Tag: Against

When in the realm of Barth studies, you will often hear of ‘Barth’s actualism.’ But what in fact is actualism in Barth’s theology? And might it, once understood, offer the way out of the classical modes of thought in regard to God’s relation to the world through the decretum absolutum (‘absolute decree’)? In other words, could Barth’s actualism allow us to understand God’s ways vis-à-vis the world in such a way that God is no longer understood to be a static monad, but instead, a relational and personalist God, who indeed is constituted by his perichoretic co-inhering relations as Father,…

Someone I know from online recently wrote a viral article for First Things where he gently critiques the approach of Tim Keller. His primary critique was of the ‘winsome’ and purported ‘third wayism’ that Keller has operated with for the last couple of decades, and even further back. My friend, James Wood, made some appeal to sociological analysis as a way into making his critique of Keller. In nuce, the argument was that Keller’s winsome approach may have had some resonance in the last decade or so, but that we have moved into times that aren’t as receptive to Christian…

Martin Luther, as I have referred to previously, was indeed anti-Aristotelian, particularly with reference to Aristotle’s anthropology as that effused throughout his Nicomachean Ethics. Indeed, Luther makes his disgust toward Aristotle’s Ethics, and thus, anthropology, very clear in his theological protestations, as he nailed those, just a month prior to his 95 theses, to the Wittenberg door. This was the real reason for Luther’s reformation, as my former professor and mentor, Dr Ron Frost, has so clearly argued. Luther saw Pelagian wickedness in Aristotle’s anthropology, and of course insofar as Aquinas appropriated Aristotle’s Ethics, among other things, this compelled Luther…

If you’re a Catholic or scholastic Protestant thinker, you’ll follow along with Erich Przywara’s dictum (following Thomas’) of ‘revelation perfecting revelation.’ You’ll see a continuity between the naked philosopher’s machinations, and what comes in perfection through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. You’ll maintain that humanity, since it is born into an iteration of God’s grace (which is an abstract creation), has the capacity, albeit, finite, to think towards the God of creation. On the other hand, if you’re a genuinely Protestant thinker who takes the noetic effects of the fall, who takes total depravity seriously, and who does not sublate…

I’ve written against theologies of glory ever since (and before) I heard of them. A life verse of mine (among a gazillion) is the following: “For I’ve determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” This typifies the staurological life I live the Christian as, from the cruciformed life of the risen Christ’s (or at least the one I aim for). Because of this I have an acute allergy to anyone who chooses instead to be a theologian of glory. Jesus identifies theologians of glory this way: “I do not receive honor from men. But I know…

I feel compelled to write something very brief with reference to the simplicity of the Gospel. When a person goes online, in the main, and comes into contact with theology and Bible people, especially those who are selling their particular ecclesial tradition or denomination, what seemingly ends up happening, at least in my perception, is that the Gospel becomes layered over. There is an accretion, a slab of barnacles, an encrustation of peoples’ takes about the reception and appropriation of the Gospel that seemingly obscures the simplicity of the Gospel/kerygmatic reality. If I didn’t have the years of training I…