A TRINITARIAN GRAMMAR OF SIN

This essay offers a critical reading of David Kelsey's hamartiology in Eccentric Existence. I elucidate Kelsey's “trinitarian grammar of sin,” which charts how human lives characteristically “miss the mark” of God's creating, consummating, and reconciling ways of relating to us. Kelsey uses this dynamic pattern of divine relating to illuminate the appropriate responses of the Christian life—faith, hope, and love—and their fundamental distortions. I commend three major contributions of Kelsey's hamartiology: his parsing of the relationship between sin and moral evil, his overturning of modernity's anthropocentric paradigm of sin, and his reconstruction of original sin. I conclude with three clusters of questions relating to: first, Kelsey's root paradigm of sin as idolatry, second, his use of impurity and stain language to describe original sin, and third, what is at stake in crafting theological anthropology in the analytical style of Eccentric Existence.     

A RAFT THAT FLOATS: EXPERIENCE,TRADITION, AND SCIENCES IN GUSTAFSON'S THEOCENTRIC ETHICS

Abstract. Although James Gustafson's use of the Christian Bible and tradition is not fully displayed in the essays published here, Bible and tradition are a crucial part of a composite rationale, which includes experience and the sciences, for his theocentric ethics. Gustafson's theocentric ethics employs the sciences to back, inform, and correct the Christian tradition and offers grounds for respecting the natural piety and morality of “nonreligious” persons while explaining and justifying why Christians draw on major themes and metaphors from their tradition that should penetrate their piety and morality. His proposal should reorient the thinking of theological ethics more than it has thus far.     

METHODOLOGICAL CHOICES IN KELSEY'S ECCENTRIC EXISTENCE

This article explores the methodological choices that shape David Kelsey's magnum opus Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (2009). These choices are explicit, and elucidated by Kelsey primarily in the introductory sections of this work. Considered in turn are Kelsey's rejection of a modern, apologetical approach to the theological task, his recovery of a premodern commitment to explaining the logic of beliefs rather than the logic of coming to belief, his explication of theological anthropology through a God‐centered, Trinitarian, understanding of the biblical plot, and his decision to elucidate the human person theologically through an appreciation of the canonical Wisdom literature, which valorizes humanity's created goodness. It concludes by assessing Kelsey's project as an unsystematic systematic theology, a notion he develops as well in his earlier Imagining Redemption (2005).     

BIBLICAL AND THEISTIC ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE EVOLUTIONARY ARGUMENT AGAINST NATURALISM

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism states that evolution cannot produce warranted beliefs. In contrast, according to Plantinga, Christian theism provides (I) properly functioning cognitive faculties in (II) an appropriate cognitive environment, in accordance with (III) a design plan aimed at producing true beliefs. But does theism fulfill criteria I–III? Judging from the Bible, God employs deceit in his relations with humanity, rendering our cognitive functions unreliable (I). Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that God's purpose would be to produce true beliefs in humans (III). Finally, from the theistic/religious perspective, it is impossible to tell whether observations have natural or supernatural causes, which undermines an appropriate cognitive environment (II). Reliable identification of deceit or miracles could alleviate these problems, but the theistic community has failed to resolve this issue. Dismissal of parts of the Bible, or attempts to find alternative interpretations, would collapse into skepticism or deism. Thus, Plantinga's problem of epistemic warrant backfires on theism.     

NEWTON AND WOLFF: THE LEIBNIZIAN REACTION TO THE PRINCIPIA, 1716–1763

Newton rested his theory of mechanics on distinct metaphysical and epistemological foundations. After Leibniz's death in 1716, the Principia ran into sharp philosophical opposition from Christian Wolff and his disciples, who sought to subvert Newton's foundations or replace them with Leibnizian ideas. In what follows, I chronicle some of the Wolffians' reactions to Newton's notion of absolute space, his dynamical laws of motion, and his general theory of gravitation. I also touch on arguments advanced by Newton's Continental followers, such as Leonhard Euler, who made novel attempts to defend his mechanical foundations against the pro‐Leibnizian attack. This examination grants us deeper insight into the fate of Newton's mechanics on the Continent during the early eighteenth century and, more specifically, sheds needed light on the conflicts and tensions that characterized the reception of Newton's philosophy of mechanics among the Leibnizians.     

RHETORIC OF FAITH AND PATTERNS OF PERSUASION IN BERKELEY'S ALCIPHRON

In this article I consider George Berkeley's Alciphron (1732) from the standpoint of the literary techniques and rhetorical procedures employed, as evidence for placing this composition within the tradition of Christian apologetic rhetoric. The argument develops around three main issues: 1) Berkeley's employment of the traditional rhetorical tool of attacking his opponents using their own weapons; 2) Berkeley's resort to a perennial tradition of pre‐Christian or non‐Christian wisdom, in order to validate his Christian‐theistic claims; and 3) Berkeley's ‘argument from utility’ (considering the beneficial effects that accepting Christianity has had over the centuries on people's lives, making them better, wiser, happier, and more virtuous, as well as the social peace and harmony that living by Christian standards brings about – it is preferable to adopt the Christian faith than not). These three theses are discussed in light of the history of Christian apologetic rhetoric, with references to the works of St. Augustine, St. Justin Martyr, Origen, St. Thomas Aquinas and other Christian authors.     

TALKING THE WALK AND WALKING THE TALK: Stanley Hauerwas's Contribution to Theological Ethics

Stanley Hauerwas's contribution to the study of Christian ethics is analyzed in the course of offering an overview of his work, including (1) his early reflections on “vision,”“narrative,” and moral agency; (2) his continuing focus on Christian virtues and practices in contrast to the ethos of moral and political liberalism; and (3) his specific attention to the meaning of peaceableness and the rejection of violence. The essay concludes by considering Hauerwas's legacy as a postliberal theologian, a critical participant in American Protestant ethics, and a conversation partner with Roman Catholics.     

CICERO, AMBROSE, AND AQUINAS "ON DUTIES"OR THE LIMITS OF GENRE IN MORALS

To compose a Christian book on exemplary Christian living, Ambrose appropriates and criticizes Cicero's book on “duties,”De officiis. In many passages within the moral part of his Summa of Theology, Thomas Aquinas incorporates quotations from both Cicero and Ambrose. Comparison of the three texts raises issues about the relation of genres to terms, arguments, rules, and ideals in religious teaching. Genre becomes a useful category for analyzing religious rhetoric only when it is conceived as a set of persuasive or pedagogical relations below a text's surface disposition.     

NIETZSCHE,THE CROSS,AND THE NATURE OF GOD

In this essay, I treat of a type of moral objection to Christian theism that is formulated by Friedrich Nietzsche. In an effort to provoke a negative moral‐aesthetic response to the conception of God underlying the Christian tradition, with the ultimate aim of recommending his own allegedly ‘healthier’ ideals, Nietzsche presents a number of distinct but related considerations. In particular, he claims that the traditional theological interpretation of the crucifixion of Jesus expresses the tasteless, vulgar, and morally objectionable character of God, thus rendering Him unworthy of belief. In response to Nietzsche's worries, I first of all argue that his account of the origins of the belief in God is both prima facie implausible and historically false. At the same time I recognize that Nietzsche is expressing, in his typically bombastic manner, a genuine and widely held worry about what the crucifixion, as an event in salvation history, says about the nature of God. In response to this worry, I draw on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey in order to support the contention that the concept of divine transcendence, which underlies Nietzsche's concern, has its proper place within the Greek metaphysical tradition, rather than in Christian faith. Building on the work of Franz Rosenzweig and Jürgen Moltmann, I outline a conception of God that more accurately reflects the claim that the cross is the definitive revelation of the divine nature while at the same time foreclosing on the possibility of the kind of response that Nietzsche articulates.     

The Bible, Knowledge of God and Dei Verbum

How may an inquiring person fittingly look upon the Bible? In what manner can a person's attention to the Bible assist them to knowledge? For a Catholic Christian analysis, what ideas are suitable about the place of the Bible in relations between God and humans, and in appropriation by a person today of whatever divine disclosure or revelation is at hand? This article outlines reflections on these matters. Links are apparent with key points in Vatican II’s Dei Verbum. The first of four sections concerns a fundamentalist outlook. Section II has to do with certain limited but significant ways in which a person may look on the Bible: ways similar to ways in which a person may look on other texts. Section III pauses on inquiries into ‘deep, inner’ matters of life where the person inquiring does not proceed from a perspective of Catholic Christian faith. Section IV surveys a broad range of thoughts that may aptly be endorsed from within a perspective of Catholic Christian faith. The thoughts concern the nature of the situation by which a Catholic Christian person today can advance in knowledge of God: in appropriation of divine disclosure. Ways in which a person may look on the Bible that go beyond those exhibited earlier are now made explicit. (The article fully allows that numerous views held by one or another follower of Jesus who does not adhere to Roman Catholicism may, in respects at stake, harmonize with a Catholic Christian faith‐perspective.)     

“LONG LIVE THE WEEDS AND THE WILDERNESS YET”: REFLECTIONS ON A SECULAR AGE

While we are deeply appreciative of Taylor's A Secular Age, we nonetheless worry that his use of the immanent/transcendent duality may introduce a certain kind of Christian Constantinianism that he wants to disavow. In particular, we worry that the immanent/transcendent duality is far too formal in its character. In order to develop this concern, we draw on Talal Asad's account of the secular to suggest how liturgy may provide an alternative way of understanding as well as challenging Taylor's worries about “the immanent frame.”     

THE ONE STORY: A CRITIQUE OF DAVID KELSEY'S THEOLOGICAL ROBOTICS

In this article I argue that David Kelsey's approach to theological anthropology is problematic. I argue that a narrative basis proves inadequate to establish the doctrine of the Trinity and its relationship to human beings. Similarly, a Reformed humanist starting point, together with a Reformed extrinsicist account of revelation, I argue, cannot arrive at an orthodox Christology or an account of humanity as a divine gift. By bypassing ontology in favour of narrative and positivity, Kelsey is ironically forced to deny the truth of many passages of the Bible, especially the opening of Genesis, and to reject the Biblical doctrine of the image of God in humanity.     

HANNAH'S CHILD: A LIFE GIVEN AND THEREFORE LIVED

In response to Hannah's Child, this essay begins from the reality of “unlikely friendships” and the idea of the “conservative radical”. The essay then moves into a discussion of three particular themes raised in Hauerwas's memoir and in his work generally: Christocentrism as sequela Christi; Christian politics as eschatology; and witness as the heart of Christian life. What draws the various themes of the essay together is the proposal that givenness is the unique and Christocentric key to the Christian unity of thought and practice.     

IAN BARBOUR ON RELIGION AND THE METHODS OF SCIENCE: AN ASSESSMENT

Abstract. Two aspects of Ian Barbour's position on the relation between religion and science are considered. First is his preference for comparing religions as a whole to scientific paradigms. It is suggested that the concept of a tradition as defined by Alasdair MacIntyre is more useful than Thomas Kuhn's paradigm. Thus, the Christian tradition could be compared to the Aristotelian or Newtonian scientific traditions. Within traditions, both religious and scientific, we find schools with enough agreement on fundamentals to be designated research programs, as defined by Imre Lakatos; here fruitful comparisons between theology and science are possible. Barbour's critical realism is intended as a compromise between highly rationalistic and sociological accounts of science. However, rationalism and sociology of science are answers to two different sets of questions rather than extremes on a spectrum of answers to the same question. Thus, there is no middle position between them, and no compromise need be found.     

THINKING THROUGH KIERKEGAARD'S ANTI-CLIMACUS: ART, IMAGINATION, AND IMITATION

What place do imagination and art have in Christian existence? This paper examines this question through the writings of Kierkegaard's pseudonym Anti‐Climacus: The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. I focus on the latter work in particular because it best illustrates the importance of imagination in following after (Efterfølgelse) Christ in imitation, which Anti‐Climacus presents as the proper task of faithful Christian existence. After outlining both his critique and his affirmation of the imagination, I then consider what role the notion of ‘Christian art’ might play in his account of the imitation of Christ. Anti‐Climacus gives a severe critique of Christian art, insofar as it disposes the viewer to detached observation and admiration – rather than imitation – of Christ. However, an earlier passage in the same text gives a provocative yet cryptic indication of the sort of art that would not succumb to this danger. Taking a cue from the phenomenology of Jean‐Luc Marion, I draw out this suggestion and argue for the important role that visual art can play in imitating Christ. The final section illustrates this point briefly with three paintings: Matthias Grünewald's Crucifixion, Hans Holbein's The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, and Albrecht Dürer's Self‐Portrait (1500).     

Narrative and Metaphysical Ambition: On Being “in Christ”

This article addresses some of the confusion regarding the role of metaphysical claims in narrative theology. Proponents and critics of narrative theology alike wonder at the ambiguous place of metaphysical speech about God as an objective reality. This essay enters the conversation through the side door of soteriology. Rather than focusing on the relationship between narrative and metaphysics or narrative and analogy or narrative and first‐order theological claims, I examine what sort of metaphysical statements are required to make the Christian claim that human beings are “in Christ” intelligible as a soteriological reality. I argue that the Christian grammar itself assumes a Christology with a certain kind of metaphysical ambition without which Christianity lapses into incoherence. To make this case, I show that David Kelsey's “narrative identity” Christology in Eccentric Existence lacks the metaphysical statements necessary to uphold his conviction that human beings are “in Christ.” A comparison with T. F. Torrance and the Book of Hebrews reveals that when narrative circumvents metaphysical statements about the incarnate Son, soteriological claims lack coherence and the biblical narrative itself is distorted by a false metaphysic. Thus, metaphysical claims internal to the narrative of Jesus are necessary to tell the story of God faithfully. In this way, narrative is the expression of a theological metaphysics.     

Extrinsic Grace and Eccentric Existence

Catherine Pickstock has critiqued David Kelsey's Eccentric Existence for, among other things, adopting the position on the relation of nature to grace that has become known as “extrinsicism”. Pickstock's critique of Kelsey parallels the criticism that both she and John Milbank have leveled against extrinsicism. This paper considers the merits of Pickstock's charges of extrinsicism and supposedly related theological ills against Kelsey. Finding that they fall short, I suggest that Kelsey's “three narrative” anthropology and its “multiple teleology” are potentially valuable resources for ongoing theological debates concerning nature and grace.     

Part IV: Prophecy,Knowledge and Study of Religion

The historical connection between the study of the Bible and the study of religion is examined through Spinoza's application of his anthropomorphic theory of religion to his analysis of biblicalprophecy. Drawing on current epistemological discussion, Spinoza shows in the Ethics how the pervasive anthropomorphism of popular explanations of the world, rooted in imagination, develops into religious systems. This theory informs Spinoza's analysis of biblical prophecy in his Treatise, in which he displaces the philosophical hermeneutic of Maimonides in favor of an historical-critical analysis. The result is a consistency of method—historical, critical, comparative — between his study of the Bible and the study of religion generally.     

On Editing Luther's Writings on Scripture

Much of Martin Luther's prodigious output consisted of exposition and editing Scripture. While a series in English cannot do justice to his greatest achievement, his Bible in German, much can be learned from his prefaces and commentaries, which are selected in volume 6 of The Annotated Luther. Luther's attitude to interpreting Scripture evolved in a constant dialogue with his theology of justification. While he held to the absolute authority of Scripture, his approach was pre‐critical but not uncritical. His exposition constantly balanced the consolation of grace and warnings against complacent trusting in our own works. His relentless emphasis on seeing Christ everywhere in the Bible, praised in past generations, poses problems today insofar as it determined his stance against Judaism.