TO THE GLORY OF HIS GRACE: The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity and its Interrelatedness to the Economy of God in Salvation

It is a contemporary trend by many theologians and philosophers to view the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (from hereon, DDS) as an unnecessary, illogical, and problematic addendum of scholasticism to theology proper. However, upon further investigation, this doctrine is found to be prevalent and implied in biblically orthodox ontology. Furthermore, it may be shown that the DDS bears potentially broad ramifications to how we understand the Trinity (given that it proceeds from simplicity in logical priority) and, subsequently, how we understand the initial, sustained, and perfected work of God in salvation through grace. Therefore, contrary to current theological trends, it may be stated that the DDS is, in fact, a centrifugal, practical, and even indispensablepart of the Christian understanding of how we know God.

Divine Action, Design, and Natural Theology

This chapter reviews the debate about intelligent design as it emerged within biology. Then it treats the argument from design as represented by various features of the universe, like temporal and spatial order. The chapter argues that divine agency and divine action inform this debate by highlighting the identity of the agent who is the designer, by exposing how far one can specify the intentions and purposes of God in arguments from design, and by bringing to light two radically different ways of construing the place of natural theology in theology proper. It suggests further work is needed on this issue.

Motus Dei (The Move of God): A Theology and Missiology for a Moving World

This article engages Christian doctrines to introduce and develop the concept of Motus Dei by arguing that God of the Bible is continually on the move and as one who beckons his followers to come alongside to see what God is doing in the world. Thus, the mission is about moving with God to see all things made new as we harmonize our wandering steps to be in sync with a moving God. The mission is following God, moving in, and catching up with God in many different cultural and geographical spaces all over the world, and to grow in our appreciation of God’s work in, through and around us as we move. The authors venture into the domains of theology (proper), anthropology, soteriology, pneumatology, and eschatology, as they attempt to construct a new theology and missiology for a world in motion. The work draws from the rich resources of the Christian faith to try to comprehend God and His work in a world of unprecedented human mobility and consequent societal and global transformations brought about by what is now considered an ‘age of migration’.

Is God Morally Obligated to Prevent Evil? A Response to James Sterba

James Sterba’s book, Is a Good God Logically Possible?, argues that given the amount of significant and horrendous evil in the world, it is not possible for a (morally) good God to exist. This article draws on the work of Brian Davies’ interpretation of Thomistic metaphysics and theology proper and argues that God is not a moral being, and thus has no obligations to prevent such evil. If such is the case, then the problem of evil as presented by Sterba is not a problem for God’s existence.

Revelation

The chapter sketches out the theological and intellectual context of Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of revelation. It notes first the broad characteristics of the doctrine in Edwards’s immediate heritage and then the peculiar challenges to it posed by the English deist thinkers of his day. The chapter argues that in the face of radical objections Edwards defended a recognizably Reformed version of the doctrine. The chapter then briefly considers his theology proper, noting that for Edwards God was essentially a communicative being and that his teleology was one aimed at God’s glorification through self-communication. While Edwards denied that the book of nature was salvific, his theology proper and teleology coupled with his metaphysical commitments to a form of idealism and to being as relational and communicative, meant that as regards the regenerate he was prepared to grant a far more expansive revelatory role for nature and history than was common to his heritage.

God

In the field of theology proper, God’s graciousness is Bonhoeffer’s preoccupying theological concern. Who and what we see when we ‘see the God of the Bible’ is, Bonhoeffer contends, simply God for us. Formally, Bonhoeffer’s theological inquiry is marked by a relentless christological concentration practiced as the discipleship of thought to the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Materially, its central concern is to explicate the reality of divine promeity as the quintessence of the God of the Christian Gospel: God is for us. By taking divine promeity as his primary theme Bonhoeffer makes divine freedom and transcendence important subsidiary concerns, as concepts analytic in the idea of promeity. In Bonhoeffer’s hands, these concepts receive apt, self-consciously evangelical elucidation.

God

Chapter 2 examines Irenaeus’ understanding of the divine being, his theology proper. Since the propositions fundamental to Irenaeus’ doctrine of God bear upon his understanding of the Word-Son and the work of Christ, this chapter also prepares for the chapters to come. To be specific, this chapter examines the two propositions upon which Irenaeus founds his conception of the divine being: God is infinite and God is simple. Both propositions have philosophical roots. Moreover, they sustain several corollaries that further define the divine being: transcendence, incomprehensibility, immanence, immateriality, and atemporality. Once these propositions and their corollaries are addressed, this chapter discusses Irenaeus’ identification of God as Spirit, an identification which has a biblical basis as well as a philosophical one. It concludes by considering the implications of Irenaeus’ theology proper for understanding his thought more generally, as well as particular implications for the remaining chapters of this study.

Prolegomena

Systematic theology is an intellectual discipline for insiders which presupposes the canonical faith of the church embedded in the creeds. This in turn assumes an understanding of the Gospel and serious initiation into the kingdom of God. As an intellectual discipline, systematic theology requires various modes of thinking: expository, hermeneutical, constructive, and apologetic. Epistemological issues can be mentioned but must not be allowed to marginalize the great themes of theology. In this work, the author draws on Scripture understood as a medium of divine revelation, experience, and reason. Yet the aim is to stick to theology proper and return to focused work on the central elements of Christian teaching.

Peter Lombard’s on God’s Will: Sententiae, Book I, Distinctions 45-46

The global Peter Lombard research continues, but the Master of the Sentences’ theology proper is still to be analyzed in detail. In particular, a more thorough exposition of the distinctions 45-48 of his Book of Sentences, which deal with the notion of God’s will and its relation to the human free will, has for some while remained a desideratum. The given article partly fills this lacuna and elucidates on the doctrine of the divine will as presented by the Lombard. In particular, it is shown that for him there exist two ways of speaking about God’s will: «simply and absolutely» and «not simply and absolutely» which may be identified with intransitive and transitive use of the verb «to will,» respectively. The will is primarily understood in terms of execution of one’s will (active willing) but its relation to one’s desires and inclinations (wanting) are downplayed or altogether omitted from the Lombardian doctrine of God. The divine will is by definition free and efficient but Lombard highlights that there is place for human free will, too. His explanation of the relationship between the divine and the human wills seems somewhat unconvincing but the unfolding of his theory on the basis of a few biblical texts should be acknowledged a peculiar theological exercise.

Reviewing the Terrain

In this chapter the author provides a retrospective glance on the material reviewed thus far, and suggests a deeper history of the debates about the nature of divine action among both theologians and philosophers is needed. The author demonstrates the complexity of the debates and the assumptions brought to the table, particularly those assumptions tacit in philosophical queries into the justification of religious belief. He suggests the contours of this particular debate colored the debate on divine action. Following I. M. Crombie, the author argues that theology proper can inform how one thinks about divine actions. Moreover, he argues that theologians and their proposals ought to be considered in the ongoing debate about divine action on their own terms, rather than to be thought secondary to explicitly analytic philosophical arguments and terms for debate.