The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavor to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Aeterna Press
The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas brings to light the Trinitarian riches in Thomas Aquinas's Christology. Dominic Legge, O.P, disproves Karl Rahner's assertion that Aquinas divorces the study of Christ from the Trinity, by offering a stimulating re-reading of Aquinas on his own terms, as a profound theologian of the Trinitarian mystery of God as manifested in and through Christ. Legge highlights that, for Aquinas, Christology is intrinsically Trinitarian, in its origin and its principles, its structure, and its role in the dispensation of salvation. He investigates the Trinitarian shape of the incarnation itself: the visible mission of the Son, sent by the Father, implicating the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit to his assumed human nature. For Aquinas, Christ's humanity, at its deepest foundations, incarnates the very personal being of the divine Son and Word of the Father, and hence every action of Christ reveals the Father, is from the Father, and leads back to the Father. This study also uncovers a remarkable Spirit Christology in Aquinas: Christ as man stands in need of the Spirit's anointing to carry out his saving work; his supernatural human knowledge is dependent on the Spirit's gift; and it is the Spirit who moves and guides him in every action, from Nazareth to Golgotha.
"This book is about relations--intimate relations--that exist between all that is living: between the cosmos and humanity, between the cosmos and God, and between God and humanity. It is also about relations--essential relations--that exist within all that is living: within an evolving cosmos, within a developing humanity, and within the living God. It is moreover about relations that are fundamentally constitutive of cosmic, human, and divine being and thus provide a clue to the nature of reality itself."--Intro., p. 11.
Cutting across the divide between East and West and between Catholic and Evangelical, Thomas F. Torrance illuminates our understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Torrance combines here the Gospel and a theology shaped by Karl Barth and the Church Fathers, and offers his readers a unique synthesis of the Nicene Creed. This volume remains a tremendously helpful resource on the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed. The new introduction for this Cornerstones edition is written by Myk Habets, the leading Thomas F. Torrance scholar today.
Leibniz penned his reflections on Christian theology, yet this wealth of material has never been systematically gathered or studied. This book addresses an important and central aspect of these neglected materials - Leibniz's writings on two mysteries central to Christian thought, the Trinity and the Incarnation.
For too long contemporary theology has downplayed the importance of holding together the incarnation and the resurrection when thinking theologically. Paul Molnar here surveys the place of these key doctrines in the thought of several influential theologians: Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Thomas F. Torrance, John Macquarrie, Gordon Kaufman, Sallie McFague, Roger Haight, John Hick, and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Molnar demonstrates that whenever the starting point for interpreting the resurrection is not Jesus himself, the incarnate Son of the Father, then Christology and Soteriology are undermined because they are not properly rooted in a plausible doctrine of the Trinity. Fair, comprehensive, and balanced, Molnar's analysis, following Torrance and Barth, highlights the details of contemporary theology of the resurrection linked to the incarnation and maintains the necessity of the incarnation in its intrinsic unity with the resurrection as the beginning, rather than the end, of Christology.
What can the early church contribute to theology today? Donald Fairbairn takes us back to the biblical roots and central convictions of the early church, showing us what we have tended to overlook, especially in our understanding of God as Trinity, the person of Christ and the nature of our salvation as sharing in the Son's relationship to the Father.
A constructive study of Trinitarian theology that aims to clarify our knowledge of the triune God by rightly ordering the theological language we use to praise him. The Triune God reaches its conclusions about how this doctrine should be handled on the basis of the way the Trinity was revealed. As such, theologian Fred Sanders: Invites a doxological invitation to the reader to contemplate the mystery of the Trinity. Establishes the biblical exposition and draws the doctrinal implications from it. Offers dogmatic principles for Trinitarian exegesis. Though Sanders does interact with major voices from the history of doctrine—and his arguments are indebted to and informed by the great tradition of Trinitarianism—he is clear throughout that Trinitarianism is a gift of revelation before it is an achievement of the church. The most patristic way to proceed toward a well-ordered doctrine of the Trinity is, after all, to study Scripture. -ABOUT THE SERIES- New Studies in Dogmatics seeks to retrieve the riches of Christian doctrine for the sake of contemporary theological renewal. Following in the tradition of G. C. Berkouwer's Studies in Dogmatics, this series provides thoughtful, concise, and readable treatments of major theological topics, expressing the biblical, creedal, and confessional shape of Christian doctrine for a contemporary evangelical audience. The editors and contributors share a common conviction that the way forward in constructive systematic theology lies in building upon the foundations laid in the church's historic understanding of the Word of God as professed in its creeds, councils, and confessions, and by its most trusted teachers.
