JOHN POLKINGHORNE AND BERNARD LONERGAN ON THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF THEOLOGY

On the basis of his acquaintance with theoretical elementary particle physics, and following the lead of Thomas Torrance, John Polkinghorne maintains that the data upon which a science is based, and the method by which it treats those data, must respect the idiosyncratic nature of the object with which the science is concerned. Polkinghorne calls this the “accommodation” (or “conformity”) of a discipline to its object. The question then arises: What should we expect religious experience and theological method to be like if they are accommodated to the idiosyncratic nature of God? Polkinghorne's methodological program is typical of postcritical positions in the theology‐science dialogue in holding that the fiduciary element in theological method is simply a species of the fiduciary element that is a de facto part of all knowing—in other words, theological method does not differ in fundamental kind from the methods of the natural sciences. But this program may contain the seeds of an alienation of theological method from the transcendence of God similar to the double self‐alienation of theology described by Michael Buckley in At the Origins of Modern Atheism. I contend that something like Bernard Lonergan's position on how the method of faith seeking understanding is related to the methods of the natural sciences is exactly the sort of thing that one should expect on the supposition of Polkinghorne's principle of accommodation, at least if the God who is the object of theological science is transcendent. The way in which the divine differs from all other objects ought to be disclosed or reflected in religious experience and theological method. Polkinghorne charts the course for an accommodated theology, but it seems to be Lonergan who is more intent on following it.     

Suffering the Promise of God: Engaging Oswald Bayer

This article examines Oswald Bayer's wide‐ranging constructive appropriation and application of Luther's theology of the Word. Bayer grounds theology in the divine word of promise, understanding theology and the Christian life as a vita receptiva in which human action is, from first to last, responsive. He pits Luther against modern theological evasions of the Word in his insistence on the distinctively Christian pathos of existence, and his ethic of categorical gift reflects this. I conclude with a commendation of Bayer's theology of the Word, a question about the relation between God's revelation and hiddenness and a concern that he may at times compromise the definitive self‐revelation of God in Christ.     

THE PARTICULARITY OF ANIMALS AND OF JESUS CHRIST

Clough's theological account of animals critiques the familiar negative identification of animals as not‐human. Instead, Clough highlights both the distinctive particularity of each animal as created by God and the shared fleshly creatureliness of human and nonhuman animals. He encourages Christians to recognize Jesus Christ as God enfleshed more than divinely human, and consequently to care for nonhuman animals as those who share with human animals in the redemption of all flesh. This move risks downplaying the possibilities for creaturely specific forms of redemption; limiting the cosmic efficacy of salvation in Christ; and losing the particularity of Christ's divine and human natures. Another, possibly less risky, direction to take Clough's insights about creatureliness and well‐formed theological ethics might attend to the perverse ways that humans assess the worthiness of human and nonhuman animals by substituting particularities of use and abuse for the particularities of creation and salvation.     

On Christian Discernment and the Problem of the Theological

This article lays the groundwork for a theology of discernment that seeks to address modern anxieties about the integrity of the theological by showing how Christian believers are sanctified for the identification of true speech about God. It does so by arguing that post‐Kantian understandings of the activity of the human subject in judgement need not be seen as inimical to an account of Christian discernment, that recognition of Paul's understanding of the place of discernment in the Christian life points to alternatives to Barth's attempt to resolve the difficulties of the theological through an exclusive appeal to divine activity, and that Augustine develops a helpful account of the place of a theology of discernment in addressing the problem of the theological by treating the connection between these topics as an element within theologies of sanctification and creaturely vocation.     

Thomas Aquinas’ Divine Simplicity as Biblical Hermeneutic

Long draws from the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann's commentary on Jeremiah some strong reasons for rejecting the traditional teaching on divine simplicity. Above all, for Brueggemann the book of Jeremiah simply will not work if God is simple: God explicitly tells Jeremiah that God suffers and also that God changes in response to Israel. According to Long, however, Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of divine simplicity actually upholds the points that Brueggemann draws from Jeremiah. Long argues that theological accounts of divine simplicity should especially have two purposes: to serve as a way of manifesting in speech the mystery of the Triune God, and to affirm God's transcendent sovereignty over creation. In light of Brueggemann's approach, Long examines four early Reformed theologians: Peter Vermigli (1499‐1562), Girolamo Zanchi (1516‐1590), John Biddle (1615‐1662) and John Owen (1616‐1683). While Biddle rejects divine simplicity, the others uphold it. Long shows that their teaching on divine simplicity focuses on God's transcendent sovereignty over creation. By contrast, Long finds Aquinas's doctrine of divine simplicity to be more helpful in upholding Brueggemann's insights, insofar as Aquinas uses the doctrine to defend the simplicity of the Triune God. Rather than focusing on God's sovereign power, Aquinas's doctrine of divine simplicity focuses on getting the Trinitarian processions right.     

Explorations in a Theological Metaphor: Boethius,Calvin, and Torrance on the Creator/Creation Distinction

This article explores a theological metaphor, comparing God and creation to an author and story. Framed as an Einsteinian thought experiment, and broadly in the genre of theological retrieval, it seeks to resource the use of this metaphor in contemporary theology by bringing it into dialogue with three areas of theological reflection throughout church history: Boethius' doctrine of divine foreknowledge, the so‐called extra Calvinisticum, and Thomas Torrance's account of Christ's ascension. It is suggested that the story metaphor brings into greater visibility what unites and determines each of these different doctrines, namely, a simultaneously robust and dynamic Creator/creation relation. In particular, it is suggested that the metaphor of story illumines the ontological priority of God over creation, as well as the importance of the incarnation and ascension as the determining events for their relationship.     

A Jewish Modified Divine Command Theory

We claim that divine command metaethicists have not thought through the nature of the expression of divine love with sufficient rigor. We argue, against prior divine command theories, that the radical difference between God and the natural world means that grounding divine command in divine love can only ground a formal claim of the divine on the human; recipients of revelation must construct particular commands out of this formal claim. While some metaethicists might respond to us by claiming that this account leads to an inability to judge between better and worse constructions of the commanded life, we propose that an analysis of the human response to divine love—theological eros—can be the basis for an articulation of a philosophical theology (in our case, negative theology) that can guide the religious believer toward generating particular principles for ethical action that are grounded in an account of divine action. By linking divine command to imitatio Dei, the believer can have confidence that her imitative acts of God are not inaccurate constructions of the commanded life.     

The Responsiveness of Pure Actuality: Unmediated Agency,Linguistic Potentiality and the Divine Accommodation of Speech Acts

This article builds upon the trinitarian theology of Thomas Weinandy, applying his elaboration of Aquinas' notion of God's pure actuality to the matter of linguistic agency. In particular, the seemingly contradictory claim will be made that God is more responsive to us (properly understood) precisely because he cannot perform the act of response. Rather, God reveals the pure act that is himself through what the article terms notional responses. These are the epistemological accommodations of his pure actuality to finite human persons in the form of speech acts as humans change in their relation to God. In understanding God's communicative agency as such, divine transcendence will be shown to establish divine immanence rather than to stand at odds with it.     

AN EVOLVING VISION OF GOD: THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN F. HAUGHT

The theology of God in the scholarship of John Haught exemplifies rigor, resourcefulness, and creativity in response to ever‐evolving worldviews. Haught presents insightful and plausible ways in which to speak about the mystery of God in a variety of contexts while remaining steadfastly grounded in the Christian tradition. This essay explores Haught's proposals through three of his selected lenses—human experience, the informed universe, and evolutionary cosmology—and highlights two areas for further theological development.     

Religion, Science, and Evolution: Paul Tillich's Fourth Way

Abstract. In his book God After Darwin John Haught provides a useful categorization of theological approaches to evolution: some theologians actively oppose Darwinian evolution, another group maintains that science and religion have nothing to say to one another, and a third seeks to engage evolution. Haught wishes to pursue the third way. But many theological attempts to talk about divine action in the world, including divine involvement in the process of evolution, run afoul of the scientific principle of the conservation of matter‐energy. Haught's reliance on the now‐familiar notion that information can have causal efficacy does not in fact escape this difficulty. I suggest a fourth approach, represented by a constructive reading of Paul Tillich's theology. The central argument is that Tillich offers a way of taking Darwinian evolution up into one's ultimate concern without claiming that God has any causal relation to evolution. God provides no historical telos for evolution, but rather a “depth teleology” that springs from the manner in which God, as the depth of the structure of finite being, is the object of Christian faith.     

Speaking of Possibilities: The Theistic Actualism of Anselm's Divine Locutio

In his Monologion, Anselm represents God's knowledge of his creative possibilities, not in the intellectualist and Platonic terms of Augustine's divine ideas, but in the linguistic, poetic, and semi‐Stoic terms of a divine “utterance” or “expression” (locutio). Through his shift in theological metaphor, Anselm makes a subtle yet significant departure from the prevailing, “possibilist” model of divine possibility in western theology—according to which God's possibilities are known prior to and independently of any act or intention to create—towards a radically alternate, analogical and “actualist” appreciation of God as the sovereign speaker and inventor of his own possibilities.     

Can the Created Co‐Creator Be Lutheran?A Response to Svend Andersen

Abstract : The author responds to Svend Andersen's article in this journal 43: 4(Winter 2004) 312–23, “Can Bioethics Be Lutheran?” in which Andersen criticizes the concept of humans as created co‐creators, particularly because it asserts an equality between God and humans; he recommends in its place Luther's concept of humans as God's co‐operators or co‐workers. It is argued here that the created co‐creator meets the critique offered. The concept can be both theologized and secularized, which Andersen overlooks. The concept can be integrated into the Christian theology of divine creation, but it introduces irony into theological formulation which is necessary, and which the idea of “God's co‐operators” fails to do. Finally, the chief and most difficult theological issues are framed: Why does God create co‐creators? and How can they receive grace within a Lutheran framework?     

God as First Truth,the Will's Good and Faith's Cause: The Theology of Faith and Newman's University Sermons

In the theology of faith, the nature of faith as a human cognitional state is sometimes treated as a foundational topic, to be analysed prior to theological claims about the God who in fact elicits this faith. The article suggests why this is an inadequate account of the act of belief, likely to lead to distortions in the content of belief, and then uses the example of Newman's argument with Lockean notions of faith to propose a renewal of the theology of faith in attention to divine agency.     

ENERGY AND THE GENERATION OF THE WORLD

Abstract. Energy concepts in theology and natural science are studied to see how they may aid the science-theology dialogue. Relationships between divine and human energies in classical Christology and energy ideas in process theology are significant. In physics, energy has related roles as something conserved and as the generator of temporal development. We explore ways in which God and the world may interact to produce evolution of the universe. Possible connections between the double role of physical energy and the bipolar character of God in process theology are noted. Energy helps to describe God's relationship with the world in both theological viewpoints and, thus, may bridge them.     

Herman Bavinck’s ‘Yes’ and Karl Barth’s ‘No’: Constructing a Dialectic‐in‐Organic Approach to the Theology of General Revelation

By grounding theology in God’s revelation, Herman Bavinck (1854‐1921) and Karl Barth (1886‐1968) take differing attitudes to general revelation, which is widely accepted in the circle of Reformed theology. Bavinck firmly says ‘Yes’ to the existence of the knowledge of God in creation. In contrast with him, Barth holds fast to the Christocentric view of God’s revelation, and thus says ‘No’ to general revelation in the universe. This divergence is primarily due to their different theological thinking and concerns. Bavinck deploys organic thinking in revelation and focuses on God’s creation, which seems to blur the distinction between general and special revelation. By contrast, Barth makes use of dialectical thinking and preoccupies himself with divine‐human reconciliation, which subordinates creation to God’s redemption. To this extent, both bring about disparities within God’s revelation. This essay proposes a dialectic‐in‐organic approach to general revelation, which affirms the disclosure of the knowledge of the Triune God in creation, recognises the independent value of creation, and maintains the diversity‐with‐parity within the revelation of the Triune God.     

JOHN MILBANK's THEOLOGY OF THE "GIFT" AND CALVIN's THEOLOGY OF GRACE: A CRITICAL COMPARISON1

In his theology of the Gift, John Milbank advocates a theology of “reciprocity” between God and humanity, involving “active” rather than “passive” reception of the divine gift. Calvin and other Reformation theologians are criticized by Milbank as demeaning the role of the human partner by advocating “passivity” in the reception of grace. This essay compares Milbank's theology of the Gift with Calvin's theology of grace, showing how Calvin overcomes the schematic options of “passivity” or “reciprocity” in the divine‐human relation, all the while holding much more in common with Milbank's concerns about sanctification and participation than has generally been recognized.     

God and Some Recent Public Theologies

This article addresses the 'ever widening' circle of theological writing concerned with the public character of theology. Specifically, it examines the work of two 'public theologians': Linell Cady and Max Stackhouse, and it does so by focusing on the concept of God ingredient in their programmes for contemporary public theology. The article is an inquiry into the sort of theology such public theologies might be. It argues that an account of the identity and agency of God is of decisive significance for an account of the public character of theology. In keeping with its exploratory nature, it concludes with a series of questions regarding the work of Cady and Stackhouse and suggests an alternative way forward for public theology. It suggests a re-orientation of public theology 'on the basis of a more robust account of divine identity and divine agency cognizant of the possibilities afforded by the prevenient publicity of the God of the Christian gospel'.     

Whence the Sovereignty?

This essay challenges an approach to political theology, exemplified by Clayton Crockett, that insists that divine sovereignty must be rejected to avoid the conception of political sovereignty developed by Carl Schmitt. Crockett conflates different understandings of God and God’s power, particularly ignoring the rise of nominalism and its influence over modern political theory. By attending to this history, we see that Crockett is incorrect to reject all classical onto‐theological or monotheistic definitions of God as the basis for sovereignty. The final section explores other theological options (Oliver O’Donovan, John Milbank, Jürgen Moltmann) that also challenge modern political sovereignty from within the classical Christian tradition.