In his 2005 Christmas encyclical, Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI explains why love has to be understood as both eros and agape , as ascending and descending love. He notes early on that the Bible rarely uses the word eros , arguing that “the tendency to avoid the word eros , together with the new vision of love expressed through the word agape, clearly point to something new and distinct about the Christian understanding of love.” As he notes, “these... Read more
Proverbs concludes with the portrait of the “excellent wife” (31:10). The portrait reaches back to the beginning of Proverbs and the portrait of wisdom. Like Lady Wisdom, the excellent wife’s value is far above jewels (v. 10; cf. 3:15; 8:11). Like Lady Wisdom, the excellent wife offers food (31:15; cf. 9:2, 5). The excellent wife brings gain (31:11), like Wisdom (cf. 3:14). Wisdom begins from the fear of Yahweh, which is precisely what animates the excellent wife (31:30). The final... Read more
Today, many Reformed theologians are advocates of “classical theism.” A few hints from Richard Muller’s volume on the Trinity raise the question of whether the Reformed tradition fits neatly into what passes as classical theism today. A few brief gleanings will suffice to raise the issue. Classical theists insist above all on the unity of will in the Trinity. It is argued that will is an attribute of nature, not person, and so any plurality of wills in God implies... Read more
Kendal Soulen (The Divine Names and the Holy Trinity, 97) summarizes Barth’s treatment of the implicit Trinitarianism of the Old Testament: “the Old testament testifies to Yahweh in three distinct ways. ‘Yahweh’ refers ‘a first time’ to the unseen God who is invisibly enthroned over all things, who remains forever hidden even in the act of revelation itself. It also refers again ‘in another way’ to God insofar as he is truly known by this or that person, as revelation... Read more
In an insightful piece on “wokeness as myth,” Alan Jacobs points to a brief blog post in which Timothy Burke describes Trump as a “desecration”: “Trump is the Piss Christ of liberals and leftists. His every breath is a bb-gun shot through a cathedral window, bacon on the doorstep of a mosque, the explosion of an ancient Buddha statue. He offends against the notion that merit and hard work will be rewarded. Against the idea that leadership and knowledge are necessary... Read more
Fergus Kerr, explicating Thomas’s understanding of divine simplicity, acknowledges that “The doctrine of divine simpleness seems to make God so utterly different from anything created – so ‘totally otherwise’ – that any claim to have knowledge of God would be ruled out on the grounds that that which is ‘simple’ could never be known by ‘composites’ such as we human beings are” (quoted in Hinlicky, Divine Simplicity, 48). At this point, Kerr fends off this conclusion by citing ST 1.21.1,... Read more
In a discussion of God’s transcendence, Jeremy Begbie (Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts) observes that some accounts of transcendence leave the impression “that language is something by its very nature that God would long to escape, that something so finite and susceptible to corruption could have no integral role in God’s purposes” (111). Begbie rightly rejects this extreme apophaticism: “at the center of the New Testament we find a Person who speaks. To claim that the Word became flesh .... Read more
In his “Person” in Christian Tradition, Stephen Hipp notes that the “originality” of Cappadocian Trinitarian theology “lies in using the word hypostasis to designate the person in distinction from the substance. The distinction between hypostasis and ousia had not been instituted during apostolic times; the Greek Fathers are the first to articulate it in order to resist the heretical temptation to advocate three distinct Gods or a singe divine Person” (49). This usage, Hipp argues, represents not only an advance... Read more
William Hasker (Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God) cites Carl Mosser’s objection to social Trinitarianism’s claim that the three Persons are “distinct centers of willing”: “If the divine persons cannot differ because they necessarily act in concert with one another, then attributing distinct wills is superfluous. Attributing distinct wills to two or more persons simply is an admission of the possibility of difference. If there can be no difference, then the individuals share a single will” (206). Hasker responds by noting... Read more
Shannon Hayes is a different kind of feminist, a feminist who has not only broken from the patriarchy but from she views as a global capitalist system that buttresses the patriarchy. She is a Radical Homemaker. She explains that “Radical Homemakers are men and women who have chosen to make family, community, social justice and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives. They reject any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that does... Read more
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