It’s common sense that origin determines destiny. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and remains so; that which is born of earth returns to the earth. This is the common sense that the gospel subverts. Men originated from earth are remade after the image of the heavenly man; flesh dies and rises as Spirit. Or, what is equally astonishing: We are given a second origin, a new birth from God. Which means: The gospel subverts any social order... Read more
Athanasius regularly compares the Arians to Jews and Judaizers. This is not merely name-calling. The obvious comparison is that both Jews and Arians deny that Jesus is the eternal Son. But something more subtle is going on here too, perhaps: If the Son is not eternal and equal to the Father, then the incarnation was no real incarnation, no real appearance of God. If that’s true, then God has not appeared, not made Himself tangible and visible in the world.... Read more
The Spirit who comes to dwell “in” us is the Spirit who is “in” the Son, who is also “in” the Father. By grace, we are capacious enough to house God. But it goes in the opposite direction too: We live and move “in” the Spirit, who is “in” the Son who is “in” the Father. So it’s a chiasm: I in Spirit in Son in Father in Son in Spirit in me. Or: Father in Son in Spirit in... Read more
Athanasius expounds the prayer of Jesus in John 17 as follows: “whence is this their perfecting, but that I, Your Word, having borne their body, and become man, have perfected the work, which You gave Me, O Father? And the work is perfected, because men, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead; but being deified , have in each other, by looking at Me, the bond of charity.” This is a remarkably dense statement, and demands some disentangling. (more…) Read more
For Thomas, the advantage of explicating the Trinity by reference to knowing and willing was that these are two human processes that remain within the soul. They remain within the realm of praxis. Jenson notes that the great achievement of Barth’s Trinitarian theology is to start elsewhere, not with “self-contained” knowing and willing but with the “self-revealing” God. Barth moved Trinitarian theology where it belonged, into the realm of poiesis. Read more
Gregory of Nyssa identifies Arianism as a form of tragic metaphysics. They go astray because they “define God’s being by its having no beginning, rather than by its having no end . . . . If they must divide eternity, let them reverse their doctrine and find that mark of deity in endless futurity . . . ; let them guide their thinking by what is to come and is real in hope rather than by what is past and... Read more
Is God’s being in His becoming? We might not want to say that. But we can’t avoid the question, if we want to continue the patristic project of “evangelizing metaphysics.” For the Greeks, Jenson writes, “Being” is “what satisfies the mind’s longing for absolute assurance, for transcendence over time’s surprises.” Jenson doesn’t think that the biblical God is the kind of God to avoid time’s surprises. But put that aside: Is there any reason why Christian theology should accept a... Read more
Definitely not this either: “there is properly no mutual love between the Father and Son, for this would presuppose two acts” and “within the Trinity there is no reciprocal ‘Thou.’” Read more
Barth did not see Nazism as a reaction to or restriction on the untrammeled freedom of choice celebrated by modern liberals. On the contrary, it was itself the product of the same “false concept of freedom” that shaped post-Enlightenment Europe. If freedom means life “in free competition of persons, systems, and ideas, under the motto, ‘Make way for the competent,’” then a “battle of all against everyone . . . which will never be without harshness and suffering” is already... Read more
Barth argues that the Trinity is not a challenge or a qualification of monotheism, but the only true form of monotheism. Antitrinitarianism always collapses either into the denial of God’s revelation or of God’s unity. Denial of revelation because “To the degree that it maintains the unity of God it has to call revelation in question as the act of the real presence of the real God. The unity of God in which there are no distinct persons makes it... Read more
Leithart
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