Tag: Against

When the work of Christ is separated from the person of Christ, all you can be left with are either pure Pelagian or semi-Pelagian doctrines of salvation; as that becomes funded by some functional type of an adoptionistic christology (e.g., Ebionism etc.) This is why TFT refers to the Latin Heresy: he is referring to theologies, Western-Augustinian ones, that ultimately don’t think salvation, as both objectified and subjectivized in the Monarxia of God in the person of Jesus Christ. When this or that individual person is understood as being “elect” of God, based on an arbitrary and hidden decree of…

Performance based theories of salvation continue to plague the evangelical Protestant landscapes. Whether that be funded by a Reformed background (inclusive of Reformed proper, and Arminianism et al.), or Lutheran (either orthodox, and/or mainstream). When people are offered a notion of God wherein He is understood as a juridical God, one who relates to the world through a covenant of works/grace, or other like frameworks, at which point law-keeping sublimates grace into its image, those under this specter live a life of deep angst, always wondering if they are going to finally measure up (or persevere) unto the final reward:…

A genuine Christianity is not pluriform, it does not have multitudinous realities at its core. It is not a cluster of beliefs that likeminded people rally around. A genuine Christianity—its inner reality—is in fact a person; it is God for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. When people exit or walk away from this or that perceived form or expression of the “Christian existence,” they aren’t walking away from Christianity’s inner reality, per se, if in fact they believe that to be exhaustively represented in the form of that, as they have come to experience that, in this…

Just because something happens in Church history, gains some sort of consensus of the so-called faithful, this does not (or should not) lead to the notion that God caused whatever happened to happen; whether it be related to some form and development of church government, some doctrinal development, so on and so forth. As Protestant Christians, we OUGHT to repudiate these types of natural theologies; the types where it is asserted a priori that the way the consensus decided just is the will of God for the Church’s edification. It may or may not be, that’s why we are to…

The following is a post I wrote in 2012. I am simply reiterating the party-line among those who occupy the chairs within the confessionally Reformed world; i.e., that Calvin, along with the whole catholic tradition belongs to them. That they represent the most valid and definitive Protestant reception of the catholic tradition, and that Calvin simply stands among them. Thus, the great revision of Reformed development goes. Here Muller confirms what I have been asserting all the while; that he sees an organic thread between Calvin and the “orthodox, Calvinists.” He writes: In the early years of the Reformation emphasis…

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…

The last few years have seen record numbers of anti-LGBTQ bills being proposed and passed, particularly in state legislatures, across the country. “As bishop of this church, I am concerned that the rights of transgender and nonbinary Americans have been targeted all over this nation,” wrote ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton in her statement on anti-transgender legislation (3/20/23). “We must stand together, dear church, faithfully advocating for the full humanity and dignity of all people. Let us recognize and affirm the humanity of our transgender and nonbinary siblings. Let us advocate for their dignity.” With a family-informed plea, Jamie Bruesehoff,…

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…

Being a genuine Christian theologian starts at the point that we become Christians. The same confession made to become a Christian, is the same confession that remains as the ground of our theological witnesses as Christians. The fact of our sin never leaves us. We are constantly sinning, and the person who says otherwise “is a liar and the truth is not in them.” But the Good News, indeed, is that we have an Advocate with the Father; we have a Savior, and His name is Jesus Christ! This is the ground of all Christian theologizing; the only other ground…

I was just re-reading the following post which I originally posted on September 13, 2021. I was looking for a post that got into the role that natural theology and no-natural theology plays in regard to Christian praxis vis-à-vis the state. This particular post has to do with BigMedicine, and what I call, along with Agamben, a new religion. Really it isn’t new at all though. Hitler rationalized that what he was doing, in pushing forward his third reich, was being done in the name of medical and scientific advancement (thus cultural advancement ushering in a new millennium where he would be…