Category: Evangelical Calvinist

When engaging the theologians, it is an important exercise to broaden out the frame, every now and then, in order to get a greater, even critical understanding of just who we might be engaging with. This holds true for any of the theologians, including Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance (the two modern theologians who, of course, have had the greatest purchase in my life over the last, almost, two decades). In an effort to expand the scope on the way we might respectively approach Barth and Torrance, I wanted to offer some words from ecclesial intellectual historian, the late, Steven…

The LORD is beautiful. He alone is Immortal and dwells in unapproachable light. He who has this hope purifies himself. The glory of the LORD covers the earth as the waters cover the seas. The LORD’s Will will be done, and has been done. Jesus cried out God’s Will for the world, and said: “it is finished!” He made this cry in perfect tense. This is God’s beauty finished for the world in His dearly beloved Son. He has dwelled in this a se beauty, this plenitudinous pleroma before the foundations of the world; yea, before the foundations of the…

Out of curiosity: is anyone interested in more posts on classical Calvinism and Arminianism, and how they contrast with Evangelical Calvinism and/or Athanasian Reformed theology? I haven’t written those types of posts very much lately; I’m not even promising I will. But just curious if there is any interest in that, since that used to be the mainstay of what I engaged with. Athanasian Reformed

Knowledge of ourselves first requires a genuine knowledge of the One who created us. Without that outer reference point, there can be no genuine knowledge of the self. This was a key axiom of Calvin’s, as he wrote in his Institutes; and it is key for Barth as he developed his theological anthropology in the Church Dogmatics. The following is an excerpt from Barth’s CD III/2, where he is, indeed, doing the yeoman’s work of developing what he takes to be a genuinely Christian understanding of what the entailments are of what it means to be human. You will notice,…

As a Christian, as those in union with Jesus Christ, in union with the One who alone dwells in unapproachable Light and Immortality, we live an indestructible life; because our life is indestructible. Our energy is resurrection power of the immortal type; the type that rises from the dead, ascends, and comes again and again, and finally again. Nothing can stop us; death is no match for us; because Life came, assumed death, looked at it, mocked it to its face, and left it in the abyss of nothingness. The Christian is always on the verge of breaking into the…

Depth Dimenson, that is the language TF Torrance uses when referring to an engagement with Holy Scripture’s deep context. He reifies the sacramental language of thinking Scripture as the signum (sign), and its res (reality) as Jesus Christ and the triune God that Christ mediates to the Church and world. The reification comes for Torrance as he thinks all things from the patristic homoousious and/or the double consubstantial (both fully God and human) person of Jesus Christ. It is from this analogy that Torrance thinks the relationship between Scripture’s broad canonical context, and the meaning that funds that context in…

My frequency of posting has clearly dropped off. Years ago I would write a blog post every single day. As life’s demands became greater that slowed to a few posts a week. At the moment it seems as if I’m generally down to one post a week. My work schedule, once again, has changed (to being on-call 24/7) which is why my pace of posts has slowed to nearly a trickle. It isn’t because I want to write less, it is simply because I am physically exhausted all of the time. Pray that the Lord might open other doors for…

Unreality. 17 Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word. 18 Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law. 19 I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me. 20 My soul is crushed with longing After Your ordinances at all times. 21 You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, Who wander from Your commandments. 22 Take away reproach and contempt from me, For I observe Your testimonies. 23 Even though princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes. 24 Your testimonies also…

The following is taken from my final exam from my Patristic Theology class in seminary (circa 2003); we had to answer three out of five questions in essay form. This essay highlights the person and theology of Irenaeus. I will provide a brief description of Irenaeus first, and then get into the essay. This was before I ever started reading either Barth or Torrance in any depth. But you might see how once I did, I was already predisposed to their respective theologies vis-à-vis informing theologies like Irenaeus’ represents. Irenaeus (ca. 130-200) was Bishop of Lyons. Most likely he grew…

Karl Barth, in his Göttingen Dogmatics, takes from neo-Reformed Dutch theologian’s, Herman Bavinck’s notion of Deus dixit (‘God has spoken’), as a way to think about the way God has revealed Himself bound up in a radical doctrine of the Word of God. Many have probably heard of Barth’s threefold form of the Word of God; it is in the early years of his time at Göttingen that this line of thinking got started for him; particularly as he was pressed upon to teach a Reformed dogmatics within a Lutheran setting. The following showcases the way Barth articulated his understanding…