Rahner says that the Beatific vision is “through grace” and comes as a “free gift, not due to [man] by nature, not pledged to him by his creation (so that our creation, which was a free act of God, not due to us, and the free gift of grace to the already existing creature, are not one and the same gift of God’s freedom).” I’ve asked before, but I ask again: Why not? (more…) Read more
When it’s all said and done, Rahner multiplies levels of nature and the supernatural. There is the purely conceptual “pure nature,” which has never existed in reality but must be possible if we are to think grace as grace. There are actually existing natures, the concrete reality of created beings. There is human being, which is “created spirit” which experiences all sorts of intimations of transcendence and the supernatural, but remains natural. There is the supernatural existential which surrounds and... Read more
Some thoughts on Book 19 of Augustine’s City of God, mostly taken from an article by Oliver O’Donovan (the revised version of the essay published in O’Donovan and O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection). O’Donovan points out that the the issues in this book are broadly moral rather than specifically political. It introduces the final section where Augustine discusses the “ends” of two cities. In the last few books, Augustine literally discusses eschatology, but he begins with “ends” in a moral sense,... Read more
In the opening pages of his Theology After Wittgenstein , Fergus Kerr, O.P., mounts a Wittgensteinian critique of Rahner’s epistemology, which, he concludes, is thoroughly indebted to Cartestian philosophy. Due to the influence of Cartesian categories, Kerr sees Rahner’s theology determined by “an extremely mentalist-individualist epistemology” that contributes to a central theme of his theology, namely, “the possibility for the individual to occupy a standpoint beyond his immersion in the bodily, the historical and the institutional.” This has significant implications... Read more
One of Dabney’s answers to the charge that imputation is unjust is tat “God forbids imputation of capital guilt by human magistrates,” but “He customarily claims the exercise of it in His own government.” The difference he explains by saying “Human magistrates are themselves under law, in common with those they rule; God is above law, and His will is law.” God’s government is not man’s. And yet, this answer to the objection is deeply unsatisfying. After all, the cross... Read more
Several students have observed the parallels between Peter’s denial in John 18 and the denial of Jesus by the Jews in chapter 19. Peter denies three times, in a pattern of 1 + 2; so do the Jews. Between then, contrasting to these denials, is Pilate’s threefold confession of Jesus’ entire innocence. Read more
Dabney thinks that Calvinists have offered “unsatisfactory” answers to objections to its doctrine of definite atonement. Two sorts of objections in particular: “From the universal offer of atonement through Christ, and from Scripture.” He answers these objections, and then goes on into a detailed discussion of the “relation of limited atonement to the Universal call.” His ultimate answer is that Christ’s atonement has multiple ends, the primary end of reconciling the elect and various subordinate ends. (more…) Read more
O’Donovan makes the point, against Markus, that Augustine does not describe the earthly city as a combination of private ends and public or common utility. This would be a secular system, which leaves ends to individual citizens as they make use of common goods. O’Donovan says Augustine does something like the opposite: There is a common end for all men in the earthly city, and no proper utilitas at all, since utilitas has to do with referring the use of... Read more
Von Balthasar again: Creation is God’s free decision. There need not be a world. “But if he decides to create a world, then of course this decision can only take the form of the analogy of being, which is grounded in God’s very ‘essence’ itself. Created being must be by definition created, dependent, relative, nondivine, but as something created it cannot be utterly dissimilar to its Creator. And if this creature is a spiritual and intellectual being, both its ontic... Read more
Von Balthasar says that grace presupposes a nature that is free from revelation: “If there is to be revelation, then it can only proceed from God to a creature – to a creature that precisely as a creature does not include revelation in its conceptual range.” Van Til is much more biblical, if much more paradoxical: Revelation and creaturehood arise simultaneously because every creature in fact is a revelation of God. There is initially no creature to receive revelation; revelation... Read more
Leithart
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