Genitive God

Last updated on: August 25, 2011 at 10:23 am By Peter Leithart

Gregory of Nazianzus again. He argues that “unbegotten-begotten” point to personal characteristics rather than substance, what Augustine later distinguishes with “substance” and “relation.” In the course of the argument, he makes two puzzling provocative observations. Twice times (Third Theological Oration, section 12) he states that God is necessarily a God of : “since God is somebody’s God”; and, “God is somebody’s – he is God of all.” But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Why can we not think... Read more

Simplicity and Trinity

Last updated on: August 25, 2011 at 10:07 am By Peter Leithart

Gregory of Nazianzus has this clever little argument for the equality of Father and Son in the Third Theological Oration. He responds to the Arian argument that Augustine also deals with: a) God is simple, and has no accidents; b) therefore, every statement about God speaks of substance; c) since the Father is “unbegotten,” He is substantively unbegotten, and since the Son is begotten, He is substantively begotten; d) thus, the Father and Son are not the same substance, since... Read more

Suffering God

Last updated on: August 24, 2011 at 12:19 pm By Peter Leithart

The more seriously one takes the evangelical claim that God suffers the condemnation of humanity in Jesus, “the stronger becomes the temptation to approximate to the view of a contradiction and conflict in God Himself.” So says Barth. Yet Barth with equal vehemence rejects the notion of self-contradiction in God as a blasphemy. What’s contradicted is not God but metaphysical concepts of God, “abstract” notions of God that construct a theology without reference to Jesus in His actual history: “who... Read more

Election as Gospel

Last updated on: August 24, 2011 at 12:07 pm By Peter Leithart

With deceptive simplicity, Eberhard Jungel ( God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth ) neatly captures why Barth considers the doctrine of election to be the gospel: “God’s being-in-act becomes manifest in the temporal history of Jesus Christ. The temporal history of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s eternal resolve. The fulfillment in time of God’s eternal resolve is God’s existence as man in Jesus Christ. God’s existence as man... Read more

Commandeering language

Last updated on: August 24, 2011 at 11:35 am By Peter Leithart

Barth says or implies that human language is “in itself” inadequate to the task of bearing God’s revelation. It has to be commandeered in order to become the vehicle of revelation. Language “can only be the language of the world” though we must have confidence that “contrary to the natural capabilities of this language, it can and should speak of God’s revelation in this language as theological language.” So too his hesitations about the vestigia Trinitatis : Creation lacks the... Read more

God and Election, Fitt the Second

Last updated on: August 24, 2011 at 11:08 am By Peter Leithart

Barth’s doctrine of election feels incarnational because it is the determination of the Son to be the incarnate Son. Traditional Reformed dogmatics always insisted, as Richard Muller has shown, always election in Christ. But, again, the fact that in electing the elect in Christ God the Son determined Himself to be the elect One has been implicit rather than explicit. Barth brings it to the forefront: God the Son elects because He is God with the Father and Spirit; but... Read more

Election and God

Last updated on: August 24, 2011 at 10:47 am By Peter Leithart

Traditional Reformed dogmaticians place the decree of election in the doctrine of God. So does Barth. But they do it very differently. The difference, if I might be allowed a simplistic caricature, is in the question of whether election is a determination of creation or also a determination of the Creator. For traditional dogmatics (especially of a supralapsarian variety), election and reprobation constituted God’s primal decision concerning the destiny of created beings. There was no “reflex” back on God, such... Read more

Biblicist Hermeneutics

Last updated on: August 23, 2011 at 3:48 pm By Peter Leithart

Back to Christian Smith’s Bible Made Impossible, The: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture : Smith’s argument against Biblicism rests on the “pervasive interpretive pluralism” evident among evangelical Biblicists. Despite their claim to understand the plain meaning of Scripture, they disagree on issues large and small – theological questions like the millennium, the mode and subjects of baptism, and predestination; moral and political questions about male-female relations, homosexuality, and war. This interpretive pluralism is not accidental... Read more

Augustine on the Trinity

Last updated on: August 22, 2011 at 9:27 am By Peter Leithart

In summarizing the argument of the first seven books of de Trinitate , Luigi Gioia ( The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate ) distinguishes between the “outer layer” of the opening books of de Trinitate, which concerns the mystery of the Trinity especially as revealed in Scripture, and the “inner layer,” which has to do with the knowledge of God. Regarding the outer later, the key issue has to do with the apparent separation of activity among the Persons... Read more

Perichoretic exchange

Last updated on: August 22, 2011 at 4:51 am By Peter Leithart

A friend, Chuck Hartman, offers a Trinitarian account of economic exchange: He describes it as a perichoretic reality. Each party to the exchange benefits the other, so there is a mutual glorification in exchange. It “amens the Trinity.” He points to an analogy with the Fifth Commandment, where those who honor father and mother are themselves honored with long life in the land. Because it is mutual glorification, exchange is also an act of love. Mutual glorification is the source... Read more