Relation Of God Research Articles

“As Your Heavenly Father is Perfect”: The God of the Bible and Commandments in the Gospel

In common with much Hellenistic philosophy and Jewish tradition, early Christian writings often ground ethical teaching in the imitation of God. In the Gospels, however, what comes to the fore is “correspondence” to God, in which the divine love, mercy, and compassion provide the pattern also for human conduct. The bond of love between Creator and creature finds its most intimate expression in the relation of God as Father to God’s children, a love that they are to embody in relations toward neighbor and enemy alike.

Book Review: From Nothing: A Theology of Creation

From Nothing: A Theology of Creation. By Ian A. McFarland. Louis- ville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. xvii + 212 pp. $35.00 (paper).Recent years have seen a renewed interest in, and focus on, the role of the doctrine of creation within systematic theology. North American Anglicanism is no exception to this trend. In 2012, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed Resolution A136, which focused on creation in light of the relationship between science and Christian faith, and commended the Catechism of Creation as a tool for congregational study. Unfortunately, the Catechism of Creation left much to be desired as a theological text. Its casual readers may be left with the impression that Christians must choose between either a version of process theology or creationism of the sort unique to contemporary American debates on the origins of the material universe and of humanity.Ian McFarlands compact but rich retrieval of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo offers another way forward, engaging with recent developments in the physical and biological sciences through the lens of the Christian tradition. McFarland, whose previous work has involved theological anthropology as well as Christology, is most recently the author of In Adam's Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin. His latest effort thus follows the trajectory of his previous work, reaching beyond the Fall to the moment of creation. At the same time, however, From Nothing is not ultimately concerned with temporal questions of origins. Instead, McFarland focuses primarily on the dogmatic function of creatio ex nihilo as a Christian proposal about the character of God's relationship to the world (p. xiv).Crucially, this God is not an abstract or universal prime mover, but the Triune God known and revealed in Christ. McFarland argues that the doctrine of creation cannot function as a ?forecourt of the Gentiles,' a means by which Christians can find common theological ground with non-Christians at a generous remove from the more knotty questions associated with topics like atonement, original sin, or the (p. xii). McFarland eschews these attempts to speak in a kind of theological Esperanto, relying instead on a grammar that is emphatically and irreducibly Christian, and grounding his argument in the doctrine of the Trinity through the role of the Word in creation described in John 1. As he explains in the preface, The church's doctrine of creation from nothing is best understood in the context of the specifically Christian doctrine of the Trinity and, still more specifically, as a corollary of the belief that Christ is the one in whom all things were created (Col. …

‘God, the Father Almighty’: A Theological Excursus

AbstractThe confession of ‘God, the Father almighty’ in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds can be interpreted as offering a progressively more focused characterization of the First Person of the Trinity, such that ‘Father’ clarifies the meaning of ‘God’, and the force of ‘almighty’ is controlled by the meaning of ‘Father’. The results of such an exegesis accentuate divine transcendence in a way that raises questions about theological claims to natural knowledge of God. More specifically, they suggest that the very comprehensiveness of God's relationship to the world implied by divine almightiness blocks any direct line of inference from creation to Creator.

The transformation of the temple in the Fourth Gospel

In at least two stories of the Fourth Gospel the transformation of the temple is an explicit theme. In the story of the cleansing of the temple the narrator comments that Jesus spoke of the temple of his body. In the dialogue with the Samaritan woman Jesus explains that God is no longer worshipped at mount Gerizzim or in Jerusalem, but in spirit and truth. In this article I will try to describe some aspects of this transformation against the background of the conflict between the Johannine congregation and the synagogue. As the dwelling place of God the temple is a holy place. Characteristic for the temple that Jesus is, is the mutual indwelling of God and Jesus and the mutual connection of Jesus and his disciples. The two mutual relations make it possible that the disciples come into contact with God. In the new temple that Jesus is, Jesus himself is the sacrifice of atonement. This atonement restores the relation of God and the believers. In the situation that is characterised by the absence of Jesus, the function of Jesus is taken over by the spirit of truth. That God is worshipped in spirit and truth makes a new inclusiveness and universality possible, where the conflict between the ‘Jews’ and Jesus’ disciples is unsolvable because of the exclusive claims of the conflicting parties.

A Challenge to Divine Psychologism

ABSTRACTAlvin Plantinga proposes that mathematical objects and propositions are divine thoughts. This position, which I call divine psychologism, resonates with some remarks by contemporary thinkers. Plantinga claims several advantages for his position, and I add another: it helps to explain the glory of mathematics. But my main purpose is to issue a challenge to divine psychologism. I argue that it has an implausible consequence: it identifies an entity with God's relation to that entity. I consider and rebut several ways in which a divine psychologist might argue that this is not really a consequence, or that the identification is plausible.

God's Greenhouse

God's Greenhouse

Book Review: The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God's Relation to the World

The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jungel on the Sacramental Structure of God's Relation to the World. By R. David Nelson. T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013. 256 pp. $29.95 (paper).R. David Nelsons The Interruptive Word makes contributions to ongoing conversations concerning both sacramentology in general and the work of Eberhard Jungel in particular. In this text Nelson addresses an apparent lacuna in the field of Jungel research, namely the theology of sacrament (p. 1), while providing interesting insight into the problem of sacrament.In part 1 Nelson explicates significant claim comes to the world by coming-to-speech (p. 11). He suggests God comes to through the event of the addressing word, interrupting the Cartesian selfcorrespondence of the ego which seeks self-actualization in its worldly situation. Through the interruptive word, the human is drawn out of self-centered existence (incurvatus in se), resulting in an ecstatic relation to self, God, and the other. In this manner God's addressing word is understood God's sacramental presence to the human, yet the presence of one who is absent.Nelson subsequently turns attention to analogy of advent, which the theologian developed in conversation with Karl Barth and Erich Pryzwara. Jungel believes the analogy of advent allows God to come to through human language, yet remain as one who speaks out of himself' (p. 29). Contrary to the Augustinian tradition in which the form of must be differentiated from its content (see chapter 5), Jungel holds that there is a word in the speaking of which which is spoken arrives in speech (p. 34). This arrival is the analogy of advent. Rearranging the Lateran IV decree, in the analogy of advent God discloses God's self to humanity in a manner which subordinates a great dissimilarity to an even greater similarity.Nelson illustrates and begins to develop his greatest critique of approach in a chapter outlining the latter's work on parable. In Christ's teaching the kingdom of God comes to through the human form most appropriate for the task, the parable. This is an eschatological word-event the parable interrupts the normal course of human events so the kingdom of God may come to speech. As Nelson notes, Jungel s emphasis on the interruptive character of the parable seems to be at odds with his analogy of advent's subordination of great dissimilarity to a still greater similarity.In part 2 Nelson affirms Jungels emphasis on the interruptive structure of the sacramental word is repeated in his understanding of the sacramental being of Jesus Christ (p. …

R. David Nelson, The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God's Relation to the World. London and New York: Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark, 2013, 256pp. £65.00 / $120.00

R. David Nelson, The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God's Relation to the World. London and New York: Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark, 2013, 256pp. £65.00 / $120.00

Book Review: Without Apology: Sermons for Christ's Church

Without Apology: Sermons for Christ's Church. By Stanley Hauerwas. New York: Seabury Books, 2013. 208 pp. $18.00 (paper).In his Without Apology: Sermons for Christ's Church, we find renowned theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas in an unusual, yet familiar place. This book is a collection of sermons and other popular writings. As such, it is a departure from Hauerwas s more academic work. Yet, many of the themes and positions that he develops therein are quite familiar to those who are even remotely acquainted with his thought. The result is twofold: we get interesting pieces that are more practical in nature, while also being treated to an accessible way to begin to filter through the main themes of Hauerwas s work.Without Apology contains three sections. The first is the introduction, where Hauerwas lays out a theology of preaching. The first move he makes in this theology of preaching is to fight the common presumption that he does not believe in apologetics; rather, he believes he follows Karl Barth in that the best apologetics is a good dogmatics. With this in mind, Hauerwas sees preaching as communicating the difference that exists for how we live and exist when we say that God was in Christ. From this, he does not try to translate the gospel into a more accessible language, but to allow the odd grammar that is Christian speech help us see the contingency of our existence and how we are to live and be as creatures made in Gods image. The second move that Hauerwas makes in the introduction is to explain why he does not explain. He fights against the critique leveled against him that he does not explain the gospel. He contrasts this by saying these attempts are almost always us; he would rather speak about the Triune God and how God has determined God's relationship to us. Our attempts at controlling the gospel must be broken by seeing our relationships and the whole of our lives in light of God's relationship with us. From this, Hauerwas refuses to dumb down sermons, instead opting to allow the Holy Spirit to show up as the Word is rightly proclaimed.The second section of Without Apology is the longest, containing a number of sermons that have been preached in a variety of places, but mostly at his home congregation, Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and at Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is canon theologian. The main theme that runs throughout Hauerwass sermons is that the way we, as American Christians, often practice our Christianity is at best problematic and at worst unfaithful. …

David Brown's Divine Humanity

The contributions of this fine book are many but I will concentrate on three, before turning to several more critical remarks.First, and most obviously, the book does the invaluable service of surveying developments in kenotic christology in the nineteenth century while situating them nicely in their different contexts of origin and with reference to lines of mutual influence: continental, Scottish and British trends are all canvassed rather masterfully. Some attention, in lesser detail, is also given to the way these christological trends are extended in the twentieth century to accounts of the Trinity and God's relation to the world generally: kenosis, the self-emptying or self-limiting action of God, in the incarnation, is now viewed as a primary indication of who God is and how God works, from creation to salvation.

N. T. Wright's Great Story and Its Relationship to Paul's Gospel

From his own study of the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism, N. T. Wright reconstructs what he calls "the great story" of God's relationship to the created order, to the human race, and to Israel. His insistence that Paul's gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah is to be interpreted within the framework of this threefold great story employs an approach that is contrary to Paul's own: Paul understands God's relationship to the creation, to humankind, and to Israel within the framework of the gospel rather than the reverse as claimed by Wright. Paul's approach is a function of his apocalyptic understanding of the Christ event as God's eschatological invasion of the human cosmos to effect its liberation from evil powers. Wright fails to do sufficient justice to this and other aspects of Paul apocalyptic theology, particularly as this comes to expression in Galatians.

N. T. Wright's Great Story and Its Relationship to Paul's Gospel

From his own study of the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism, N. T. Wright reconstructs what he calls "the great story" of God's relationship to the created order, to the human race, and to Israel. His insistence that Paul's gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah is to be interpreted within the framework of this threefold great story employs an approach that is contrary to Paul's own: Paul understands God's relationship to the creation, to humankind, and to Israel within the framework of the gospel rather than the reverse as claimed by Wright. Paul's approach is a function of his apocalyptic understanding of the Christ event as God's eschatological invasion of the human cosmos to effect its liberation from evil powers. Wright fails to do sufficient justice to this and other aspects of Paul apocalyptic theology, particularly as this comes to expression in Galatians.

Conversion and Proselytism in the Light of “Christian Witness in a Multi-religious World”

Pope Francis, celebrating World Mission Sunday on Sunday, 20 October, remarked that mission of church is spread throughout world flame of faith that Jesus has lighted in world ... The method of mission is not proselytism, but that sharing of flame that heats up soul. (1) And blessed Pope John Paul II affirmed that missionary activity belongs to very nature of life, and is also inspiration behind ecumenism: 'that they may all be one ... so that world may believe that you have sent me' (John 17:21). (2) Emil Brunner in 1931 noted that the Church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning. (3) The church's universal mission is thus found in faith of Jesus Christ, who is definitive self-revelation of God. Christians go out on mission with conviction that they are saved to save, reconciled in order to reconcile. The church ought to make known to all people in all walks of life that Jesus Christ is Saviour, true God and true man. Nevertheless, church, while being faithful to her entrusted mission, needs to fight against two temptations. The first is mere humanization of mission, through abandoning missionary proclamation, conversion, and in favour of dialogue and social justice. The second involves triumphalism and exclusivism, which tend to deny or ignore presence of Logos and Holy Spirit in all cultures and God's relationship with all peoples throughout ages. Accordingly, awesome responsibility of Great Commission--Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in name of Father and of Son and of Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you (Matt. 28:19-10)--cannot be divorced from great commandment of love of God and neighbour (Matt. 22:34-40). If evangelism as invitation for authentic discipleship is at heart of missio Dei, (4) A then all Christians, as disciples of Jesus Christ, are called upon to be agents and co-operators in God's outreach to all of humanity. The missio ecclesiae, mission of church, thus, ought to be grounded on trinitarian life as a communion-in-mission. Divisions and hostilities among Christians not only set a counter-witness, but also weaken the promotion of healing and reconciling message of Gospel (5) as well as ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue. In my short input, I would like to address following three issues: first, conflicting understanding of evangelism, conversion, and proselytism; second, conversion debate and religious liberty; and third, document Christian Witness in a Multi-religious World: Recommendations for Conduct. Conflicting understanding of evangelism, conversion and proselytism Three sets of empirical population data contribute to increase and decrease in world religions: (i) births and deaths; (ii) converts to and converts from; and (iii) immigrants and emigrants. It is a social phenomenon that is shifting to global South with changing demographics of Christians. Christianity is expected to grow as a proportion of Africa's population, from 143 million in 1970 (38.7% of continent's population), to 630 million by 2020 (49.3%). In Asia, is growing more than twice as fast as general population, mostly through conversions, though it is still a minority religion there (only 8.2% in 2010). (6) The growth of shows obedience of disciples of Christ to Great Commission. Yet spread of in southern hemisphere raises potential political difficulties, and on occasion leads to violence. Proselytism can be defined as an illicit form of or an unethical activity. (7) Evangelism of some Christians includes also members of Catholic as well as other churches. …

Newtonian Idealism: Matter, Perception, and the Divine Will

AbstractThis paper investigates Isaac Newton's rather unique account of God's relation to matter. According to this account, corpuscles depend on a substantially omnipresent God endowing quantities of objective space with the qualities of shape, solidity, the unfaltering tendency to move in accord with certain laws, and—significantly—the power to interact with created minds. I argue that there are important similarities and differences between Newton's account of matter and Berkeley's idealism. And while the role played by the divine will might at first appear to be a species of occasionalism, I conclude that there are, for Newton, genuine causal relations between minds and bodies. Ultimately, to fully appreciate this account of the creation and persistence of matter, we must consider not only Newton's metaphysical writings, but also his sensorium theory of mind‐body interaction, his heterodox theological commitments, and the influences of Descartes, More, and Locke.

The Enigma of “In, With, and Under”: A Response to the Great Dane

With more energy than a supernova, theologian Niels Henrik Gregersen creatively and expansively explores the most difficult conceptual problems surrounding God's relationship to the world. Eschewin...

A SOUTH AFRICAN ANNOTATION TO SHAME IN EZEKIEL 16

This article attempts to makes sense of the layering of different texts - by one another and by different reader responses. The juxtaposed texts are Ezekiel 16 and the TRC account by Antjie Krog. The different reader responses are created by both texts and are partly contributable to women's multiple identification, already mentioned. Ezekiel 16 is itself a layered text. Its central metaphor is "Jerusalem is a woman." The metaphor is worked out as a story of a married woman, shamed by her husband because of her infidelity. On another level, Ezekiel 16 is the story of the people of God's relationship with God in which God judges Judah-Jerusalem's disloyalty, but offers a prospect of restoration. Jerusalem the city is thus also a symbolic representation of population of the city and of Judah. Furthermore, one cannot neatly disentangle these levels.

The Trials of Job: Relitigating Job's ‘Good Case’ in Christian Interpretation

AbstractApplying the legal metaphor integral to the book of Job, this article re-evaluates the evidence for Job's innocence (Job 42:7). After examining the conflicted testimony of the book itself, the article focuses on exemplars of Christian interpretation throughout history (the author of James, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, and Barth) to discuss the various attempts made to come to terms with the final form of the book of Job, including its testimony to Job's complaints. Though some interpreters simply ignore the complaints in their attempts to hold up Job as an exemplar of patience, following, it is often argued, the example of James 5:11, for those who wrestle with Job's apparent blasphemy, three general approaches emerge. The first, denial, refuses to acknowledge Job's accusations of divine injustice. The second, mitigation, attempts to minimise the force of Job's arguments against God. The third, absolution, acknowledges Job's defiance of God but claims that this wrong is not beyond God's grace, and that it may in fact highlight it. However, none is able to satisfactorily reconcile Job's accusations with the innocent verdict God delivers at the end of the book (42:7) and affirm that Job has indeed said what is right about God. Even so, the broader biblical testimony offers evidence to exonerate Job by testifying to divine favourable response to and even initiation of complaint in a tradition of ‘faithful revolt’. Job joins the heroes of Israelite faith, Abraham (Gen 18:17–33), Jacob (Gen 32:6–12, 22–31), and Moses (Exod 32:1–14), the psalmists who dare to cry ‘Why?’ and ‘How long?’ and prophets such as Amos (e.g. 7:1–9), Jeremiah (e.g. 20:7–18), and Habakkuk (e.g. 1:2–4, 12–17) in confronting God and demanding that the deity make things right. Jesus endorses this tradition through both his parables of the importunate friend (Luke 11:5–9) and the importunate widow (Luke 18:1–8) and his cry of dereliction from the cross. Instead of reading Job's complaints in line with this tradition, when these Christian interpreters grapple with Job's accusations against God, Job's ‘friends’ once again become his accusers due to their application of a limited view of God and God's relationship to humanity.

Aquinas on God's Relation to the World

AbstractAquinas’ denial that God has a real relation with the world results in the difficulty of understanding how God creates, knows, wills, and loves the world without entering into a real relation with the world. Because of this perplexity, the contemporary philosopher William Lane Craig argues that Aquinas’ doctrine is ‘extraordinarily implausible.’ After reviewing Aquinas’ teaching in the Summa theologiae, I consider Craig's criticism and then attempt to defend Aquinas’ teaching. In this defense, I consider Aquinas’ teaching as heir to Aristotle, Lombard, and Augustine. I also look at Aquinas’ teaching in relation to his discussions of the divine immutability, knowledge, will, and love.

In the “Light Out of the East”: Emerson on Self, Subjectivity, and Creativity

In “Experience” Emerson announces his readiness “to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West” (CW 3:41). Whatever personal manifest destiny the passage expresses, it arises from Emerson’s deep affinity for Eastern philosophy. The inscription in Emerson’s notebook “Orientalist” is “Ex oriente lux,” or “Light out of the east” (1993, 39), and, as Ronald Bosco notes in his introduction to the notebook, Emerson believed that the light of the East “has the power both to nourish otherwise impoverished individuals and nations and to transmute . . . the crime of materialism into wisdom” (1993, 14). His west is far to the east in “the sunbright Mecca of the desert,” not Huckleberry Finn’s territory, the pioneer’s prairie, or the miner’s rocky west, and unlike miners, settlers, land speculators, governments, and most Western philosophers, he does “not make” or stake a claim; he “arrive[s] there, and behold[s] what was there already” (CW 3:41). Emerson’s approach to the west entails the death or disappearance of “all mean egotism” (CW 1:10) and the open flexibility of a Zen practitioner’s mind. The grand sense of entitlement and the mission of proliferation that sent most European Americans west are quite foreign to Emerson’s acknowledgment and receptivity. All a miner knows is by penetration into the earth; all

A PANENTHEIST READING OF JOHN MILBANK

AbstractJohn Milbank contends that modernity's attempt to establish an autonomous and secular realm for finite reality derives from a theological error originating primarily in the thought of Duns Scotus. Here both divine and finite reality share in a transcendental univocal Being that understands the divine as merely an extrinsic presence. Addressing this error, Milbank seeks to return to a participatory orthodoxy. This article will argue that in such a return Milbank qualifies in important ways the classical understanding of God's relation to creation and the divine attributes, allowing for a panentheist reading of his work that is both asymmetrical and dipolar in character.