Category: Evangelical Calvinist

… This means that in spite of all his undeniable efforts to move away from Pietism, Barth was clearly too closely attached to it to be able to attack the innermost bastion of Pietism held by his reviewers. In the following section we will elaborate on the decisive point where he was still closely attached to Pietism in spite of everything.” -Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth & the Pietists, trans. by Daniel W. Bloesch (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2004), 65. This is probably another reason I have so resonated with Barth over the years. My background, of course!, as an…

The relationship between philosophy and theology remains a varied thing, at least for me. In the Barth[ian] tradition there are a variety of takes on this relationship just the same. Barth himself sees a relative value to having an understanding of the various philosophies blowing about, whither and thither. But in the main, for Barth et al., an untoward appropriation and deployment of any philosophy vis-à-vis a Christian theology, ends up presenting a highly delipidated theology that bears no resemblance to the genuine article as Self-revealed in the prosopon (face) of Jesus Christ. Of note, as Barth is engaging with…

Given what’s going on with Israel and Iran I jotted down some thoughts (elsewhere online) on Israel and how ethnic Israel continues to relate to the Man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. There is a right-wing movement among some so-called MAGA people who are highly antisemitic, or we could more accurately say: supersessionist. They have bought into the old rhetoric that Israel as a nation ceased to exist in 70AD, never to reunite again. But her ethnicity has always been vouchsafed in the Man from Nazareth (see Jeremiah 31). Her ethnicity transcends itself in its purpose as the Messiah bearer for…

As I continue on with my linear read through of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics I have come across a small print section in CD III/3 §50, 30 wherein Barth is engaging with a doctrine of nothingness/sin. In this particular section he is commiserating with that Teutonic, Leibniz’s understanding on such matters. Without providing the necessary context I am simply going to drop some of my reflection on this following: Leibniz’s anthropology, according to Barth’s reading, was highly monistic in regard to what it means to be human vis a vis God’s perfections. Indeed, a rather dreary prospect for the Eschaton….

Human agency is lost in the fall (which remains an inexplicable thing). The only hope for human agency to be reestablished before God is for God to re-create it as He has for us in the human agency of the Second and Greater Adam, who is the Christ. This is one reason people of a certain ilk reject the notion of a natural theology, and its subset in the anologis entis (analogy of being). Hence, knowledge of God is a purely Graced reality, and not a natural one in any way. I am, in fact, of said ilk (shocking!) I…

Just finished. This is the third book of Bruce Gordon’s I have read over the years (his other books: on Calvin and Zwingli respectively). Overall, a good and informative and interesting read. It appears to me that, Bruce, at points, has imbibed too much of the higher critical palate when it comes to thinking of the supernatural nature of Scripture. His chapter on the Pentecostal appropriation of the Bible isn’t the strongest. But again, overall, I would commend this book to you. It will give you a greater appreciation for the Bible’s reception across the millennia and across the globe….

Barth and TF Torrance are the only modern theologians I have come across who if you don’t start with radically construed Chalcedonian premises, you won’t get. Their dialect is strictly christologically conditioned all the way down. This is one reason I think so many evangelical and conservative theologians of today write them off as incoherent. For example, theologians who harvest purely from the Post Reformed orthodox (pro), and some of the mediaeval theologians, will attempt to read Barth and TFT through the speculative, decretal categories they have imbibed vis-à-vis their recovery of said pro and med. theologians. And yet, this…

I think I am going to start writing more ‘Book Impressions’ in the days to come, for the blog. I won’t be writing full fledged reviews, but just presenting my raw impressions as I finish this or that book. By the way, I do read a lot of theology books as time passes by; I just rarely share any of that here (you mostly get my Barth readings and reflections these days). Anyway, I just finished another book, and below is my reflection on it. The book: Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. I started…

The following is part of something I wrote back in 2008 on a doctrine of the Trinity. It requires greater context, particularly as these things relate to God’s freedom in election. But I’m simply going to parachute this in without its further context, to be provocative. With the above in mind, apply this being/becoming in the life of God to the incarnation of Christ; what does this imply? It implies that in the very ousia or being of God, the Son is always and already becoming deus incarnandus (God in the flesh Jn 1:14). In other words, what Jesus becomes in ‘historic time’, in…

Thumbnail created originally by Leighton Flowers (Caleb) I was listening to James White live today on his Dividing Line vlogcast, and what he reinforces over and over is that he is what some are calling a ‘biblicist,’ or what I would identify as a solo Scriptura or nuda Scriptura proponent, as far as the way that he approaches Scripture. In this way, James White and his archnemeses, Leighton Flowers, ironically affirm the same bibliology and its attending hermeneutic. It is both modern, postEnlightenment, and Lockean (i.e., tabula rasa) in orientation. That is, it sees Scripture and its reception in a…