Tag: Social

Torrance is discussing the impact that dualistic Hellenism has had upon Western-thought-forms; namely the precedence that classical thought has given to the optical mode of thinking and verification (so the obsession with empiricism, etc.). TFT is highlighting the impact that this methodology and epistemology can have upon our construal of God’s “Father-hood” and “Son-hood,” and how Christian/Patristic theology, primarily through Athanasius’ influence, eschewed this “Hellenizing” effect by reifying it through Christian ontology. The contrast between Christianity and Hellenism could hardly be greater than at this fundamental level, where biblical patterns of thought governed by the Word of God and the obedient hearing of faith (υπακοη της πιτεως) conflict…

Karl Barth operated with his own reformulated Christologically conditioned Covenantal theology. For Him there is one covenant (of grace), just as sure as there are two covenants, if not three (covenant of works, covenant of grace, pactum salutis i.e., covenant of redemption) that the Federal or classically covenantal theologians such as Cocceius, Ursinus, Olevianus, Bullinger et al. articulated. Barth was a strident critic of Federal or classical Covenantal theology, insofar that he detected a primacy of the Law as the antecedent ground upon which the conditions of the covenant of grace are ultimately fulfilled in the coming of Christ for…