Barth in fully Barthian regalia (Church Dogmatics, IV.1, 186-7): “As God was in Christ, far from being against Himself, or at disunity with Himself, He has put into effect the freedom of His divine love, the love in which He is divinely free. He has therefore done and revealed that which corresponds to His divine nature. His immutability does not stand in the way of this. It must not be denied, but this possibility is included in His unalterable being.... Read more
Phillip Cary of Eastern College has argued, “Protestantism cannot carry through its own deepest intention – to put faith in the word of Christ alone – without a Catholic doctrine of sacramental efficacy.” I offer a brief defense of Cary’s counter-intuitive claim at The Evangelical Pulpit. Read more
Like some other recent writers on the atonement, Sharon Baker argues (Executing God, 125), in a fashion similar to Thomas, that “the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross was acceptable to God not because of the external offering of Christ’s body with its dripping blood, but because of the internal disposition with which it was offered.” Jesus gave Himself in toto “to God and others.” More than that, Baker says, “the sacrifice of Jesus was an act of forgiveness” –... Read more
Abelard insisted that human beings cannot be held guilty of acts that the did not commit. And there went original sin. But he also recognized that people suffer evils, and he tied this to the original sin of Adam and Eve. Without repentance, people are heading to eternal damnation. Infants die, but they are not culpable of anything, including original sin. Their deaths seem arbitrary. Adam Kotsko (Politics of Redemption) examines the consequences. Once the devil’s role has been marginalized... Read more
In his study of Abelard’s soteriology, Logic of Divine Love, Richard Weingart the common claim that Abelard’s doctrine of the atonement is a “subjective” one. For starters, that opinion is based on a brief comment in Abelard’s Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos that “is only an outline of Abailard’s teaching,” and not a complete account )131).Most substantively, even that passage is not “subjective”: “The whole tone of the passage is set by the theme that God is moved by love to... Read more
It’s a joke. It’s a comedy routine. Doom is coming! Doom doom doom! The world is ending, the kingdom is coming. Head for the hills, run, escape! The end is near! Repent! So says John, so repeats Jesus, like long-hairs with picket signs at the street corner. But then it happens, and there’s no mushroom cloud. The sky is still there, sun, moon and stars in their places. Only a little puff of smoke where one man dies in agony... Read more
The title of Benjamin Dunning’s Christ Without Adam summarizes one of the key themes of his book. He devotes chapters to Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Zizek, all of whom have written on Paul in recent years. In each case, though in different ways, they break the links that Paul forges between the first and last Adam. Dunning’s interest is partly in the implications that this has for understanding sexuality. He argues that the church has always had struggled to fit Eve... Read more
Distinguishing Catholic-infused from Protestant-imputed is difficult to sustain, since Luther frequently claims that justifying righteousness is “within” rather than “outside.” Luther’s 1520 treatise The Freedom of a Christian provides some rich material for this investigation. This is a very early treatise, and does not represent in every respect Luther’s mature understanding of justification, but it is clearly a Reformation treatise, written by all accounts at least two years after his “Reformation breakthrough.” It is thus important evidence that helps us to... Read more
Jesus was an ingrate. That’s on of the themes of Gratitude: An Intellectual History. Sign up now for the Theopolis newsletter, In Medias Res, and receive a free excerpt of the book. Fill out the simple subscription form here. Read more
Ward Blanton’s Materialism for the Masses provides a rebuttal to Nietzsche’s claim that Christianity was nothing but pop-Platonism. On the contrary: Paul can be read as offering a “materialist spirituality” that has never been more needed than it is today. There’s something in that, though Blanton’s meandering book makes it difficult to see exactly what. The book would have been stronger if Blanton had been able to concentrate his attention on Paul for more than a paragraph or two, before wandering... Read more
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