The canonical gospels often portray Christ as limited in various ways, for example, with respect to knowledge. But how could Christ be divine yet fail to know certain true propositions? One prominent ...answer is known as kenoticism, the view that upon becoming incarnate Christ ‘emptied’ himself of certain divine properties, including omniscience. A powerful objection to kenoticism, however, is that it conflicts with Anselmian intuitions about divinity. Specifically, kenoticism implies that Christ was not the greatest conceivable being. I articulate a modified version of kenoticism that avoids this powerful objection while remaining faithful to the depiction of Christ found in the gospels.
The ecclesial communities that separated themselves from the Orthodox Church of the Roman Empire in the aftermath of the Fourth Ecumenical Council (the Council of Chalcedon of 451) are known today as ...the Oriental Orthodox or Non-Chalcedonian Churches. They comprise the Coptic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Apostolic Armenian, and Tewahedo Ethiopian Churches. Attempts to reunite them to the imperial Church were abandoned in the mid-sixth century and were only resumed unofficially in 1964 and then officially in 1985. The Official Consultation was suspended in 1994 after a strong protest from the Holy Community of Mount Athos concerning the theological implications of the Agreed Statements and has only recently been resumed. The issues discussed in the two books under review include the compatibility of different understandings of the key terms of Christology, the role of contextual theology, and the non-negotiability of the status of ecumenical councils. Both books make important contributions to what is still an intensely debated problematic.
John Macquarrie’s contribution to Anglican systematic theology has been long acknowledged and his impact is still being felt both within and outside Anglicanism. His existentialist theology, with its ...roots in German philosophy, as well as Christian mysticism, can at times seem quite distant from ‘traditional’ Anglican theology, but when his way of engaging in theological reflection is examined closely, his epistemology does not appear to be as remote from the ‘traditional’ Anglican hermeneutic of Scripture, tradition reason as it might seem at first sight. This article will argue that Macquarrie’s epistemology is rooted in the Anglican three-fold hermeneutic inherited from Richard Hooker, albeit in a way that is adapted for the modern age. In some respects, Macquarrie’s hermeneutic is a development of Hooker’s ‘three-legged stool’, but a ‘stool’ that has been heavily renovated in light of, and in response to, the existentialist crisis seen in continental philosophy from Søren Kierkegaard onwards. Macquarrie offers a resolution to the tension between individual and corporate identities, and his epistemology may offer Anglican thought a means of negotiating some controversial contemporary theological issues.
In
Christ the Heart of Creation
, Rowan Williams argues that Christology as expounded by the classical tradition in Western theology holds a bounty for thinking in Christian ontology about the ...God-world relation. In particular, he uses the work of Søren Kierkegaard throughout to show that the relation between finite and infinite, immanent and transcendent, is not competitive, and thus there need be no metaphysical problem when holding that the incarnate God-man is both fully human and divine. This essay argues, however, that Kierkegaard’s own pseudonymous work cited by Williams holds the incarnation to be far more paradoxical and intellectually offensive than Williams allows. However, such priority of offense does not put an end to Christ’s central ontological position but rather shifts it to new directions in our thinking about theological ontology. Rather than Williams’ own conception of a cosmos in which the divine and non-divine are compatible and harmonious, Kierkegaard presents a doctrine of existence in which God and the human are in constant, dynamic engagement and in which temporal being bears ultimate primacy for Christian existence.
The Spirit and salvation? Van der Westhuizen, Henco
In die skriflig : tydskrif van die Gereformeerde Teologiese Vereniging,
01/2020, Letnik:
54, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
To answer the question of the relation between the Spirit and salvation, this article explores Michael Welker’s theology of the Trinity. I argue that Welker’s Trinitarian theology, with its focus on ...the activity of the triune God, is built on his theology of the Spirit. The Spirit, I argue, allows him to understand the salvific activity of the triune God realistically. The first three parts of the article will focus on Welker’s Trinitarian understanding of salvation, by looking at the sacraments, particularly at holy communion as a mirror of the salvific activity of the triune God. The fourth and final part will analyse Welker’s theology of the triune God in light of Dirk J. Smit’s analysis of the Trinity, thereby shedding light on Welker’s understanding of the activity of the triune God, on the one hand, and on the relation between the Spirit and salvation, on the other.
Even thirty years after Thomas Morris wrote The Logic of God Incarnate, there are some claims that Morris makes that require examination in analytic Christology. One of those claims is a concession ...that Morris gives to modalists near the end of the book, where he says that the two–minds view he has defended can be used to provide a consistent modalistic understanding of Jesus’s prayer life. This view, he says, blocks the inference from the fact that Jesus prays to the Father to the additional claim that Jesus and the Father are numerically distinct. I argue that Oneness Pentecostals can appropriate central concepts from The Logic of God Incarnate as Morris suggests, and further that this means Oneness Pentecostals should abandon the claim that Jesus believes he just is the Father. Once Oneness Pentecostals abandon this claim, they can give a possible explanation of how it is that Jesus relates to the Father in prayer even though he just is the Father.
Classical Trinitarians claim that Jesus—the Son of God—is truly God and that there is only one God and the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct. However, if ...the identity statement that ‘the Son is God’ is understood in the sense of numerical identity, logical incoherence seems immanent. Yet, if the identity statement is understood according to an ‘is’ of predication then it lacks accuracy and permits polytheism. Therefore, we argue that there is another sense of ‘is’ needed in trinitarian discourse that will allow the Christian to avoid logical incoherence while still fully affirming all that is meant to be affirmed in the confession ‘Jesus is God.’ We suggest a sense of ‘is’ that meets this need.
Spinoza's Christology A Brief Summary Di Giovanni, Aldo
Journal of religious & theological information,
20/2/3/, Letnik:
19, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article summarizes a number of Spinoza texts relating to his Christology and soteriology based on his Christology. The texts show that Spinoza's Christology underpins his formulation of human ...nature or the constitution of the essence of the human mind. Considering Spinoza's texts concerning God or Nature, "Christ according to the spirit", the spirit or mind of Christ, and human salvation or blessedness; this article illustrates that given the texts, the study of Spinoza's Christian religion is skewed and ought to be more balanced. The author's reading of Spinoza and its application to his work presented in this article provides a coherent and tenable understanding of Spinoza's efforts "to commend and establish the authentic purpose of the Christian Religion".
Wolfgang Vondey’s
Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel
is a tour de force in Pentecostal systematic theology. It is also the most articulate statement of the fivefold gospel’s power to ...explain the impulses of past Pentecostal spirituality and its constructive potential for future Pentecostal discourse. Combining both traditional and innovative systematic loci, Vondey’s project shows great promise for the enterprise of christologically oriented narrative theology. One looming question is whether the christocentrism of the full gospel can bear adequate witness to some of the details of Spirit christology. That is, can the full gospel, with its emphasis on Jesus actively bestowing the Holy Spirit on creatures, give proper place to Jesus passively receiving the Holy Spirit from the Father, without the full gospel’s structure undergoing fundamental transformation? While some ambiguities remain in Vondey’s attempts to employ both the full gospel and elements of Spirit christology in the same theological paradigm, he takes long strides towards integrating these two themes that have often competed with each other for space in Pentecostal theology.
A Frenchman in Tokyo Ireland, Benjamin Hiramatsu
Journal of literary & cultural disability studies,
07/2022, Letnik:
16, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The article examines Endō Shūsaku’s Wonderful Fool (1959) through the lens of disability studies to argue that the novel’s protagonist Gaston Bonaparte—a Frenchman and failed seminary candidate prone ...to misadventures in Tokyo—subverts cultural structures of ableism in postwar Japanese society. Described as a horse-faced man with a monstrous physicality, Gaston embodies a disabled Christ figure whose presentation integrates numerous transcultural characteristics. The article situates the novel during postwar Japan, in relation to the beginning of disability movements in 1960s Tokyo, to suggest Endō’s implicit criticism of ableism—a perpetuating, defining cultural feature of postwar Japanese society giving rise to exclusionary treatments of physically and culturally dissimilar bodies. Endō’s novel not only promotes a Christian-oriented inclusivity as a solution to postwar Japan’s social brokenness but also a theology of disability—namely, a recognition that embracing Christ and Christian virtues entails an interdependence with all disabled and foreign bodies. Wonderful Fool uses a disabled folkloric-Christological figure—a paradoxical, transnational union between the East and West—through whom Endō envisions a cultural shift toward disability acceptance and Christian evangelization in Japan.
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