A Theology of Mercy

Send Lazarus ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 133-163
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Eggemeier ◽  
Peter Joseph Fritz
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Good Samaritan ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter constructs an antineoliberal systematic theology. It contests the bedrock neoliberal commitment to impersonal reality (represented by the market) by laying out a Trinitarian theology focusing on the distinctive characters of the three persons of the Trinity. Each Trinitarian person exhibits that reality is at its core mercy. Next it resists the neoliberal anthropology of human capital by describing what we call a neighbor anthropology and an innkeeper ecclesiology, that is, a theological anthropology and ecclesiology conceptualized out of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Finally, against the neoliberal ethos of mercilessness and culture of indifference we direct the works of mercy, presented traditionally as charity, and reimagined as structural and political: a politics of mercy.

Redefining progress in Trinitarian theology: Stephen R. Holmes on the Trinity

2014 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Fred Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
The Trinity

This essay examines some of the implications for contemporary constructive work on the doctrine of the Trinity if Steve Holmes is correct in his judgments about the direction taken by the recent revival of interest in the doctrine. Holmes raises serious questions about the exegetical basis of the doctrine, and raises the question of what God has revealed in the sending of the Son and the Spirit. Some areas of maximal divergence between the classic tradition and the recent revival are probed, such as the recent lack of interest in the elaboration and defense of divinity unity, and also of the divine attributes as explored by classical theism. Finally, Holmes’s work raises questions about the proper relationships between systematic theology and allied theological disciplines such as historical theology and analytic theology.

Was Barth a pro-Nicene theologian? Reflections onNicaea and its legacy

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-359
Author(s):  
Paul D. Molnar
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
The Trinity

If this very weighty and important book did nothing else than establish the fact for modern systematic theology that the trinitarian theology of the fourth century cannot be understood properly by dividing Eastern from Western theology with the usual statement that the former begins with the three persons and moves towards the divine unity while the latter begins with the divine unity and moves towards the three persons, then something truly significant would have been accomplished (Nicaea, pp. 52, 384). Why? Because then one would not be able to trace a supposed modalist tendency directly from Augustine through much Western theology to contemporary theologians such as Barth in order to argue for a view of God's triunity which actually could undermine the full divinity of each of the persons of the Trinity who in reality exist eternally as three persons, one being. Consider, for instance, the remark made by Ted Peters that ‘There is no inherent reason for assuming that the three persons have to be identical or equal in nature.’ If one studies the development of fourth-century trinitarian theology, I think one would find many reasons to insist that the three persons are in fact equal in nature, among which are that any other assertion would undermine the divinity of the Son, lead to some sort of subordinationism or adoptionism (what Barth called Ebionite christology), and would ultimately strip the Gospel of its saving power.

‘America's theologian’: an appreciation of Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology, with some remarks about the bible

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-223
Author(s):  
Francis Watson
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Canonical Structure ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Trinity

Robert Jenson's two-volume Systematic Theology is a highly creative and individual synthesis of a number of often divergent strands of contemporary theology. An ecumenical and trinitarian theology, it is also a theology of narrative, hope, and of the word. The main body of this article attempts a sympathetic paraphrase of the argument of this work section by section. In a more critical ‘postscript’, it is argued that ‘word of God’ language is appropriate to the bible's twofold canonical structure, and that the appropriation of the beginning, middle and end of the biblical narrative to the first, second and third persons of the trinity respectively results in an undue bias towards eschatology.

Divine Persons and Notional Acts in the Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 603-625
Author(s):  
Nicholas E. Lombardo
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
The Trinity

This article presents a reconstruction of an important but neglected element of the trinitarian theology of Thomas Aquinas: namely, his teaching on the notional acts, the intratrinitarian acts attributed to the Divine Persons, and how they relate to individual Divine Persons. In the process, this article shows that, for Aquinas, and for medieval theologians more generally, although we can distinguish between the Divine Persons and their respective intratrinitarian acts according to our human mode of understanding, each Divine Person is, in reality (literally, in the res, or in the thing), nothing other than a single eternal act. This article also explains how thinking of the Divine Persons as divine acts offers significant resources for contemporary theology and corrects against certain perceived weaknesses of Aquinas’s trinitarian theology and relation-centered accounts of the Trinity more generally.

Freedom and Responsibility

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-184
Author(s):  
Thomas H. McCall ◽  
Keith D. Stanglin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

In Chapter 4, we survey how claims to knowledge of God were defended in the nineteenth-century Methodist context; we look both at the theological methods that were employed and how apologetic impulses functioned within those prolegomena. Turning to the doctrine of God, we trace some of the momentous changes that took place as Wesleyan theology wrestled with modern challenges in relation to its classical inheritance (especially in relation to classical doctrines of perfection, simplicity, aseity, immutability, and omniscience as well as Trinitarian theology). With regard to theological anthropology, we see how the major Methodist theologians wrestled not only with long-standing disputes (for example, the mind–body relation) but also with current debates (for example, race and ethnicity). We trace the Wesleyan debates (both internally, and against traditional Reformed theology as well as revisionism and modernism) over the doctrine of original sin.

Augustine and the Trinity: Whose Crisis?

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Neil Ormerod
Keyword(s):  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The World ◽  
The Trinity

This article analyses criticisms made of Augustine's Trinitarian theology by Colin Gunton. It demonstrates that many of these criticisms are unfair, or are based on inconsistencies and inadequacies in Gunton's own position. More constructively, it shows that Augustine's account of human consciousness is not that of an isolated monad, but of a consciousness always in relationship with the world.

The Doctrine of Appropriation as an Interpretative Framework for Karl Barth's Pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-290
Author(s):  
Adam McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Interpretative Framework

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.

Review of Wolfgang Vondey’s Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Steven M. Studebaker
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Spirit Baptism ◽  
Pentecostal Theology ◽  
The World ◽  
Full Gospel ◽  
The Individual ◽  
New Phase

Wolfgang Vondey’s Pentecostal Theology is a creative, constructive, and far ranging contribution to the development of Pentecostal theology. Grounded in the Pentecostal experience of the full gospel, it provides both a fundamental Pentecostal theology and a Pentecostal perspective on major categories of systematic theology. The book marks a new phase of efforts to develop a comprehensive or systematic Pentecostal theology by starting with Pentecostal concerns and developing a theology in terms of them. This review focuses on Vondey’s discussions of creation (ch. 7) and theological anthropology (ch. 8), in which he argues that a Pentecostal theology of creation and eschatology does not conclude with God razing the world, but with the Spirit’s renewing creation. Furthermore, although Spirit baptism transforms the individual, the purpose of that individual transformation is to lead beyond the self and to create a community of sanctified life. Spirit baptism leads those who receive it into the world to live for all people.

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