‘As in a Mirror’: Jonathan Edwards,Self-Love and Enlarging to Receive Another

Through a robust deployment of visual metaphors, Jonathan Edwards’s theology utilizes notions of vision to articulate his doctrine of God, creation, anthropology, redemption and ultimately glorification. Focusing on anthropology, this article attends to how human beings are constituted through sight, and reconstituted (i.e. regenerated) as they are contemplated in the Son and as they are given a vision of the Father in the Son by the Spirit of illumination. Put differently, Edwards’s anthropology is ordered around its teleology of becoming like God only if one can ‘see him as he is’ (1 Jn 3:2), which is anticipated by faith in this present age and ‘through a mirror dimly’ (1 Jn 13:12). After mooring his anthropology to broader theological concerns, the article narrows to consider how Edwards’s idiosyncratic personalism is developed around the notion of a ‘reflective self’ that can enlarge to internalize an ‘other’. Clarifying this notion is a brief comparison of a similar construction in Thomas Aquinas, showing how Edwards’s theory of loving neighbor as oneself is a unique contribution to questions concerning personhood, self-love and neighbor-love.     

Nature and Grace: Two Participations in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards

Christian theologians are increasingly interested in both ontological and soteriological forms of participation theology. Paul Gavrilyuk challenges scholars to be more precise in how these relate to each other. This article contributes to the need for further precision by engaging with the thought of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards employed both types of participation, but did not embed one within the other. Ontological participation, dubbed ‘common participation’, undergirds created nature and is a methexis in God for being. Soteriological participation, dubbed ‘special participation’, explains special grace and is a relational koinonia in the love between the Father and the Son. These two participations are complementary and facilitate a clear distinction between nature and grace.     

Maker of Heaven and Earth

The first article of the Nicene creed forms Christian teaching about creation in two ways. It exhibits a particular order of Christian confession and instruction, and it recommends to the church the importance of properly distinguishing three relations: the relation between God the Father and God the Son; the relation between God and the world; and the relation between heaven and earth. This dogmatic commentary on the creed attends to the first two relations and introduces the third.     

The Problem of Criteria and the Necessity of Natural Theology

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ‐centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self‐disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post‐liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old‐fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self‐evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life‐world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach.     

Heidegger’s Destruktion of Theology: ‘Primordial Faith’ and ‘Recognition’ of the Messiah

Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life offers important insights by engaging Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, where he distinguishes ‘Paul the Pharisee’ from ‘Paul the Christian’ in order to explicate the nature of faith in contrast to systematic theology. Neither certitude in God’s existence is primordial to Christian faith, according to Heidegger, nor is rabbinic nor theological disputation concerning God’s existence or God’s nature. Instead, what is essential to Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life are: (1) faith as lived experience and (2) recognition of ‘the Christ’ (ho christos/ha ma?ía?). This ‘recognition’, however, requires phenomenological clarification and not philosophy of religion as traditionally construed.     

Leashing God with Levinas: Tracing a Trinity with Levinas

Levinas' ethical metaphysics opens up a nexus of relationships, in the midst of which God becomes accessible as the counterpart of the justice I render to others. Although Levinas refuses a theorising theology which does violence to God, we attempt in this article nonetheless to glimpse the possibility of a divine threesome (leash) which can be articulated in the language of ethical metaphysics. We seek to trace a Trinity, not in Levinas, but with Levinas. We seek to 'leash God with Levinas.'
Thus, we argue the liturgical nature of God . God is utterly 'for-the-other.' The Father, as utterly self-diffusive, is 'for-the-Son', and the Son, as utterly responsive, is 'for-the-Father.' The divine nature ( ousia ) is the ethical reality of 'for-the-other.' Secondly, this one nature ( ousia ) has three distinct hypostases , which need to be understood ethically. The relationship between Father and Son is not the same as the relationship between the Son and the Father. The Father and the Son are the same in that they are essentially 'for-the-other,' bound by a bond or a Spirit of responsibility . Yet, the Son's relation to the Father is responsive, whereas the Father's relation to the Son is initiative or originary. Thus, there is both an identity yet a non-identification of Father and Son. Again, since responsibility is the ethical hypostasis of 'the-other-person-in me,' we might say that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father (cf. John 14:10,11), in a non-identical way, and that it is precisely this perichoresis of the one in the Other which constitutes the hypostasis of each.     

A Cry of Dereliction? Reconsidering a Recent Theological Commonplace

Abstract: The ‘cry of dereliction’ (‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’) has often been understood in recent theology as pointing to a genuine abandonment of the Son by the Father in the event of the cross. Hans Urs von Balthasar's account of this is explored, and exegetical and theological reasons are offered for preferring a more traditional account in which the unity of the Trinity remains unbroken by human sin.     

God’s Faithfulness and Dementia: Christian Theology in Context

Christian theology concerns the practical, contextual realities of life in the church and the world. What does this mean for a person with dementia? While much dementia care focuses on deficits, this article promotes a different starting point: God’s faithfulness rather than our forgetfulness. Using case studies from residential aged care, opportunities for meaningful pastoral care are explored, inviting us to see in the person with dementia a deep connection with ourselves. Drawn from a theological understanding of God as three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—“person-centered care” invites us into relationships of mutuality and reciprocity not dependent on words. Pastoral care of families is manifest through personal relationships where all aspects of dementia, including death and dying, can be discussed openly. Grounded in God’s faithfulness, the first and final word is love. Hope lies in the belief that we have already been found. We are blessed by the grace of God, called into community where the insightful and the forgetful flourish together.     

Christ's Love as the Basis of the Church's Faith Witness to Muslims

According to the Christian view, the essence of the triune God is revealed in the relational event between God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The Bible says of this God, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). By way of example, the article explores “God's love” to show that the Qur'an's conception of God is incompatible with key tenets of the New Testament. Thus, when keeping both conceptions of God in view, we cannot speak of one and the same God. Now what does this mean for the pursuit of conciliatory relations between Christians and Muslims? Which relational paradigms need to be kept in mind? After reflecting on the concepts of neighbourliness, companionship, and hospitality, the article goes on to trace the conceptual outlines of Christian mission as a mission of God's love (missio amoris Dei). Its hypothesis is that a characteristically Christian conception of God can supply useful motifs for appreciative and conciliatory actions by Christians toward Muslims. Finally, the author proposes a theology of interreligious relations (which he has elaborated upon elsewhere) as an alternative approach to conventional theologies of religion.     

‘From the time he took on the form of a servant’: The Christ's Pilgrimage of Faith

Addressing the pistis christou debate in New Testament studies, this article argues that in the eternal life of the perfect God, the divine Son pleases the Father in the Spirit and, therefore, the divine Son trusts the Father by the Spirit's power during his earthly pilgrimage. It roots soteriology in Christology and shows that the christological account flows forth from the eternal relations of the Trinity. The article concludes by noting implications for dogmatics and exegesis.     

The Livingness of God; or,the Place of Substance and Dynamism in a Theology of the Divine Perfections

Theological reflection on the divine character is serviceable to the extent that it prevents the livingness of the triune God – and so the subject matter of theology – from disappearing behind rigorous consideration of the perfections themselves. The topic of God's livingness, in other words, informs the locus de Deo as a whole. The present article begins with a biblical‐dogmatic proposal for the form and content of this livingness: God's life in and for the world, it is proposed, is at every point rooted in the life which God has from himself as Father, Son and Spirit. Two clarifications are subsequently offered. An appeal to the livingness of God should be distinguished both from an abstract rejection of ‘substance’ language and from a conceptualization of reality under a general theory of the forward advancement of the world process.     

‘God,the Father Almighty’: A Theological Excursus

The 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 Trinity in Qur’anic Idiom: Q 4.171 and the Christian Arabic Presentation of the Trinity as God,his Word,and his Spirit

ABSTRACT

Since the early centuries of Islam, the Qur’an’s deep imprint on Arabophone Christians has been evident, not only in their evocation of qur’anic language, but also in their creative employment of the text in constructing their own orthodox Christian Arabic theology. This article investigates the presentation of the Trinity as ‘God, his Word, and his Spirit’ in Christian Arabic theological tracts in the early centuries of Islam. It argues that Q 4.171 played a foundational role in constructing a distinct Christian Arabic Trinitarian theology and that Arabophone Christian writers discerned in it the nucleus of what could be developed as an orthodox Trinitarian theology. It traces the development of the Christian Arabic Trinitarian formulation in four works by Arabophone authors: John Damascene’s On Heresies 100; On the Triune Nature of God; the interreligious disputation in the court of the ?Abbāsid Caliph al-Ma?mūn attributed to the theologian Theodore Abū Qurra; and the apologetic letter by ?Abd al-Masī? al-Kindī. This article also makes observations on the implications of the Christian Arabic theological project for interreligious encounter in the early Islamic centuries.     

The Hidden and Triune God

Luther rightly perceived that God is hidden in his presence. The challenge systematically is to integrate discourse about God's hiddenness with a serious trinitarianism. The attempts by Gregory Palamas and Karl Barth to do just this are judged inadequate. A constructive proposal begins by recognizing that God's hiddenness is an impenetrability of his moral agency in his history with us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rather than a correlate of God's ontological uniqueness or our creaturely epistemic limitations. God's hiddenness must be thought of in terms of the sheer factuality of God the Father, which limits theodicy; the suffering of the Son, and thus the rejection of idolatry; and the freedom of the Spirit.     

Attachment and women’s faith development

This article explores the relationship between human attachment and God attachment, particularly in Christian women’s experiences of faith. It is based on the attachment perspective as a conceptual framework. The main aim was to evolve an attachment‐theoretical approach to women’s faith development and to offer a complementary path to interpret women’s faith development. The method was qualitative, as the data were collected via biographical narrative depth interviews. The findings suggest that an early attachment experience is a significant factor in the women’s faith development; three patterns of women’s faith are presented in which the differences in their images of self and God are represented accordingly.     

Who is God in the Old Testament? Retrieving Aquinas after Rahner's Answer

Karl Rahner adamantly argued that the God of the Old Testament is the unoriginate Person of the Father. This forms the bedrock of his trinitarian theology, often credited as renewing Christian appreciation for the Trinity. However, his position that the Old Testament God must be identified as the Father contradicts much of the Christian tradition, including strands of Greek theology whose emphasis on the Father he claimed to restore to the West. This article retrieves the theology of Thomas Aquinas after Rahner in order to correct the imbalance of Rahner's position with greater nuance in appreciating the mystery of God in the Old Testament.     

A Sense of Belonging: on the Challenging Complexity of Women and Church

Abstract

This article presents a general outline of a feminist Christian faith. It is argued that some of the characteristics of this form of Christian religion and theology offer inspiring challenges for a renewal of contemporary theology and the churches of Western Europe. This argument is demonstrated proving the following theses: One of the main characteristics of feminist theology is its ‘ekklesiality’; there is a strong connection between this ekklesiality and the importance of an immanent God; the ongoing struggle of dealing with ‘differences’ and ‘diversity’ is an important source of creativity for the ekklesiality of feminist theology and the women-and-faith movement. It is suggested that the integration of these elements will empower the vitality and the future of the churches.     

“I will bless those who bless you”: Christian Zionism,Fetishism, and Unleashing the Blessings of God

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of ‘blessing’ Israel that has become common among contemporary American Christian Zionists. After introducing a theological scheme that has dominated discussions of contemporary Christian Zionism, the article critically examines one of the emerging narratives concerning the (re)discovery of Christian Zionists’ Jewish roots and the way the Jewish contribution to Christianity is framed. Following this, the article considers the way Israel and Jews are understood to hold a distinct place in the network of world redemption and how contemporary Israel acts as a marker—what is referred to as a ‘signifier of stability’—that helps Christian Zionists locate God’s ongoing work in the world. Finally, the article discusses how Christian Zionists ‘bless’ Israel in practical ways as a form of submission to God, a reminder of their relationship with God, and a way to locate themselves in the redemptive process.