The Judgement on Athanasius in the Historiography of Christian Dogma (Mosheim—Baur—Harnack)

2010 ◽  
Vol 90 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 277-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eginhard Meijering
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Trinity

The present article studies the attitude of three prominent historiographers of Christian dogma towards Athanasius, viz., Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693–1755), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), and Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930). Their different theological backgrounds resulted in different judgements on his expositions on the Trinity. Mosheim’s evaluation of Athanasius is positive, but he thinks Athanasius speculates too much about the mystery of the Trinity, which cannot be understood by reason. Baur considers his theology to reflect a crucial moment within the development of Christian thought, a moment that shows the internal dynamics of this development. Harnack is of the opinion that Christians owe it to Athanasius that Christian faith did not end up as moralism and cosmology. He also thinks that in Athanasius’views on Christ we can hardly find anything of the Jesus of the gospels.

Including Multiculturalism, Social Justice, and Peace within the Integration of Psychology and Theology: Barriers and a Call to Action

2020 ◽  
pp. 009164712097498
Author(s):  
John M. McConnell ◽  
Vincent Bacote ◽  
Edward B. Davis ◽  
Eric M. Brown ◽  
Christin J. Fort ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Clinical Work ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Education Training

Multiculturalism, social justice, and peace are important aspects of the Christian faith. However, scholars in the literature seeking to integrate psychology and Christian theology have underrepresented them. In this present article, we review barriers to including them in our psychology–theology integration literature. Thereafter, we provide a trinitarian theology of multiculturalism, social justice, and peace with a hope that theological knowledge will help Christian psychologists begin to overcome barriers and to move this body of literature forward. We also offer implications for scholarship/research, education/training, and clinical work.

L’iride e la Trinità: Osservazioni sulle fonti di Basilio, Epistula 38,5

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-399
Author(s):  
Francesco Verde
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Interesting Point ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Deep Interest

Abstract The focus of this contribution is to examine the section 5 (Courtonne) of Basil’s Letter 38 devoted to the rainbow considered as a physical metaphor of the Trinity. The main purpose is to scrutinize the likely ancient pagan sources of Basil’s description of rainbow’s formation. The present article concludes by pointing out that the sources used by Basil could be traced back to Aristotle’s Meteorology and the Stoics (especially Posidonius), without denying an Epicurean influence too. The most interesting point is that the author of the letter seems to occasionally modify the ancient sources on the rainbow he consults in order to make the explanation of the rainbow consistent with his theological/Trinitarian scope. Since several studies confirmed the deep interest of Basil in the explanation of natural phenomena (always for theological and not scientific goals) on the basis of the theories of the ancient pagan Greek philosophers, it cannot be ruled out the possibility that Basil actually was the author of this epistle. This question is very problematic; it is not resolved but, in my opinion, it should also be reconsidered in the light of the part of the letter devoted to the comparison with the rainbow.

Duns Scotus

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Richard Cross
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Original Thinker

After a brief summary of Duns Scotus’ life and works, this chapter offers an overview of Scotus’ theology, showing how Scotus’ principal theological aim was theoretical generality: the attempt to treat of God and creatures using the same metaphysical tools—in particular, the same theories of unity and distinction. Despite his status as a radically innovative and original thinker, Scotus’ debt to twelfth-century theology is also highlighted, along with the aim, shared with these earlier theologians, of showing as much as possible of the Christian faith without appeal to revelation. Topics covered include: the theory of individuation, the coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity, the proof for the existence of God as a Trinity of persons, the univocity of being, the Immaculate Conception, Christocentrism, will and freedom, and the doctrine of grace.

Abelard, Peter (1079–1142)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin M. Tweedale
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Moral Ideals ◽  
Rational Argumentation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Many ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Among the many scholars who promoted the revival of learning in western Europe in the early twelfth century, Abelard stands out as a consummate logician, a formidable polemicist and a champion of the value of ancient pagan wisdom for Christian thought. Although he worked within the Aristotelian tradition, his logic deviates significantly from that of Aristotle, particularly in its emphasis on propositions and what propositions say. According to Abelard, the subject matter of logic, including universals such as genera and species, consists of linguistic expressions, not of the things these expressions talk about. However, the objective grounds for logical relationships lie in what these expressions signify, even though they cannot be said to signify any things. Abelard is, then, one of a number of medieval thinkers, often referred to in later times as ‘nominalists’, who argued against turning logic and semantics into some sort of science of the ‘real’, a kind of metaphysics. It was Abelard’s view that logic was, along with grammar and rhetoric, one of the sciences of language. In ethics, Abelard defended a view in which moral merit and moral sin depend entirely on whether one’s intentions express respect for the good or contempt for it, and not at all on one’s desires, whether the deed is actually carried out, or even whether the deed is in fact something that ought or ought not be done. Abelard did not believe that the doctrines of Christian faith could be proved by logically compelling arguments, but rational argumentation, he thought, could be used both to refute attacks on Christian doctrine and to provide arguments that would appeal to those who were attracted to high moral ideals. With arguments of this latter sort, he defended the rationalist positions that nothing occurs without a reason and that God cannot do anything other than what he does do.

scholarly journals God as One

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem H. Oliver ◽  
Erna Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Early Church ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

Two notions are discussed in this article, namely, the (unity of the) Trinity and God’s omnipresence. These two notions are deeply embedded in the Christian faith system and religion – they actually form both the basis and point of departure for the Christian religion. The aim of this article is to revisit the (Early Church and present) dogma of the Church about the Trinity and omnipresence of God as a result of the heresies and apologies linked to this dogma, and to rethink the notion of the concept ‘Trinity’ linked to God’s omnipresence. The historical method is used in the discussion of the (primary) sources and to reach the outcome.

Classical Theism and the Doctrine of the Trinity

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Charles J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

It is well known that Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas participated in a tradition of philosophical theology which determined God to be simple, perfect, immutable and timelessly eternal. Within the parameters of such an Hellenic understanding of the divine nature, they sought a clarification of one of the fundamental teachings of their Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. These classical theists were not dogmatists, naively unreflective about the very possibility of their project. Aquinas, for instance, explicitly worried about and fought to dispel the seeming contradiction between the philosophical requirement of divine simplicity and the creedal insistence on a threefold personhood in God.1 Nevertheless, doubts abound. Philosophers otherwise friendly to Classical Theism (CT) still remain unsure about the coherence of affirming a God that is at once absolutely simple and triune.2 A less friendly critic has even suggested that the theory of divine simplicity pressured Augustine and his medieval followers away from recognizing that real complexity within the life of God which Trinitarianism expresses.3

The Science of Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donovan O. Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William James ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Christian Thought

This chapter examines broad transformations in Christian thought that came to pass over the course of the nineteenth century through exposure to new developments in the life sciences. Taking William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) as a starting point, it shows how a conception of an unchanging God that could be demonstrated through rational proof was affected by the new emphasis on change in the biological sciences, especially in the aftermath of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. Rather than suggesting that these new themes weakened Christian faith, however, a close examination of Christian thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century shows that encounters with science energized Christian theology, philosophy, and practice. This trajectory culminated with the development of the psychology of religion, as exhibited by the American pragmatists William James and Charles S. Peirce. George Eliot’s Middlemarch serves as a guide to the complexity of these transformations.

A systematic theological theory of truth in Kathryn Tanner's Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Helmer
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Concentric Circles ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The One ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Contemporary Context

This paper raises the truth question to explore the possibility of constructing a system of systematic theology in the contemporary context. By using Schleiermacher's thought as a constructive resource, two dimensions of truth are discussed in dialogue with Kathryn Tanner's book Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology: coherence and correspondence. Addressed in the first section is coherence, along with its auxiliary, comprehensiveness, as a requirement for system. The whole of the Christian world view is grasped by a principle of coherence that reflects both a subjective component of authorial individuality and an objective component of an individual grasp of the ‘spirit of the age’. Furthermore, consensus regarding systematic coherence in Western Christian thought agrees on a metanarrative structuring doctrines from creation to apocalypse. In Tanner's work, the principle of coherence is gift-giving that is traced from an inner-trinitarian narrative to its outer-trinitarian expressions in creation, the incarnation, eschatology, as well as in ethical response. Thematized in the second section is the tricky issue of theological correspondence between claims of redemption on the one hand and the sin, evil, and tragedy of the world on the other. Tanner's book offers one solution to this problem: analogical correspondence that situates doctrinal patterns of gift-giving (such as the incarnation, creation) as concentric circles in varying degrees of correspondence to their inner-trinitarian center. In view of this solution, this paper questions the relation between systematic coherence and the reality of both life's brokenness and the depths of divine self-giving pathos.

scholarly journals Adam Pastor, Antitrinitarian Antipædobaptist

1917 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 73-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Henry Newman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Church Membership ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Traditional Doctrine

The intellectual, social, and religious upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of which the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolution were phases, along with the decidedly skeptical tendency of the Scotist philosophy which undermined the arguments by which the great mysteries of the Christian faith had commonly been supported while accepting unconditionally the dogmas of the Church—together with the influence of Neoplatonizing mysticism which aimed and claimed to raise its subjects into such direct and complete union and communion with the Infinite as to make any kind of objective authority superfluous:—all these influences conspired to lead many of the most conscientious and profoundly religious thinkers of the sixteenth century to reject simultaneously the baptism of infants and the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. Infant baptism they regarded as being without scriptural warrant, subversive of an ordinance of Christ, and inconsistent with regenerate church membership. Likewise the doctrine of the tripersonality of God, as set forth in the so-called Nicene and Athanasian creeds, involving the co-eternity, co-equality and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father and the personality of the Holy Spirit, they subjected to searching and fundamental criticism.

scholarly journals Mengajarkan Konsep Trinitas sebagai Pembekalan Apologetis Jemaat di Era Disruptif

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Fekky Daniel Yermia Tatulus
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

The subject of the Trinity in the Christian faith is often the subject of questions from other religious groups that are posted to the congregation. The concept of the Trinity is not easy to understand, but the church must strive to teach the congregation so that they can become apologetic in this disruptive era. The method used in this study is descriptive and phenomenological analysis, giving an overview of the situation in the disruptive era and its effect on the lives of believers. The conclusion of this study is that the pastor as a leader has the responsibility to teach the subject of the Trinity through weekly sermons. Abstrak Pokok Trinitas dalam iman Kristen sering menjadi bahan pertanyaan dari kelompok agama lain yang dilayangkan kepada jemaat. Konsep Trinitas memang tidak mudah dipahami namun gereja tetap harus berusaha untuk mengajarkan kepada jemaat agar dapat menjadi bekal apologetis di era disruptif ini. Metode yang digunakan dalam kajian ini adalah deskriptif dan analisis fenomenologis, memberikan gambaran tentang situasi di era disruptif dan efeknye terhadap hidup orang percaya. Kesimpulan dari kajian ini adalah, gembala sidang sebagai pemimpin memiliki tanggung jawab untuk mengajarkan pokok Trinitas melalui khotbah mingguan.

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