International Journal of Systematic Theology最新文献

According to plural person theory, a group of close friends can act together not just distributively, as separate individuals all at once, but also corporately, as a nonmetaphorical plural person supervening on the friends. This article proposes that the Spirit is a plural person in precisely this sense. Modeling the Spirit as a plural person not only secures the Spirit's personhood and full divinity; it also provides a new conceptual scheme for interpreting the relationship between divine grace and human agency along non-competitive lines. What is more, it makes sense of existing Christian practices, including Ignatian contemplation, evangelical quiet time, and Quaker waiting worship.

Recent work in eschatology has sought to retrieve the doctrine of the beatific vision, one that has served as one of the predominant views of the eschatological life throughout church history. Yet the doctrine has been criticized for its reported marginalization of the human body. This essay seeks to provide a modest contribution and response to this objection through the retrieval of 17th-century theologian Petrus van Mastricht. I argue that humanity's telos can be conceived of as complex involving a particular mode of life with God that the visio Dei makes possible, one which requires the resurrection and glorification of the body.

Changes in the scientific picture of the origin and destiny of the physical universe present particular challenges to Christian eschatology. Both the great expansion of our picture of the size and age of the universe and the recent perception of an inexorable progression of the universe toward heat death in the far future alter the secular understanding of the universe with which Christian theology engages. In this essay, these challenges are considered in relation to how the theologian is to understand the eschatological role of physical objects far removed from interaction with humanity, for example, distant stars. Anthropocentric understandings of their role become implausible in light of recent changes in cosmology. This essay explores the traditional doctrine of bodily resurrection as a potential key to understanding the eschatological significance of stars. The insistence that the risen body is both radically transformed and yet numerically identical with the present body provides some parameters for understanding the nature of an eschatologically transformed universe and how its flourishing might be a witness to the glory of God.

Though Calvin is averse to theological speculation, he is the first to claim that Christ is Mediator and Head of Angels. This often-overlooked office is present consistently throughout the various editions of the Institutes and can be found in his treatises, commentaries, catechism, and various sermons. This paper argues that Christ's mediation of angels is a form of ontological mediation that serves as the logical foundation for his redemptive mediation of the Elect. Sin is an intensification of a preexisting problem that requires the Son to be the medius and Mediator between God and creation because of his unique position in the Trinitarian taxis as the begotten one. This overlooked office places Calvin's theology of mediation in a greater cosmic context where the triune God is uniting all things to himself typified in the angels and the Elect.

This article explores the way in which two modern Reformed theologians, Charles Hodge and Herman Bavinck, articulate their theologies of divine incomprehensibility and the knowability of God in radically different ways, against the backdrop of post-Kantian epistemology. This contrast will draw attention to why the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility has diminished in influence in modern Reformed theology, while also making some suggestions as to how it can be retrieved in order to supplement and strengthen contemporary discussions on the doctrine of God in the Reformed tradition.