Modes Of God Research Articles

The Spirit of the Atonement: The Role of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s Death and Resurrection

In this essay, we marshal resources from a range of biblical, trinitarian and soteriological commitments, set within a broadly Barthian framework, to offer a doctrinal proposal for the Spirit’s role in the triune God’s work of at-one-ment. We argue that the Spirit plays a vital role in the atoning work of the triune God, as the Spirit is the love of God directed toward the incarnate Son a two-fold manner: (1) in the mode of wrath against our sin born by Christ our representative, and (2) in its mode of blessing in the resurrected and ascended Christ, the exalted one in whom we receive the promised Holy Spirit. Seen in this light, Christ’s death and resurrection was God’s two-fold act of love in the Spirit: the two-fold means of making our representative, Jesus, a fit receptacle for the promised Holy Spirit, that in him all the peoples of the earth might be blessed through his recapitulation of Israel. Key to this thesis are two commitments: (1) seeing a changing economic relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit integral to Jesus’ recapitulation of Israel, and (2) viewing wrath as a mode of God’s love, and therefore a part of, rather than something alien to, the work of the Spirit. With these doctrinal resources in hand, we have the necessary conceptual tools to affirm that the Spirit, just as much as the Father and the Son, is the one who saves us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

O vento sopra onde quer: pneumatologia e diversidade religiosa

A presente pesquisa propõe-se estabelecer um caminho de diálogo do Cristianismo com as grandes religiões a partir da Pneumatologia. O ponto de partida é a Sagrada Escritura. O testemunho bíblico aponta para a ação universal do Espírito Santo. Ele age para além das fronterias do Cristianismo, pois “o vento sopra onde quer” (Jo 3,8). Em seguida, à luz do Concílio Vaticano II, parte-se para o diálogo da Igreja com as religiões promovido pela ação do Espírito Santo. Constata-se, por conseguinte, que o Espírito dá a todos a possibilidade de se associarem ao mistério pascal de Cristo por um modo só de Deus conhecido (GS 22). Vários documentos do Magistério da Igreja reforçarão esta possibilidade no Espírito. A Igreja igualmente reconhece que o Espírito Santo suscita nos corações das pessoas de diferentes povos e culturas uma diversidade de valores espirituais. Assim, o avanço na pesquisa pneumatológica garante uma justificação e fundamentação para o diálogo inter-religioso.

The Infiniscience of the hospitable God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: Re-interpreting Trinity in the light of the Rublev icon

Because of the impact of church doctrine and many documents explaining the official confession of many denominations in Christianity, Trinity was mostly defined in terms of static and substantial categories (the impassibility of God). The undergirding research assumption is that the latter reflects, in most cases, more abstract and rather positivistic metaphysical speculation than representing the vividness of God’s compassionate being-with as explained and revealed in the narratives of the biblical account on God’s graceful intervention with the frailty of human life. The relational dynamics between the Father, the Son and the Spirit should be revisited. In this respect, the Rublev icon on Trinity could help establish the circular and spiral thinking of divine perichoresis as modes of God’s unpredictable, but faithful, covenantal and redemptive encounter with human misery. Trinitarian thinking should be directed by hospice-categories rather than by personhood-categories representing ‘substance’. It is argued that the trinitarian interplay should be re-interpreted in terms of compassionate categories stemming from the passio Dei in theopaschitic theology. This approach should be supplemented by the bowel categories of ta splanchna in order to qualify the infiniscience of the JHWH-Godhead: the being of divine interventions in terms of verbing terminology.

Son-Condescension and the Logic of Theology

SummaryIn the following essay, I compare concrete and abstract theological logics, critiquing the latter in favor of a biblical-revelational version of the former. I then move the comparison to the specific issue of biblical interpretation. Abstraction bares its antinomies openly here. The biblical-revelational approach focuses on Son-condescension as the mode of God’s every act with regard to not-God. If Son-condescension is the mode of the Creature/creature relation, then it should also be the logic of understanding it. Therefore, I commend a Son-condescension model for explaining the Creator/creature relation and then more basically as the logic of Christian theism.

Jesus’ Cry of Lament: Towards a True Apophaticism

The lament speech form is an integral part of Israel’s faith and liturgy, yet its significance has not been adequately accounted for in Christian liturgy and theology. This is astonishing given that Jesus’ resurrection is God’s response to his lament on the cross. Jesus’ cry radicalizes Israel’s practice of lament, yet at the same time his lament contains the distinct aspects of revealing a trinitarian kenosis of God and portraying the crucified one as the new locus of encounter with God, all of which highlights the need to give prominence to an apophatic theology. Given the saving significance of Jesus’ suffering, our suffering, as taken up into the history of God, is to be viewed as a mode of God’s presence; it is not only a condition from which to be delivered but the means by which the hope of a ‘new creation’ will be realized. Jesus’ cry also discloses a complex threefold character to his suffering, which calls for a radical discipleship conceived as participation in the kenosis of the crucified one, who is in complete solidarity with all aspects of suffering humanity.

Divine Action: A Neo-Byzantine Model

Briefly stated, the problem of divine action has, in recent thought, been that of whether and how God can affect the workings of a world characterized usually at least by obedience to "laws of nature." There have, essentially, been two kinds of answer to this question. One of these has relied on a traditional conceptual scheme, which speaks of a "special" mode of God's action which is analogous, in many respects, to that of any other personal agent. In this understanding, a very clear distinction is made between "general" providence which arises straightforwardly from what the cosmos will do "on its own" and what will happen if God chooses to perform some "special" providential action by interfering with the normal workings of the cosmos.1 The other main kind of response to the problem of divine action is conceptually different from this interference model (though it is sometimes combined with aspects of it.) Here the focus is on a distinction between primary and secondary causes, and God's action is not seen as that of an agent working "from the outside", as in the interference model. The fact that this approach has given rise to outlooks as varied as a traditionalist neo-Thomism and an essentially deistic kind of naturalism indicates, however, that the model, in itself, has no specific answers to the questions of how God's will is brought about through "natural" causes, and of what the scope of this mode of divine action is.

Human Rights: a Channel for Salvation?

In the light of many severe social-economic and health problems many South Africans today experience a situation of helplessness and despair. In the face of these problems we ask whether there is a better solution than leaving the country and starting a new life elsewhere. If Christianity still has anything to say regarding these social-economic problems it must be the belief in salvation - salvation from a situation of helplessness and despair. The belief in salvation should appeal to and inspire people and therefore trigger change-oriented action. But does it happen in practice? To gain insight into this question we did empirical research among two groups of youths: a group of grade 11 students at some private (Catholic and Anglican) schools, and a group of grade 11 students at Afrikaans-medium public schools whom we investigated in a comprehensive survey research project, about their belief in God's salvation in the past, present and future, as well as in his salvation in both their personal relations and local and global communities. The question is whether this belief has an effect on their human rights culture, which theoretically can be positive or negative, or lead to no effect at all. The conclusion of this research is that their belief in divine salvation has a non-exclusive, differentiated positive effect. The effect is non-exclusive, because other religious factors like an open type of religious socialisation, ritual praxis and church participation, and more especially non-religious factors like gender, home language, political and cultural orientations also have an effect, sometimes even a stronger effect. The effect is differentiated, because only their belief in God's salvation in their personal life and their own communities has a positive effect on their human rights attitudes, whereas the other modes of God's salvific activity have a clearly ambivalent (positive/negative) effect or even no effect at all.

On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza's Metaphysics

On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza's Metaphysics JOHN CARRIERO A CENTRALIF DIFFICULTPOSITIONtaken in Spinoza's Ethics is that things in the universe other than God--including rocks, trees, ideas, and minds--are modes of God; according to Spinoza, produced things are modally dependent on God. How are we to understand this relation of modal dependence? Spinoza inherits the term mode from Descartes, who was using the term as a replacement of sorts for the Aristotelian accident. In the Aristotelian tradition, accidents are supposed to inhere in their subjects. Is modal dependence for Spinoza basically the same thing as the traditional relation of inherence?' Some commentators have argued not. Explicating the traditional idea of inherence in terms of predication (so that the relation of inherence is supposed to amount to the relation between a property or quality and the subject of which the property or quality is predicated),~these commentators suggest that to interpret Spinoza's modal dependence in traditional terms would be to commit him to the view that a produced thing, e.g., Mt. Rushmore, is a quality or property predicable of God. In the view of these commentators, this position is so odd as to suggest that Spinoza's understanding of modal dependence cannot be the traditional idea of inherence but must be fundamentally novel. This line of reasoning is flawed in that it relies on a misleading caricature of the traditional relation of inherence. In particular, it is a mistake to explicate the traditional relation of inherence in terms of predication. In Section l, For ease of exposition, I am using modal dependenceas a label for the dependence of modes on their subjects in Spinoza (whatever that dependence may amount to) and inherence for the traditional idea of an accident's existing in a subject (whatever that may amount to). "Curley writes in Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), hereafter cited as "SM," p. 18: "When qualities are said to inhere in substance, this may be viewed as a way of saying that they are predicated of it." [~45] ~,46 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:9 APRIL 1995 I sketch a traditional medieval Aristotelian conception of the dichotomy between substance and accident which distinguishes inherence from predication . I also show how Spinoza's thinking about the substance/mode dichotomy draws, often in surprising and subtle ways, on that tradition. In the remaining two sections I respond to arguments that have been offered against relating Spinoza's conception of modal dependence to a traditional conception of inherence . In Section ~, I take up Edwin Curley's claim that things like tables and chairs are of the "wrong logical type" to count as modes, which leads him to suggest that all that modal dependence comes to in Spinoza is causal dependence . In Section 3, I consider three of Bayle's objections to Spinoza's claim that produced things are modes of God, objections which Curley has suggested are so compelling as to give us further reason for doubting whether Spinoza understood modal dependence as inherence. 1. SPINOZA AND A TRADITIONAL ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPTION OF ACCIDENT Let's begin by recalling a standard Aristotelian treatment of the distinction between substance and accident.3 In the Categories (la 16ft.), Aristotle develops the notion of substance by presenting a pair of orthogonal distinctions. First, he distinguishes between things that can be said of a subject and things that cannot be said of a subject. Horse, for example, can be said of a subject, but Bucephalus cannot. Roughly, this first distinction is between universal and particular.4 Aristotle goes on to draw a second distinction, between things that exist in a subject and things that do not exist in a subject. According to Aristotle, white and being eight feet tall exist in subjects, say Socrates or Bucephalus, but humanity or horsehood does not exist in a subject. If whiteness exists in Socrates, why isn't it equally true that humanity exists in him? Aristotle 's point here is that Socrates is too closely bound up with his humanity for s As we shall see, questions have been raised in the middle part...

SUDDEN CHANGE IN THE WORLD

Abstract. The suddenness of phase change is examined as an example of a discontinuity in nature, in which an apparently random microscopic event can trigger a macroscopic change of state such as the crystallization of a liquid. Recent advances in nucleation theory that have helped to quantify but not eliminate this randomness are described, and analogies with the modes of God's action in the world are explored.

Ideologie und Toleranz im Denken Reinhold Niebuhrs

Abstract Reinhold Niebuhr's concept of ideology, a synthesis of the doctrine of sin and sociology of knowledge, denotes any claim to absolute truth with reilsvested interests. Tolerance, its anonym, is based on an acknowledgement of one's own fallibity and need for forgiveness. Niebuhr thus intertwines Luther's two »realms« (modes of God's ruling the world), without mixing them up. His theory is deemed a major contribution to both theology and political science.

Knowing the Unknowable God (review)

468 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY a7:3 JULY 1989 though not, perhaps, more so than the Demiurge of Proclus, for example, albeit Proclus' system is much more complex, and the demiurgic function is divided among various entities. Certainly, there is no discernible Christian influence on' Hierocles, as Aujoulat rightly concludes. "Hi~rocl~s d'Alexandrie est un philosophe peu connu," Aujoulat begins. Not any longer, I think. What he needs now, if anything, is a further spell of obscurity. Damascius describes him in the Life oflsidore (Fr. 1o6, p. 83, 14-a 5 ~ zin) as, "sublime in his life-style, but rather fuzzy intellectually," and that, I think, is a fair, if rather waspish assessment. JOHN DILLON Trinity College,Dublin David B. Burrell. Knowing the UnknowableGod. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986. Pp. x + 13o. Paper, $x5.95. Philosophical theologians have long been concerned with unravelling the nexus of problems centered around the relation between a transcendent deity and the created universe. Such problems have traditionally involved not only what can be known or predicated of such a deity, but what sort of knowledge said deity has of its creation. Reflecting these concerns, Burrelrs aim in his book is to explain how it is that an unknowable God, one whose nature transcends the human, can nevertheless be addressed in a cognitively meaningful way; that is, how "such a One, who must be unknowable, may also be known" (3). Inasmuch as his interests are historical as well as philosophical Burrelrs examination occurs from within the medieval context and highlights the views of three prominent medieval thinkers--Avicenna, Maimonides and Aquinas. Burrell analyzes the views of these thinkers concerning three major issues: the nature of God's essence; the limits of religious language; and the extent of God's knowledge of His creatures. Before turning to these issues, however, Burrell summarizes the Neoplatonic emanation scheme against which all subsequent discussion must occur. For, as he correcdy points out, medieval philosophers were much influenced by the theological ramifications of this emanationist ontology, particularly with respect to the very notion of a 'creator' deity. How is it that multiplicity can arise from unity? This was the problem inherited by the intellectual followers of Plotinus, a problem shared by medieval Jews, Moslems, and Christians. As Burrell points out, one must distinguish "creation from emanation .... intentional activity from necessary bringing forth" (15). Accordingly, Neoplatonism, while raising technical difficulties for the philosopher, at the same time allows for an ontology in which God is both separate from and related to the world. In chapters ~ and 3 Burrell examines the nature of God's reality, as articulated in particular in terms of the distinction between essence and existence. The importance of this distinction, although developed first by Al-farabi and Avicenna, was not fully recognized until Aquinas and his followers. For, while earlier philosophers such as Avicenna and Maimonides used the essence/existence distinction to emphasize what is BOOK REVIV.WS 469 unique about God, a Necessary Being whose essence implies existence, only Aquinas, according to Burrell, amplified it to highlight the importance of the individual as a unique existing entity. Burrell explores Aquinas' use of the term esse as applied to God, emphasizing the natures of simpleness and oneness as they pertain to God's essential nature. If God is essentially simple, however, how can philosophers say anything about God: does not the very process of predicating attributes to God imply an act of blasphemy ? Maimonides certainly thought so, and developed a theory of negative predication in an attempt to account for the meaningfulness of linguistic utterances when applied to God. In chapter 4, Burrell examines the attempts of both Maimonides and Aquinas to vindicate the process of divine predication. Juxtaposing Maimonides' theory of negative predication with Aquinas' doctrine of analogy, Burrell suggests that ultimately Aquinas' theory comes closer to capturing the activity inherent in God's essence. The weakness of Maimonides' theory, according to Burrell, was in construing too literally the predicable nature of divine attributes. Rather than characterizing them as modes of God's activities, Maimonides' emphasis upon God's understanding as a primary attribute undermined the predicability of any other...

The Modes of God's Presence

The Modes of God's Presence

Theism and Absolutism

Theism is sometimes defined by reference to the contrasted doctrines of Deism and Pantheism. Deism, it is said, lays stress on God's transcendence, while Pantheism emphasizes his immanence to the exclusion of his transcendence. Theism, on the other hand, mediates between these two one-sided doctrines and affirms that God is at once both immanent and transcendent. He is in the world and yet beyond it. This definition, however, can only be accepted with qualification because some forms of Pantheism are arrived at by stressing, not the immanence, but the transcendence of God. According to Neo-Platonism, for example, the ineffable Absolute is so transcendent in existence and value that the world is reduced to the humble status of a mere illusory appearance and all veritable reality is absorbed in the Divine. This complication of the matter means that when studying the nature of Theism it is necessary to consider the opposition between Cosmism and Acosmism as well as that between transcendence and immanence The cosmistic tendency is to affirm, whereas the acosmistic tendency is to deny, the ultimate reality of the finite individual's effective autonomy. Theism is cosmistic, in the sense that it refuses to reduce the finite individual to a mere dependent mode of God. Nevertheless, the acosmistic tendency is very evident in many so-called theistic systems—so much so in some cases, indeed, that what is alleged to be Theism really amounts to Pantheism in disguise.