International Journal of Systematic Theology最新文献

Reading the Creed through pneumatic lenses is essential for understanding both humanity's eschatological destiny in the likeness of the Trinity and the consistently triune economy of salvation. In light of this assertion, the essay highlights aspects of the Creed's explicit and implicit pneumatology, offering a reflection from an Eastern European pneumatic perspective on the triunity of God's work as creator, redeemer and sustainer/renewer of the cosmos, and on the church as the in-Spirit-ed communal body of Christ on earth. This reflection articulates a vision of Pentecost's Trinitarian theophany as a cosmic event that, since the beginning, has been the intended theotic telos of humanity and the rest of creation. The conclusion looks forward toward the Spirit's eschatological summoning of creation into the triune life and to the Eucharistic re-envisioning of death in anticipation of the resurrection and life in the age to come.

This article charts the Council of Nicaea's (325) relevance to the Anglican Tradition from the sixteenth century to the present day, as manifested through Anglicanism's engagement with the Nicene Creed, its attitude towards early ecumenical councils, its appeals to ‘the Fathers’ and its approach to ‘tradition’, particularly in relation to Scripture. To that end, this article examines key governing texts in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – with particular focus on the Book of Common Prayer (BCP 1662) and the Thirty-Nine Articles – as well as relevant political and theological controversies. The findings include some counterintuitive results in relation to classic maxims of ‘Anglicanism’, including that the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds are second only to Scripture in importance while simultaneously mediating Anglicans' encounter with Scripture and setting the conditions for legitimate Scriptural interpretation.

Barth's approach to borrowing from philosophical figures and schools is underwritten by several convictions that made such an approach intelligible. These convictions entailed that (1) Barth had no firm commitment to a philosophical school; (2) Barth's use of philosophy and philosophical terminology displays a pragmatic though principled character; and (3) Barth resisted any grand philosophical systems and rejected not only any form of philosophical hegemony but ideology of any kind. This essay makes a cumulative argument in three corresponding parts. First, against the common supposition that philosophy (and specifically Kant's philosophy) had a programmatic importance for Barth's theology, the actual evidence demonstrates an ever-weakening influence after the second Römerbrief. Second, in view of this examination, the mature convictions of Barth's relation to philosophy can be discerned, and when these are articulated, the overarching consistency of Barth's understanding of the relation between theology and philosophy becomes apparent. This understanding of theology's relation to philosophy is more theologically grounded and stable than is often maintained, and one predicated on a principled position regarding philosophy rather than a simple eclecticism of its use. And third and finally, Barth's principled stance evident in his relation to philosophy will be shown to be the basic mature stance he maintained in relation to all systems of thought – political and economic, and not only philosophical. When this is understood, Barth's theology is displayed as strongly anti-ideological in character.

Following the grammar of 2 Timothy 3:15–17, this article reflects on the relation between the Christological salvation unto which Scripture ‘makes us wise’ and the corresponding use of Scripture as one among many ‘good works’. Dogmatically restated, it seeks to indicate Scripture's wise use by attending to the Christological Wisdom to which that use corresponds. This task is carried out by way of critical engagement with the work of Susannah Ticciati, who describes the status of Christ as Wisdom in terms of incarnation. The article alternatively suggests the difference it would make to understand Wisdom Christology in terms of justification. Ultimately, it argues that the wise use of Scripture along these dogmatic lines is able to preserve the critical moral force of Ticciati's account without diminishing the genuinely good news that is entailed in God's work of judgment and salvation in Jesus Christ.

This article explores three strategies currently employed in interpreting Karl Barth's notable idea of the divine self-determination, or God's ‘being-in-act’. They are the ‘repetition’ reading (where the ‘act’ or ‘decision’ merely repeats who the divine being is already), the ‘constitutive’ reading (where the divine being is constituted in the very ‘act’ or ‘decision’ itself), and the ‘specification’ reading (where the divine existence is specified in accordance to the divine essence). The third reading is commended on the basis that it not only considers seriously the implication that divine self-determination carries for the ontology of the divine being, but is also well attested by the text of CD II/1/KD II/1. The ‘specification’ reading, when compared with the ‘constitutive’ reading, is also better able to account for two aspects of Barth's theology – first, that God is not causa sui and second, that God is the absolute person who is the true ‘self-moved’ being, in turn allowing a space for Barth's counterfactual claims to remain.

There is a longstanding critique of Schleiermacher's theology which claims that, due to his account of the divine attributes, we cannot truly speak about God, but only about ourselves. This essay aims to refute this charge – often couched in charges of ‘subjectivism’ or ‘nominalism’ – by direct engagement with a recent and clear articulation of this line of criticism in the spirit of Karl Barth. This essay specifically addresses three main sub-charges: one, that Schleiermacher denies knowledge of God; two, that he is a causal skeptic in the line of Hume or Kant; and three, that his doctrine of the divine attributes only aims to speak of our consciousness, and not of God. This essay demonstrates that all three sub-charges are false. This essay then shows how all three of Schleiermacher's views on these matters can be found in a signal Reformed Scholastic thinker, demonstrating that Schleiermacher's views on the doctrine of God are distinctly modern only by selectively, not wholly, parting from his ancient, medieval and early modern forebears.