“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law. -Deuteronomy 29:29 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. -John 1:18 For I would have […]
I wrote the following four years ago. This locus remains my primary point of theological interest. That is, how the Christian claims to know God, under what pressures, has the greatest theological, political, sociological, and ethical implications we could fathom. As you will see, beyond the programmatic entailments engaged with in the following, natural theology, and […]
Bruce McCormack argues, contra Hunsinger’s reading of Barth, that Hunsinger’s reading of Barth’s Trinitarian theology is in fact modulated through TF Torrance’s reading of Barth. McCormack further argues that TF Torrance’s approach is in fact Thomist, particularly when it comes to thinking a doctrine of God, and thus represents an inaccurate lens through which to […]
Knowledge of God and its bases has never been an uncontested thing in theological development and discourse. The Apostle Paul, of course, famously addresses the issue of knowledge of God in Romans 1 which has become the locus classicus for proponents of an ostensible natural theology: 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against […]
Knowledge of God is the key, that is to the ‘secret of creation.’ If “Jesus Christ is indeed the real ground of creation,”[1] then in order to know what in fact creation is for, we must first know its Creator. But as Karl Barth underscores, in a rather Athanasian key, if Jesus is the ground […]
God is my Father.[1] Jesus said to Mary post-resurrection, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” God is our Father. Athanasius writes: “Therefore it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and […]
Either something is, or it isn’t. Surely, there are nuances on a continuum, and we should all be aware of that as we approach any system or maybe better, organism of thought. Nonetheless, in the end, either a framework of thought is sound and corresponds to reality or it doesn’t. This seems like a good […]
When in the realm of Barth studies, you will often hear of ‘Barth’s actualism.’ But what in fact is actualism in Barth’s theology? And might it, once understood, offer the way out of the classical modes of thought in regard to God’s relation to the world through the decretum absolutum (‘absolute decree’)? In other words, […]
As we all know by now Karl Barth was not a proponent of natural theology, or the analogia entis (‘analogy of being’). But what we do find in Barth is an appeal to ‘secular parables,’ something equivalent to what Thomas Torrance, in his own way, calls ‘social co-efficients.’ These Barth parables are grounded in his […]
Here is Barth talking about event, and how, as Samuel Adams says: “If the event contextualizes us, rather than being contextualized by us, then we can say that it is something new, since its origin is “outside” of us and has the nature of an “event. . . .”: God’s revelation in its objective reality […]
Athanasian Reformed 