With his feet planted firmly in the evangelical tradition, Tim Perry began to think that there must be more to Mary than generally meets the evangelical eye. Should we maintain that two thousand years of Christian thought on Mary is almost wholly wrong? How could the mother of our Lord, simply by virtue of the fact that she was God's chosen means of the incarnation, not deserve more serious theological reflection? And where might this lead? Beginning with Scripture, Perry probes the texts and traces the lengthy development of Christian thinking and practice related to Mary. Finally he concludes with a constructive and even surprising theological proposal for an evangelical Mariology that is rooted in, and demanded by, a high Christology. This book addresses the increasing evangelical interest in Mary and contributes to the current discussion of Mariology in evangelical-Roman Catholic dialogue. Sure to be discussed and debated, this is a book that will leave readers in a different place from where they began. Market/Audience Students and professors of theology Pastors Catholic readers Endorsements "From the fathers to the feminists, Tim Perry surveys the history of Marian traditions and comes to some conclusions that are bound to prod and provoke. . . .This is an important study that deserves serious consideration." Timothy George, dean, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, and executive editor, Christianity Today Features and Benefits Examines what we know of Mary from the New Testament. Explores the development of Mariology in the patristic period. Surveys Mariology in medieval and Reformation periods and on into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Offers a constructive theological proposal for an evangelical understanding of Mary, rooted in Christology.
The extra Calvinisticum, the doctrine that the eternal Son maintains his existence beyond the flesh both during his earthly ministry and perpetually, divided the Lutheran and Reformed traditions during the Reformation. This book explores the emergence and development of the extra Calvinisticum in the Reformed tradition by tracing its first exposition from Ulrich Zwingli to early Reformed orthodoxy. Rather than being an ancillary issue, the questions surrounding the extra Calvinisticum were a determinative factor in the differentiation of Magisterial Protestantism into rival confessions. Reformed theologians maintained this doctrine in order to preserve the integrity of both Christ's divine and human natures as the mediator between God and humanity. This rationale remained consistent across this period with increasing elaboration and sophistication to meet the challenges leveled against the doctrine in Lutheran polemics. The study begins with Zwingli's early use of the extra Calvinisticum in the Eucharistic controversy with Martin Luther and especially as the alternative to Luther's doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's human body. Over time, Reformed theologians, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Antione de Chandieu, articulated the extra Calvinisticum with increasing rigor by incorporating conciliar christology, the church fathers, and scholastic methodology to address the polemical needs of engagement with Lutheranism. The Flesh of the Word illustrates the development of christological doctrine by Reformed theologians offering a coherent historical narrative of Reformed christology from its emergence into the period of confessionalization. The extra Calvinisticum was interconnected to broader concerns affecting concepts of the union of Christ's natures, the communication of attributes, and the understanding of heaven.
This book explores a number of closely related logical and metaphysical questions relating to the identity of Jesus Christ. In particular it considers: ‘What does “Jesus Christ” name?’ and ‘How may Jesus Christ be the subject of both divine and human attributes, given their apparent incompatibility?’. The author draws on analytic and scholastic influences and integrates them into a rehabilitation of the neglected habitus theory of the hypostatic union. The theory maintains a real identity between Christ and the Word and emphasises the instrumental or possessory dimension of Christ’s relationship to his human nature. This approach allows for an account of the hypostatic union that is true to the indispensable articles of classical Christology and which satisfies the demands of logical coherence. Yet, at no point is the mystery of the Incarnational event reduced to the strictures of creaturely comprehension. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of Christology, analytic theology and the philosophy of religion.
In the face of religious and cultural diversity, some doubt whether Christian faith remains possible today. Critics claim that religion is irrational and violent, and the loudest defenders of Christianity are equally strident. In response, Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner explores the uncertainty essential to Christian commitment; it suggests that faith is moved by a desire for that which cannot be known. This approach is inspired by the tradition of Christian apophatic theology, which argues that language cannot capture divine transcendence. From this perspective, contemporary debates over God’s existence represent a dead end: if God is not simply another object in the world, then faith begins not in abstract certainty but in a love that exceeds the limits of knowledge. The essays engage classic Christian thought alongside literary and philosophical sources ranging from Pseudo-Dionysius and Dante to Karl Marx and Jacques Derrida. Building on the work of Denys Turner, they indicate that the boundary between atheism and Christian thought is productively blurry. Instead of settling the stale dispute over whether religion is rationally justified, their work suggests instead that Christian life is an ethical and political practice impassioned by a God who transcends understanding.
This collection explores the controversial and perhaps even abject idea that evils, large and small, human and natural, may have a central positive function to play in our lives. For centuries a concern of religious thinkers from the Christian tradition, very little systematic work has been done to explore this idea from the secular point of view.
Seng-Kong Tan argues that human participation in the divinea classical theological axiom most notably associated with the Eastern Orthodox traditionis a central theme in the theology of Jonathan Edwards. This notion, Tan contends, is a defining motif for the entire systematic sweep of Edwardss theology, and it serves to focus and determine the contours of Edwards's thought. Fullness Received and Returned situates Edwards's theology within the folds of the classical theological tradition, while arguing that Edwards's is a unique and creative form of Reformed theology.
Stephen Edmondson articulates a coherent Christology from Calvin's commentaries and his Institutes. He argues that, through the medium of Scripture's history, Calvin, the biblical humanist, renders a Christology that seeks to capture both the breadth of God's multifaceted grace enacted in history, and the hearts of God's people formed by history. What emerges is a picture of Christ as the Mediator of God's covenant through his threefold office of priest, king and prophet. This is the first significant volume to explore Calvin's Christology in several decades.
In 1967 Karl Rahner famously wrote: "The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice versa." From that time onwards, Rahner's Rule has become the norm for conceiving the relationship between the Trinity in the economy of salvation and God's eternal inner life. Evangelical theologians currently employ Rahner's Rule in a variety of ways. One of the most popular is the "Strict Realist Reading" whereby trinitarian relationships in salvation history are taken to mirror eternal relationships within God. This book brings this norm into conversation with the witness of Scripture in order to assess its viability. In doing so, it highlights troubling issues that arise from the application of the Strict Realist Reading of Rahner's Rule to the narrative of Luke-Acts. This book suggests that the Strict Realist Reading can be shown to be a questionable basis for our doctrine of God's inner life.