Tag: Dialogical

What is dialectical theology? Barth is often referred to as a dialectical theologian; especially the earlier Barth. Some want to implicitly criticize Barth by asserting that because Barth was a dialectical theologian, he, eo ipso was a Hegelianizing theologian (i.e., putting Hegel’s dialectic to work for his theologizing). And yet, Barth is much more original than that. He was clearly a modern theologian, as is anyone who currently does theology in the 21st century. Even so, his methodology was to allow Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ to regulate his deployment of any other mechanisms he might have…

Dialogical theology. It is one of our theses we put forward in our first Evangelical Calvinism book. What is it; what are its entailments; and why am I such a strong proponent of it? In nuce, dialogical theology is exactly what it sounds like: it is a theological “method” that allows the object of theology, who is also Subject for us, to confront us, to speak to us first that we might speak to Him; that we might come to know Him as He knows Himself from a center in Himself for us in Jesus Christ. So, this approach, this…

This post deals with some technical stuff that might not be interesting for all readers, but I find it quite instructive in better understanding why it is that Thomas Torrance rejects the determinism that shapes frameworks of thought like that found, theologically, within Arminianism and Calvinism. And it should also help to illustrate an alternative route to thinking about things in causally determinative ways; which implicates the ways that, in the West, in general, we have become most accustomed to think, even though someone like Einstein and his theory of relativity has demonstrated that reality, in fact does not work in…