoming bewitched by the mere form that faith takes, and with the grammar of its enquiring landscape. To do so is to turn our gaze from the sun itself towards mere shadows, as fascinating as those shadows might be. Such a move threatens to cast and then bow down to an idol called ‘theology’ and allows that god’s agenda – whether of the academy, or of the Church, or of that system the Apostle John calls ‘the world’ – to determine what the triune God has and has not revealed about himself, about his people, and about the world.
Perhaps encouraged by a new leaf of democracy in Australian politics, Ben has resorted to a poll in order to identify the ‘world’s best living theologian’. A harmless enough exercise, I suppose, though thwarted with little promise of edifying anyone – something good theologians ought to be about. [Read: Jason’s just grumpy because Eberhard Jüngel is struggling to not come last]. In something of a response, Steve proposes some helpful comments on what it means – and should mean – to evaluate theologians.
Upon reading these two posts, I was reminded of the recent TF Torrance Lectures by Bruce McCormack and of how Bruce began on the first night by honouring Professor Torrance. He did so by recalling some words from Barth who once said that the phrase ‘great theologian’ was something of a contradiction in terms because worldly notions of greatness require qualities and values in a person which are contrary to the calling of a theologian. A theologian is called to be a witness – one who points beyond themselves – and to do so in service of those called to be ministers of the word.
NB: Ben has since redeemed the dignity of his blog with this post.
jasongoroncy.com 