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doi: 10.1111/ijst.12540pmid: N/A
This article offers a constructive reading of Basil’s doctrine of creation in the Hexaemeron in order to articulate the relation between Christ the divine Logos and the logos of particular creatures. Tracing two lines of thought in Basil’s homilies on the six days of creation – (1) an ambivalence about the possibility of a material substrate in creation and (2) a teleological understanding of creation – I argue that the true ontology of the creature is something realized only eschatologically as a result of the divine Logos working out in creatures what they are to become. Basil’s ability to order creaturely speculation within a spiritual pedagogy of theoria allows him to articulate the nature of creation as something that is both unknowable (for now) and yet something to be realized (in the eschaton). Though these themes remain underdeveloped in Basil’s thought, when read constructively, the Hexaemeron provides an insightful theological grammar to express the divine Logos as immanent to the logos of creaturely beings and, at the same time, to name creaturely being as an eschatological gift, the end‐product of the divine Logos bringing to realization the creative purposes and powers of each and every being.
doi: 10.1111/ijst.12542pmid: N/A
This article advances two related claims about Gregory of Nyssa's soteriology. Based on a reading of Homilies 13, 14 and 15 of the In Canticum Canticorum, I argue that Gregory conceived of humanity's salvation as membership in Christ’s pneumatic body. I proceed to argue that Gregory's theological basis for adopting this view of salvation – that is, trinitarian unity of activity, Spirit‐based Christology and Christ as ‘first fruit’ – helps us better to understand the relationship between the so‐called ‘humanistic’ and ‘physical’ aspects of his soteriology. I offer a response, therefore, to an influential interpretation of Gregory’s soteriology that originated with Wilhelm Herrmann, and has most recently been advocated by Johannes Zachhuber.
doi: 10.1111/ijst.12565pmid: N/A
I begin this article by suggesting that the current phase of trinitarian theology is characterized by an impetus to evaluate and correct work done in earlier phases. One evaluative‐corrective voice is that of Stephen Holmes, who critiques recent trinitarian ressourcement and advocates a return to more traditional conceptions. I suggest that Richard of St Victor can serve as an excellent model of traditional trinitarian theologizing. To do so, however, some recent mischaracterizations of Richard must first be corrected. Toward this end, I identify several points of disagreement with Holmes’ reading of Richard. I explicate those points of disagreement and argue for what I take to be the correct understanding. I conclude by briefly reflecting on how Richard’s project can serve the current phase of trinitarian theology.
doi: 10.1111/ijst.12552pmid: N/A
This article discusses the original and highly dynamic doctrine of the Trinity of Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381) and explores its potential for systematic theology today. Ruusbroec characterizes the Trinity as ‘a flowing, ebbing sea’ in which the divine processions are being reversed through a moment of regiratio or return. The theological‐anthropological implications of this view (as well as Ruusbroec’s affirmation of three faculties) are being examined. It is argued that Ruusbroec’s central insight may have two distinct advantages. First, it may supplement some of Thomas Aquinas’s views (who only recognizes two faculties, not three). Aquinas’s dyadic understanding of the human person makes it difficult, for instance, to do full justice to intuitive aspects we associate with mind, as well as to beauty as a transcendental. Secondly, the notion of regiratio may also assist us in addressing the problem of ‘trinitarian inversion’ whereby the ‘sequence’ of the economic missions does not cohere well with that of the immanent processions.
doi: 10.1111/ijst.12566pmid: N/A
I argue in this article that the concept of akratic action can be profitably employed to better secure the twin notions that John Calvin sought to establish with the doctrine of the Fall: the necessity and inevitability of the Fall (due to God’s predetermination) and the assumption of full moral responsibility on the part of Adam (due to his action being a free choice). Furthermore, this picture of prelapsarian free will and choice, where Adam is not granted the constancy to persevere in choosing rightly resulting in an inevitable akratic action setting in at some point in time, comports well with Calvin’s wider understanding of free will and choice in postlapsarian, redeemed and glorified humanity.
doi: 10.1111/ijst.12536pmid: N/A
In this article I address some important related criticisms of the Introduction to Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith and his Letters to Lücke which have persisted from Schleiermacher's day to the present: namely, the supposed a priori determination of dogmatic content by the Introduction, the role of philosophy in Christian dogmatics, and Schleiermacher's call for an ‘eternal covenant’ between theology and science. I use examples to illustrate a single overall point: that the Introduction to The Christian Faith and the Letters to Lücke can only be adequately understood in light of the concrete dogmatic claims found in the body of The Christian Faith.
doi: 10.1111/ijst.12568pmid: N/A
The historic Protestant wager that Christian theology is funded and governed sola scriptura sui ipsius interpres commits Protestant exegesis and theology to a particular hermeneutical programme. But is this programme viable? I argue that it is, and that it should be undertaken today by practising the theological interpretation of Scripture as a particular kind of Sachkritik: one that seeks the evangelical scopus scripturae in and across the variegated contours of the whole of the canon of Scripture, acknowledging both that it is all ‘letter’ and that precisely as ‘letter’ it is also the elected site of the adventitious self‐disclosure of Word and Spirit.
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