scholarly journals Claritas Scripturae, Theological Epistemology, and the Phenomenology of Christian Faith

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Steven Nemes

The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture maintains that the meaning of Scripture is clear to those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit through faith. But this definition provides no way to know whether one has true faith or has been so enlightened by the Holy Spirit, a problem accentuated by persistent disagreement among persons who claim to be Christians of good will. This is a specific instance of a more general problem afflicting “closed” theological epistemologies. This essay provides an exposition of Kevin Diller’s synthesis of the “closed” theological epistemologies of Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga and critiques it on phenomenological grounds. It then concludes with a phenomenologically redefined description of Christian faith which entails rejecting the doctrine of the claritas scripturae and motivates an “open” theological epistemology.

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-85
Author(s):  
Annette Weissenrieder

Insofar as Christianity can be said to have begun with the disappearance of a body, namely the absence of Jesus’ body in the grave, this disappearance occasioned not so much a disjuncture with Jesus’ preceding work as a new start, by way of a salvific turn, according to multiple accounts in the New Testament. It is through the absence of Jesus’ body and subsequent appearances of the risen Jesus that the messianic promise is fulfilled. Furthermore, the absence of Jesus’ body opens up space for transfigured bodies in multiple forms to fill the gap, each in its own way. Christian faith was thus marked, from the earliest time, by questions regarding the meaning, representation, and transformation of the body. In the Gospel of John, after Jesus is resurrected he blows (ἐμφυσάω) the holy spirit into his disciples. Here the infusion of the spirit evokes the framework of ancient embryology, in which spirit brings life. Ancient embryology illumines the recurrent passages in John referring to birth, being reborn, and children of God, especially 1:13–14 and 3:3–8.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-290
Author(s):  
Adam McIntosh

Although Karl Barth is widely recognised as the initiator of the renewal of trinitarian theology in the twentieth century, his theology of the Church Dogmatics has been strongly criticised for its inadequate account of the work of the Holy Spirit. This author argues that the putative weakness of Barth's pneumatology should be reconsidered in light of his doctrine of appropriation. Barth employs the doctrine of appropriation as a hermeneutical procedure, within his doctrine of the Trinity, for bringing to speech the persons of the Trinity in their inseparable distinctiveness. It is argued that the doctrine of appropriation provides a sound interpretative framework for his pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics.


1917 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 73-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Henry Newman

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-28
Author(s):  
Resa Junias ◽  
Dorce Sondopen

Abstract: Basically, Jesus was willing to offer himself to come down to earth to teach the gospel to every human being and was willing to be tortured, crucified, and died to atone for human sins. The purpose of this research is to answer the question: What does God want about His resurrection? How important is the resurrection of Jesus for the lives of believers? What effect will the resurrection of Jesus Christ have on the lives of believers? The answer was: (1) His bodily resurrection and eternity. Everything is possible because Christ, after He rose from the dead, did not die again, in other words, He lives and continues to live. The resurrection of Christ happened a transfer of power, Christ went from being ruled by death to being ruler over death. (2) Without the resurrection, Christian faith is not possible. His disciples are only symbols of defeat and destruction. Without the resurrection, Jesus' position as Messiah and King would be inexplicable. Without the resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit would leave an inexplicable mystery. Without the resurrection, the source of the disciples' testimony was lost. (3) The impact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for the lives of believers is that as long as man is in God, whatever he does, all his efforts in God, will receive a reward or reward from God. Abstrak: Pada dasarnya Yesus rela mempersembahkan diri-Nya untuk turun ke bumi guna mengajarkan injil bagi setiap manusia dan rela disiksa, serta disalibkan, dan mati bagi menebus dosa manusia. Tujuan penelitian ini menjawab pertanyaan: Apakah yang Tuhan inginkan tentang kebangkitan-Nya? Bagaimana pentingnya kebangkitan Yesus untuk kehidupan orang percaya? Apa dampak kebangkitan Yesus Kristus bagi kehidupan orang percaya? Jawabnya adalah: (1) Kebangkitan tubuhnya dan berlanjut dalam kekekalan. Semuanya dapat terjadi karena Kristus, sesudah Ia bangkit dari antara orang mati, tidak mati lagi, dengan kata lain, Ia hidup dan terus hidup. Kebangkitan Kristus terjadi peralihan kekuasaan, Kristus beralih dari dikuasai oleh maut menjadi penguasa atas maut. (2) Tanpa kebangkitan, iman Kristen tidak mungkin muncul. Murid-murid-Nya hanyalah simbol kekalahan dan kehancuran. Tanpa kebangkitan, posisi Yesus sebagai Mesias dan Raja tidak akan terjelaskan.  Tanpa kebangkitan, pencurahan Roh Kudus akan meninggalkan misteri yang tidak dapat dijelaskan. Tanpa kebangkitan, sumber kesaksian murid-murid hilang. (3) Dampak kebangkitan Yesus Kristus bagi kehidupan orang percaya adalah  selama manusia ada di dalam Tuhan, apapun yang ia kerjakan, semua jerih payahnya dalam Tuhan, akan mendapat balasan atau upah dari Tuhan.


Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ

Dealing with biblical inspiration within the scheme of the Word of God in its threefold form (as preached, written, and revealed), Karl Barth distinguished between divine revelation and the inspired Bible. He insisted that the revelation to prophets and apostles preceded proclamation and the writing of Scripture. He interpreted all the Scriptures as witness to Christ. While the human authors of the Bible ‘made full use of their human capacities’, the Holy Spirit is ‘the real author’ of what is written. Raymond Collins, in dialogue with Thomas Aquinas, Barth, and others, interpreted biblical inspiration in the light of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation. He spoke of the Holy Spirit as the ‘principal, efficient cause’ (with the human authors as the ‘instrumental’ causes), rejected dictation views of inspiration, and examined the scope of biblical truth and the authority of the Bible for the Church.


Author(s):  
Wolf Krötke

This chapter presents Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It demonstrates the way in which Barth’s pneumatology is anchored in his doctrine of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit is understood as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the One whose essence is love. But Barth can also speak of the Holy Spirit in such a way that it seems as if the Holy Spirit is identical to the work of the risen Jesus Christ and his ‘prophetic’ work. The reception of the pneumatology of Karl Barth thus confronts the task of relating these dimensions of Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit’s distinct work is preserved. For Barth, this work consists in enabling human beings to respond in faith, with their human possibilities and their freedom, to God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ. In this faith, the Holy Spirit incorporates human beings into the community of Jesus Christ—the community participates in the reconciling work of God in order to bear witness to God’s work to human beings, all of whom have been elected to ‘partnership’ with God. Barth also understood the ‘solidarity’ of the community with, and the advocacy of the community for, the non-believing world to be a nota ecclesiae (mark of the church). Further, to live from the Holy Spirit, according to Barth, is only possible in praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit.


Author(s):  
Matthias Gockel

AbstractThe article compares the doctrine of election in the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, particularly his magisterial essay on the topic from 1819, and the theology of Karl Barth between 1920 and 1925. It argues that both positions are strikingly similar, in regard to both their critical evaluation of the tradition and their constructive proposals for a new foundation. Both theologians offer a theocentric reassessment that shuns the particularism of previous approaches and affirms the unity of the divine will. Schleiermacher defends the Augustinian-Calvinist view of election as a bulwark against Manichaeism and Pelagianism. Still, he criticizes the idea of eternal damnation and argues that the concept of reprobation instead should be understood as a temporal ‘passing over’. The kingdom of God is realized gradually, not in one instant. Similarly, for Barth predestination is not a pre-temporal decree that divides human beings into two separate groups of persons but is actualized ever anew in history, when God’s address entails the miracle of faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. The twofold possibility of faith and unbelief is constitutive for the human encounter with God, and it concerns believers and unbelievers alike, since no person is forever exclusively elect or reprobate. Barth also insists that the relation between reprobation and election is non-dualistic and teleological: predestination is a movement


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignatius W.C. Van Wyk

The article is a contribution to the 450 year celebrations of the Heidelberg Catechism (HC). Sunday 14, Questions and Answers 35 and 36 receive attention. It deals with the two statements of the creed ‘… conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary’. The exposition of the HC is compared to the catechisms of Zacharias Ursinus and John Calvin in order to capture something about the historicity of the text. The exposition of the creed is an on-going process. Karl Barth, Eberhard Busch and Jan Milič Lochman are good examples of Reformed theologians who remain faithful to the intention of the HC, but who explain these statements with present-day criticism in mind. The exposition of Peter Berger is valuable because this sceptic argues that the opinion of modern, liberal Protestantism is of no value. The article concludes that the ‘virgin birth’ as such has no great value. It is only one aspect of the Christian gospel. It also does not proof the divinity of Christ. The divinity of Christ is presupposed.


1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-174
Author(s):  
E. A. Obeng

Romans 8.26f. has no parallel in the NT. A. J. M. Wedderburn writes,Today it is still puzzling, troublesome, divisive; for some it is the essence of the Christian faith, to others it is incomprehensible and repellent.This statement sums up adequately the position of most NT scholars on Rom. 8.26f. Its strangeness derives from three basic ideas. First, this is the only passage in which it is asserted that the Christian does not know how to pray as he ought. This is an exception to what is otherwise said of prayer in the NT. Second, this is the only passage in biblical writings where the Holy Spirit is described explicitly as an intercessor. Third, the passage appears disjointed from its context. The guiding thought in vv. 18–25 is suffering but in v. 26, Paul talks about prayer. Can these themes be related in a single unit?


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