The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead at the end of time has often been the subject of speculation in the history of theology, seen especially in the influence of Augustine. The Reformers, seeking to avoid speculation here as elsewhere, turned to meditation on the risen Christ. This article expounds two Reformed accounts, those of Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) and Francis Turretin (1623–87), which follow an anti-speculative rule formulated by Calvin: ‘we keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’. This rule, it is seen, also presses them to deny the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's humanity.

This paper extends the scope of earlier studies of Karl Barth's relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum by exploring his marriage to Nelly Barth and the deterioration in their relationship in the 1920s. It traces the development and character of Barth's relationship with Kirschbaum, and the Notgemeinschaft (emergency community) they formed with Nelly. The paper makes use of Nelly Barth's unpublished letters to her family in which she accounts for her reluctance to divorce her husband in the early 1930s. The second half of the paper explores the impact of Barth's relationship with Kirschbaum on others and goes on to suggest ways in which this had consequences for his theology, particularly in his thinking in Church Dogmatics III/4 about the relation between man and woman.

The interaction between God and creatures is central to biblical narratives. There are several possible models for understanding the relationship between divine and creaturely agency. This article argues that a ‘non-competitive’ model for the interaction of divine and creaturely agency allows for a coherent interpretation of various features of Genesis 1 where alternative models lead to confusion. Since this ‘non-competitive’ model is historically related to creatio ex nihilo, it raises once again the question of the suitability of creatio ex nihilo for biblical interpretation.

It has been commonplace for over a century to argue that the distinctively Lutheran form of the communicatio idiomatum leads naturally to kenotic christology, divine passibility, or both. Although this argument has been generally accepted as a historical claim, has also been advanced repeatedly as a criticism of ‘classical theism’ and has featured significantly in almost all recent defences of divine passibility, I argue that it does not work: the Lutheran scholastics had ample resources drawn from nothing more than ecumenical trinitarian and christological dogma to defend their denial of the genus tapeinoticum. I argue further that this defence, if right, undermines a remarkably wide series of proposals in contemporary systematic theology.

In De Trinitate 6.4, Augustine compares the inseparability of virtues within the human soul to the divine attributes within the simple divine substance of the Trinity. In this paper, I will suggest that this is more than a convenient analogy. Rather, I contend, the soul's virtues become inseparable as the soul itself conforms to the image of God through the primary virtue of love. My argument includes an analysis of the history of inseparable virtue in Graeco-Roman philosophy and a comparison of Augustine's use of the concept in Trin. 6.4 with his more extended treatment in Epistle 167. In the face of a seeming conflict in these two texts, I argue for a ‘soft’ or ‘imperfect’ version of inseparability in Augustine's view of the virtues. Finally, I suggest that the cultivation of the virtues within the unity of love may be understood as the way we come to image the Trinity.

In colloquial English the word ‘tradition’ tends to be understood as a noun referring to a more-or-less static set of propositions, often used to define the identity of the particular group that accepts them. This article seeks to challenge this convention by defending an older, more fluid sense of traditio that is not only found in but formative of a variety of major Christian theological sources. The argument draws especially on Jean Calvin, his preferred theological authority Augustine and briefly the New Testament itself, showing that each demonstrates a fundamental interest in Christian teaching as participation in divine pedagogy. Using the doctrine of election as a case study, I argue that this pedagogical framework evidences a dynamic conception of traditio as tradere, or a discourse on how human beings faithfully participate in what is properly a divine giving-and-receiving. This conception of tradition as pedagogy is commended for both its theological and its critical merit.

Amanda Perreau-Saussine de Ezcurra saw positive law as a resource for uncovering natural law. She also saw our natural inclinations, especially our natural sociability and our natural tendency toward benevolence, as crucial to a proper understanding of natural law. Drawing on these two foundational ideas of hers, this article will look at the Decalogue, the pre-eminent example of divine positive law, and then our concrete experience of desire, as revelatory of what she called ‘a law-like ordering of the world prior to human thought and action, a natural ordering that constrains practical reasoning’. To her characteristic concerns, it will add attention to God's silence.

In the American moral governmental theory of the atonement, the idea of equivalence is best understood in terms of a countervailing, or the achieving of a moral equilibrium. According to Jonathan Edwards’ disciples, Christ's atonement was not quantifiably equivalent to the penalty of the law, but morally and meaningfully equivalent. In other words, Christ's physical and psychological sufferings were not equal in amount or degree to a sinner's damnation. Rather, Christ's substitution for divine punishment exhibited sufficient displeasure against sin to effectively communicate his character and to offset the evil effects of sin. At stake was not the moral quantity of his crucifixion, but the moral quality. In this moral governmental scheme, Christ's was not a commutative atonement, but a countervailing atonement.

This article puts Michel Foucault's conception of power into critical engagement with that of Bonaventure. For Foucault power is manifested in wills to knowledge or meaning-making in a senseless universe in order to legitimate the drama of dominations. Bonaventure, however, roots his notion of power in the essence of God, so that any act of power from God cannot be classified as domination, but rather donation – a free-willed gift. This is especially evident in Bonaventure's theology of creation and sacrament. As such, Bonaventure provides a way to deal with Foucault's critique theologically without dispensing with it altogether.

Theologians have long recognised the significance of the imago Dei in Christian theological anthropology, yet the question of how to construe the imago is not straightforward. This essay offers a fresh reading of Gregory Nazianzen's vision of the imago Dei. Hitherto, historical theologians have attributed to Gregory an essentialist interpretation of the imago, in which it is identified only with the rational soul. I argue that Gregory depicts the imago Dei quite literally as a visible icon of God by weaving together christology, pneumatology and beliefs about images and idols. If interpreted properly, Gregory's vision contributes significantly to contemporary interpretations of the imago Dei, which aim to account for christology, pneumatology and the inclusion of each human person in the imago.

In both Theo-Drama IV and Mysterium Paschale, Balthasar suggests that the descensus existentially separates the divine hypostases of Father and Son. He also repeatedly argues that his position is faithful to the Great Tradition. While there has been much debate about Balthasar's view of the descensus, this debate has focused mostly on the issues of universalism and penal substitution, leaving the issue of trinitarian relations either to the side or without an analysis of its historical precedent. This article attempts to address this lacuna by asking whether Balthasar's view of the descensus is in fact supported by the Great Tradition, with a specific focus on second-century texts. After surveying the apostolic fathers, second-century Jewish and Christian traditions (e.g. the New Testament apocrypha), second-century apologists and Melito's Peri Pascha, the article concludes that Balthasar's position does not find historical support in the second century. His view may be in line with the Great Tradition elsewhere, but it is not grounded in this seminal century of Christian doctrinal reflection.

Against the backdrop of the debate about theological reading of scripture, this essay asks whether there ought to be theological interpretation of non-biblical texts. The claim is that there should be, since theology can serve as an encompassing framework that structures all of one's beliefs. On this view, non-biblical literary texts function as a set of non-privileged signs pointing toward the Christian God. These texts should therefore be read using a reading strategy that relates them to God. This raises some complexities in the argument, however, because if these texts not only do not form part of the biblical canon, but also are different in content from those that do, then it is not straightforward how they can be read with reference to the Christian God. The essay wrestles with this issue as well as the objection that the proposal advocates a version of natural theology.

Modern anti-ecumenism in Orthodoxy is grounded in a sacramental or eucharistic ecclesiology which identifies Christianity and the church exclusively with the Orthodox Church and stands in opposition to universal baptismal ecclesiology. This neo-traditionalist ecclesiology stresses the unity of the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and eucharist as equally necessary for membership in the church, identified exclusively with the Orthodox Church. It exploits a weakness in Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology, according to which the church, identified with the Orthodox eucharistic community, can be interpreted as excluding non-Orthodox Christians from the church. The article demonstrates that this anti-ecumenical, exclusivist ecclesiology is contrary to several major aspects of the Orthodox tradition.

Contemporary analyses of Anselm's objective description of Christ's atonement have often resulted in a trend of interpretation that tends to ignore the relevance of this model to a development and understanding of a western doctrine of Christian sanctification. Through the examination of some overlooked insights offered in Cur Deus homo and their integration with other spiritual writings in Anselm's corpus, the present article attempts to redirect current scholarship towards a more holistic engagement with Anselm's doctrine of atonement, out of which an original doctrine of Christian perfection can be outlined.

Glossolalia is a phenomenon that has perplexed biblical scholars for generations. This paper challenges the majority view that glossolalia in the New Testament refers to ecstatic utterances and argues that the only independent New Testament testimony of the phenomenon is found in 1 Corinthians.

This article argues that the quests for the historical Jesus have largely operated with an understanding of history hindered by a severely constricted range of divine and human possibilities. By outlining human ‘self-understanding’ as a historiographical question, it emphasises the determinative role in historical judgement played by the historian's assumptions about the range of possibility available to the processes of human thought. Highlighting three particular concerns that historians tend to connect to ‘docetism’, it suggests a couple of ways that metaphysical and theological forms of reasoning could expand the horizon of possibilities available to historical Jesus scholarship in a way that will augment access to the historical figure of Jesus.

By using the idea of theology as symbolic engagement, I propose the ‘in-between’ as a liturgical category that engages with multiple tensions in Christian theology. The concept of the in-between becomes the primary lens through which to analyse not only the relationship between ecclesial and social liturgies, but also the interstices between the two. I then apply the concept to construct theological imagination in the ministries of ushering, intercessory prayer and the sending. The article concludes with a story of the worship of the GKI Yasmin church in front of the presidential palace in Indonesia, which demonstrates the prophetic dimension of the in-between.

Karl Barth's understanding of Luther and Calvin is not best illumined by an examination of his direct citation of their work, but by a consideration of his description of their vocation as church fathers as outlined in Church Dogmatics, I/2, a position held with remarkable consistency over the course of his career. Barth's discussion of Luther and Calvin there not only sets forth his understanding of the Reformers in a historical genealogy of revelation and its witnesses, but places them in an ordering of church authorities. Moreover, his description of their unique vocation sheds important light upon his understanding of the modern discipline of church history itself. His treatment of the Reformers thus both exemplifies and follows from his conviction that church history is not an independent theological discipline but can only accompany the central disciplines of exegetical, dogmatic and practical theology.

This paper argues that Western theology has lost a certain intellectual unity by becoming divided between dogmatic theology (or doctrine) and moral theology (or ethics). The history of theological reflection on Mary illustrates this, because it has become confined to dogmatic theology and has hardly ever been discussed in the context of morals. However, mariology can help us to understand the doctrinal foundations that must support any adequate moral theology. By helping us to see how morals depend on dogma, mariology can help us to recover the unity of theology.

Augustine's identification of the Stoic therapy of passions (apatheia) as moderation (metriopatheia) has long been a focus of controversy. This article examines the theoretical foundation for Augustine's comments on the relationship between apatheia and metriopatheia in the Stoic and the Peripatetic contexts, with particular focus on whether Augustine misrepresents his predecessors’ doctrines. Based upon a critical examination of recent research and a systematic analysis of Augustine's position in various phases of his writing, this article argues for a dynamic scheme of the psychotherapy of passions in Augustine's late thought, in which he deliberately deviates from philosophical traditions by adopting new criteria to re-evaluate the quality of emotions from the perspective of theological anthropology. This dynamic theological vantage point contributes to Augustine's insight into passions as well as his new use of the philosophical terms in refuting the Stoic pride.