Category: Evangelical Calvinist

The thought occurred to me last night that much of the theological developments over the last many centuries, particularly during and post-mediaeval times stem from personal insecurities. Ludwig Feuerbach famously made the observation that ‘theology is anthropology,’ that it is the self’s projection of its self-perceived notion of virtuousness and greatness. Here’s an anonymous description taken from an anonymous source: “Feuerbach claimed that our conceptions of “god” are always just projections of our own values. God fulfills our need to objectify our virtues, and embodies our values. Thus the essence of religion is human nature, and our Gods tell us about ourselves…”theology…

The following from, Craig Carter, epitomizes what I have been writing against ever since I started my online blogging life in 2005. For me, my work against this sort of trope, started in 2001-02 when I started seminary. As I’ve told many a time, my professor, Ron Frost (who would go on to become a mentor and someone I did teaching fellowships for in Historical Theology and Ethics), introduced me to this world. Frost had his own go arounds with the father of this movement, Richard Muller; they had an exchange in Trinity Journal back in 96—97. What Carter is…

Keith Johnson continues to develop both Karl Barth’s and Erich Przywara’s theories of knowledge of God, respectively. Currently, he is treating Przywara’s existentialist side towards a knowledge of God, as that is juxtaposed with what he identifies as the essence side (which we will not get into at this juncture). The essence side has to do with the immanent, or the horizontal frame of reference in regard to knowledge vis à vis God; whereas the existentialist side has to do with the order of how vertical knowledge of God obtains vis à vis a God-human relation. Is this order from below to above…

I think sometimes folks aren’t appreciating the rub between what Barth (Torrance et al.) are doing when they offer an alternative—to classical theism—theory knowledge of God. It orbits around a question; a question Keith Johnson articulates with great clarity: Romans I Barth began concentrated study on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans a few months after delivering ‘The Righteousness of God’. The experience was slow-going, at least by the standards of his later output. The extra time spent on the manuscript, however, meant that Barth’s understanding of the distinctions and categories that had been working subtly throughout ‘The Righteousness of God’ had time…

Kenneth Oakes’ book Karl Barth on Philosophy and Theology, which I reviewed a few years ago for the blog, presses the same point that Keith Johnson does in his book Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis. The point is the way Barth sees the relationship between philosophy and theology; he doesn’t, not in the way that post-mediaeval classical theism does in its effort to synthesize so-called faith-and-reason. This is one of the primary factors that has drawn me to Barth over the years. His prolegomenon is conditioned solely by what he considers to be both the formal and material principle…