DET

I came across something this morning that I wanted to post as a brief follow-up to my last post on Paul Jones’ book . Coincidently, if you haven’t read Paul’s comment on that post, be sure to – he breaks it down nicely into a more digestible form. But, that’s not the point. The point is this thread on Barth at The Puritan Board. What began as a student at St. Andrews Div asking for clarification on Barth descended rather quickly into hyper-conservative (fundamentalist?) Reformed Barth-bashing bonanza. I’ve never seen such a condensed compilation of misinformation about and misreading of Barth. For instance, consider the following, especially in light of my post mentioned above. It comes from a commenter who is a student at New Geneva Theological Seminary (which, I would venture to say, does not even begin to hold a candle to Calvin, Beza, and Turretin’s Genevan academy – but I digress): “The Christian religion is historical. Barth's theology is a-historical. Barth's theo...

Paul Dafydd Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2008): 198. “ Geschichte signals a deft riposte to the charge of Hegelianism, easily leveled against Barth given his intensive utilization of the motif of Aufhebung throughout the Dogmatics . Barth’s basic response to the charge is easily imaginable: dogmatics has no fundamental relationship with the apprehension of Geist offered by ‘philosophic history’; it does not read ‘world history’ as Spirit’s ‘field of actualization’, with nations and prominent individuals functioning as vehicles of Spirit’s drive towards self-realization. Nor, more specifically, are the life, death and resurrection of Christ especially illustrative of Spirit’s progress, even granted that the pictorial Vorstellungen of ‘revealed religion’ apprehend this ‘true content’ in advance of speculative thought. Whereas for Hegel Geist ’s outworking manifests itself in the person of Christ, Barth uses Geshi...

I can’t pretend that this is breaking news, but it is certainly news that the T.F.Torrance Theological Fellowship (TFTTF) has launched a new journal entitled, Participatio , aimed at furthering scholarly discussion of Torrance’s work. If you follow that link, you will be able to download the journal’s first volume. The reason for my writing, however, is that information concerning the future of this journal was recently given to TFTTF members (among whom I am numbered), and I wanted to pass it along to a (perhaps) wider audience. This information pertains to upcoming journal issues, and I have reproduced it below: Vol. II: TFT's Use and Appropriation of Theological Sources (2010): * George Dragas: Athanasius & Cyril of Alexandria * Matthew Baker: Irenaeus * Alasdair Heron: Calvin * Robb Redman: H. R. MacIntosh * David Fergusson: Scottish Sources 1st miscellany volume (2010): Annual paper presentations and responses: Todd Speidell's interview with David Torrance Robb R...

Thomas F. Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ (Robert T. walker, ed.; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic and Paternoster, 2009): 105. “Justification is God’s word of truth and its revelation is truth. This word justification does not have to do simply with righteous living but with righteous understanding, for righteousness is God’s right or truth as well as his holiness and involves knowing as well as doing, and thus to do righteousness is the same as to do truth. (Compare Jesus’ statement, ‘you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.’) The revelation of righteousness is the word that puts us in the truth and as such tells us that we are in un-truth. Justification says “let God be true, but every man a liar’, as Paul puts it with reference to Psalm 51. This word of justification which puts us in the truth denies all self-justification and denominates it lying, or un-truth. If God’s justification of the ungodly means that no one can boast of their own...

I've been getting lots of spam comments lately, so I changed the settings to require word verification on comments here at DET. This isn't a step I wanted to take, since I think that the harder you make it to post comments, the fewer comments you will get - and I like getting comments and having conversations start, etc. But, the weight of spam just became to unbearable. So, there we are. Let me know if its not working right or causing problems.

If there remains anyone out there in the theo-blogosphere who has not yet figured out that the theology section over at T&T Clark is filled with wonderful people, take my word for it – they are. Exhibit A: they sent me a copy of Paul Jones’ $130 (USD, list price) book, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics . While I’m tempted to write a full-fledged review of this volume, I’m not going to because one is currently underway, by a much more qualified author, for the Center for Barth Studies review section . I will, of course, be posting a notice here when that review goes live. So, I decided that the best way to show my gratitude to T&T Clark would be to do not one large review post, but a number of posts, highlighting what I think are important tidbits of this work, and whetting your appetites for more so that you will, hopefully, go buy the book. Or at least check it out of your friendly, neighborhood theological library. Here is the firs...

No, not that WTS… While there have been numerous clues posted here, I don’t know if I’ve ever come out and said it: I am from Michigan. Furthermore, I’m not from the hip, West side of the state, with its sand dunes, Grand Rapids, Calvin College, etc. I’m from the East side, with its flat-like-Ohio terrain (I once heard that the county I grew up in was the only Michigan county without an inland lake of some size) and the rotting corpse of a formerly great city, Detroit. I grew up about 45 minutes drive north of Detroit, and so the fact that my blog is abbreviated as DET has an extra layer of meaning for me. Longtime readers know that I have even done a little amateur sports-writing about a certain Detroit team. Imagine my surprise when I learned a couple weeks ago that there is a new theological initiative developing in Detroit. In a city that is basically devoid of theological infrastructure, this group of theologically-minded denizens aspire to fill the gap, and is working h...