Category: Evangelical Calvinist

The God of classical Calvinism and Arminianism is the same God, in the sense that their respective doctrines of God find resource in what Richard Muller identifies as ‘Christian Aristotelianism.’ How the Christian thinks of God will determine all else following, theologically. Since the actus purus (‘pure being’) god of Aristotle stands structurally and materially behind the way that Calvinism and Arminianism generally conceive of a God-world relation, what happens is that they must construct a system wherein this God remains untouched by said creation/world. In this effort, said systems have come to think of this God-world relation through a…

Here is some TF Torrance on the way he thinks the natural sciences and theological science might relate; might even complement each other from their own distinctive verities. . . . theological science and natural science have their own proper and distinctive objectives to pursue, but their work inevitably overlaps, for they both respect and operate through the same rational structures of space and time, while each develops special modes of investigation, rationality, and verification in accordance with the nature and the direction of its distinctive field. But since each of them is the kind of thing it is as…

I just noticed that my blog just went over a million hits. Thank you to all my readers and lurkers for making this blog what it is. I started blogging full time in 2005, and in the first four years of my blogging I foolishly moved around from url to url, to this new blog and that one. I eventually stuck with this one starting in 2009, and it has remained a place of refuge for me; in regard to being able to unload my thoughts in written form. I plan on blogging until the Lord returns, or He takes…

It is true that on the Deist view, God can also help us in another way. The very contemplation of his goodness in his works inspires us, and energizes us to do his will. Thus as the calm and most extensive determination of the soul towards the universal happiness can have no other centre of rest and joy than the original independent omnipotent Goodness; so without the knowledge of it, and the most ardent love and resignation to it, the soul cannot attain to its most stable and highest perfection and excellence. [Frances Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, p. 217]…

“Human righteousness, in whatever form it is found, is a Tower of Babel.” “Religion—and Barth is here speaking pre-eminently of Christianity—is at its heart, an exercise in self-delusion.” -Bruce McCormack, on Barth’s theology[1]   This is hard teaching, who wants to hear it? The first clause (above) conditions the second in Barth’s theology. He is referring to the role that human subjectivity plays in the construction of religion. We create expressions, settings, bells and whistles, verbiage, pews, cathedrals, flying buttresses, smiles (even while in agony), so on and so forth. In the end, do any of these things bring us…

Photo credit, Mikhail Shankov circa. 1995 John 14: 7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” 8 Philip *said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus *said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My…

In the Tradition ‘person,’ or in the Greek, hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) is appealed to when referring to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For some this poses a problem; for Barth in fact. There are a variety of reasons why Barth does not prefer to use this word for describing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; primary of which is the context he found himself in, and the way person had come to be understood under existential pressures. Not to mention the fact that even early on in the Patristic development the language itself also was less than amenable for many…

When we think of ‘worldview’ as an analytic tool, in order to categorize various belief systems worldwide, we often think, as Christians, that we have a spot in that type of indexing. But I am not ultimately a proponent of thinking of the Christian reality in the philosophical terms presupposed for thinking in terms of a worldview. Even so, insofar as this discipline of intellection goes, it can be helpful in at least providing a sense of order in regard to thinking about the various juxtapositions of the various ‘belief systems’ that populate the world, and its peoples. But at…

I think it always remains important, especially for those who are more “intellectually” predisposed, to remember that an application of that can never be an end in itself; everything, until the eschaton, is instrumental. That is to say, Christian doctrine, because of the dynamism and organicism of its reality in Jesus Christ and the triune God, should never became a calcified given and received. It is, indeed, both, that is, ‘given and received,’ but only as an organic lively reality wherein the receivers take what they’ve been given, speak with the Lord about it, fellowship with the communion of the…

The various phenomena referred to in Holy Scripture, is the same phenomena we experience currently in the world. The world of the Bible, not its ANE (ancient near eastern) parallels, is definitive in regard to the way we think about the world. To use extrabiblical data, and read that into the “gaps” of Scripture, is neither safe nor sound. To speculate is to go beyond the things that have been revealed by God (Deut. 29:29). There is an inner-logic to Scripture, but that is biblical not speculative. This is not to say that gaining an understanding of ANE and Second…