Karl Barth and the concursus Dei – A Chalcedonianism Too Far?

Abstract:  This article considers the account in the work of Karl Barth of the concursus Dei – that part of the doctrine of providence which deals with the fatherly lordship of God as it accompanies the free activity of the creature. In recent Barth literature, the term 'Chalcedonian' has regularly been used to describe Barth's construal of the concursus Dei , on the basis of the christocentric derivation of his doctrine of providence. Nevertheless, this article suggests that this particular use of christological vocabulary is unhelpful, and concludes that, on historical, material and methodological grounds, the term 'Chalcedonian' in this context should be avoided.     

What predicts wisdom-related performance? A first look at personality,intelligence, and facilitative experiential contexts

Wisdom has long been suggested as a desired goal of development (see e.g. Clayton and Birren, 1980; Erikson, 1959; Hall, 1922; Staudinger and Baltes, 1994). Questions concerning the empirical investigation of wisdom and its ontogeny, however, are largely still open. It is suggested that besides person characteristics, certain types of experience may facilitate wisdom-related performance. A sample of clinical psychologists (n=36) and highly educated control professionals (n=54) ranging in age from 25 to 82 years responded verbally to two wisdom-related tasks involving life planning and completed a psychometric battery of intelligence and personality measures. Three primary findings were obtained. First, training and practice in clinical psychology was the strongest predictor of wisdom-related performance (26%) and, in addition, showed some overlap with personality variables in this predictive relationship. Second, 14% of the variance in wisdom-related performance was accounted for by standard psychometric measures of personality and intelligence. Personality variables were stronger predictors than variables of intelligence. Important personality predictors were Openness to Experience and a middle-range location on the Introversion–Extraversion dimension. Third, wisdom-related performance maintained a sizable degree of measurement independence (uniqueness). Predictive relationships were consistent with research on naive conceptions of wisdom and our own theoretical account of the ontogenesis of wisdom-related performance. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.