Review: 101 Philosophy Terms for theology

Clark, Kelly James., Smith, James K. , and Lints.  101 Philosophy Terms for Theology (Westminster/John Knox Press). This is one of the better “key terms intro” books out there.   It is quite selective, of course, and one’s favorite term/theologian/philosopher probably won’t be covered.   The three editors represent three different fields (analytic philosophy, continental …

Aquinas gets this wrong, and much confusion follows

There are a lot of moving parts in this discussion, I admit. Here we have a discussion about a concept, in which the discussion moves from Aristotle to Aquinas to Scotus to Luther to Calvin to Turretin and Warfield. In my recent blog post, Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Metaphysics, I cited Muller as …

Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Metaphysics

One of the elements of late medieval Scotist and nominalist theology that had a profound impact on Luther was its denial of any analogy between God and man and its consequent recognition of the impossibility of formulating a rational metaphysic concerning God. All knowledge of God must rest on authoritative testimony, primarily on that of …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God Part 4: “Knowing God”

Richard Muller moves along to the 13th century, in which commenting upon Peter Lombard’s Sentences became normative for the study of theology. Even a younger Martin Luther commented upon the Sentences (though not upon the Doctrine of God) and Calvin viewed the work as foundational for Medieval theology. With that said, I’m skipping a lot …

Putting Peter Lombard Into Perspective

Moreso than Anselm, Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160) was influential in defining the shape of subsequent discussions of the Doctrine of God: B. The High Scholastic Doctrine of God: Theologians of the Thirteenth Century Once scholastic theology has been arranged in a definitive form, such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences became for the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God, Part 3: The Sentences of Peter Lombard

“Summas” and systematization Steven Ozment notes, “Before the Ockhamists made Pelagianism a major issue in medieval theology, the scholastic debate over religious justification focused on how grace could be present in man’s soul. How can something divine be within human nature? If medieval philosophers had problems conceiving existence of a universal within a particular, there …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God, Part 2: Some Early Defining Characteristics

Following up on the section on Anselm, Muller continues to discuss some of the issues which later became some defining issues in the evolving Christian Doctrine of God. Developing Questions over God’s Freedom, the Persons of the Trinity, “Divine Simplicity”: Although Anselm’s genius certainly assured the ultimate victory of philosophical realism in the debates of …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God, Part 1: Anselm

Anselm of Canterbury and the Beginnings of “Classical Theism” The Westminster Confession of Faith explicitly endorses reason as well as Scripture as being a source of doctrine, when it says, “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, …

Proofs for the existence of God

Here is how Richard Muller introduces the topic of “Proofs for the existence of God”: An example that will be addressed at the very outset of the topical section of this study is the use of arguments for the existence of God where, contrary to much received opinion, the Reformers did not scorn the issue …

Some Specific Features of the Post-Reformation Doctrine of God

Elsewhere it has been noted that the Reformed Orthodox were not monolithic in their theologies; this section fleshes out some of those diversities. This is really a “for-what-it’s-worth” compendium of how the Reformed Orthodox thought about God. However, it was interesting to see the areas where there was some flexibility, and kinds of things that …