Was there a Lutheran Metaphysics?
Was there a Lutheran Metaphysics?

Author: Joar Haga

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 364755037X

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Joar Haga traces the Lutheran doctrine of communicatio idiomatum, the exchange of properties between the natures of Christ, as it developed in some important controversies of the 16th and the early 17th Century. Regarding it as the nerve of his soteriology, Luther stressed the intimacy of the two natures in Christ to such a degree that it threatened to end the peaceful relationship between theology and philosophy. At the same time as the Wittenberg reformers broke with certain strains of their philosophical heritage, they would insist that the continuation of Christ's bodily presence was a reality in sacrament and nature (!), irreducible to a sign or to a memory. On the other hand, they did not want to be ignorant of the claims of reason. By rejecting the classic framework for a peaceful coexistence of philosophy and theology on the one hand, and insisting on Christ's bodily reality on the other, the quest for a new concept of how philosophy and theology related was implicitly stated.Earlier research identified two traditions of Lutheran Christology: One train of thought follows Luther in emphasising the difference between philosophy and theology. This can be seen in the Tübingen solutions where Johannes Brenz and Theodor Thumm are the most interesting thinkers. Another train of thought can be found in the conservative pupils of Melanchthon, where Martin Chemnitz and Balthasar Mentzer are the most prominent theologians. This research does not merely group the thinkers within the confines of a tradition, but underlines their individual contributions to an open-ended history.

Metaphysics in the Reformation
Metaphysics in the Reformation

Author: Silvianne Aspray

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-01-28

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9780197266939

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This book argues that the anti-metaphysical stance of many reformers is itself a metaphysical position.

Communicatio Idiomatum
Communicatio Idiomatum

Author: Richard Cross

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0198846975

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This study offers a radical reinterpretation of the sixteenth-century Christological debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians on the ascription of divine and human predicates to the person of the incarnate Son of God (the communicatio idiomatum). It does so by close attention to the arguments deployed by the protagonists in the discussion, and to the theologians' metaphysical and semantic assumptions, explicit and implicit. It traces the central contours of the Christological debates, from the discussion between Luther and Zwingli in the 1520s to the Colloquy of Montbeliard in 1586. Richard Cross shows that Luther's Christology is thoroughly Medieval, and that innovations usually associated with Luther-in particular, that Christ's human nature comes to share in divine attributes-should be ascribed instead to his younger contemporary Johannes Brenz. The discussion is highly sensitive to the differences between the various Luther groups-followers of Brenz, and the different factions aligned in varying ways with Melanchthon-and to the differences between all of these and the Reformed theologians. By locating the Christological discussions in their immediate Medieval background, Cross also provides a comprehensive account of the continuities and discontinuities between the two eras. In these ways, it is shown that the standard interpretations of the Reformation debates on the matter are almost wholly mistaken.

Kant, God and Metaphysics
Kant, God and Metaphysics

Author: Edward Kanterian

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-15

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 1351395815

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Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of ‘redemption’. He intended to provide a fortress protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, from the new mathematical science of nature, and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience, an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by his religious faith. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it). It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground (1763), one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. The present book takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thought-provoking interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics, set against the background of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy.

Christification
Christification

Author: Jordan Cooper

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-07-18

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 162564616X

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The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology. In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis. Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther's doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs. This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius. Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers--such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin--is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as "Christification." This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.

Beloved Community
Beloved Community

Author: Paul R. Hinlicky

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 960

ISBN-13: 1467443034

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In this scholarly work Paul Hinlicky transcends the impasse between dogmatic and systematic theology as he presents an original, comprehensive system of theology especially apropos to the post-Christendom North American context. Deploying an unusual Spirit-Son-Father trinitarian scheme, Hinlicky carefully develops his system of theology through expansive, wide-ranging argumentation. He engages with other theologians throughout the book and concludes each major section by discussing an alternate perspective on the subject.

From Zwingli to Amyraut
From Zwingli to Amyraut

Author: Jon Balserak

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2017-09-11

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 3647552798

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Historians and scholars of the Reformation's earliest century are invited to expand their understanding of that critical era by an examination of aspects of Reform which are lesser known than Luther and his activities. This volume widens and deepens and broadens our perceptions of »the Reformation« and reminds us that in fact what we have in the 16th and early 17th century are »Reformations«. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the German monk and reformer Martin Luther posting his theses (October 31, 1517), the contributors of this volume invite us to expand our understanding of »the Reformation« by an examination of aspects of Reform which are lesser known than Luther to probe some less-explored corners of the Reformation. To be sure, Martin Luther himself receives attention in this volume. But the aim of this book is really to take the occasion provided by the increased attention paid to the Reformation during the year 2017 to explore other theologians, movements, and ideas. The expanding of the scholarly mind and opening up of new vistas often overshadowed by larger figures, like Luther, can only be good for the study of the Reformation and Early Modern era. This volume is intended for students of early modern Church history with a particular focus on the non-Lutheran aspects of that history.

The Irenic Calvinism of Daniel Kalaj (d. 1681)
The Irenic Calvinism of Daniel Kalaj (d. 1681)

Author: Dariusz M. Brycko

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2012-09-12

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 3647550469

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Daniel Kalaj (d.1681) was a Polish Reformer of Hungarian background, born in Little Poland (Malopolska) and trained in Franeker, Friesland, under some of the most brilliant Reformed theologians of seventeenth-century Europe, such as Cocceius and Cloppenburgh. Kalaj's ministry in the Reformed Church of Little Poland was abruptly interrupted when Catholic authorities wrongly accused him of spreading then-outlawed Arianism, calling him a »Calvinoarian.« Kalaj became the first Polish Protestant minister to receive a sentence of capital punishment as a result of the new anti-toleration law issued in 1658 against Arians, under the false pretext of military treason during the Second Northern War (1655–1660). He escaped the axe by fleeing to Lithuania (and later to Gdańsk), where he wrote his best-known work »A Friendly Dialogue between an Evangelical Minister and a Roman Catholic Priest«. The »Friendly Dialogue« is both: Kalaj's own personal defense and a compendium to Polish Reformed doctrine, and has a strongly irenic disposition. In contrast with many Reformed thinkers of his day, Kalaj is capable of communicating Reformed doctrine in a friendly and peaceful manner. He places special emphasis on the unity of the catholic church, as expressed in his statement that »the three churches Roman, and Lutheran, and Reformed are all part of one true church before God,« while at the same time attempting to retain his Reformed orthodoxy.

The Flesh of the Word
The Flesh of the Word

Author: K.J. Drake

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0197567967

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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.

Dominus Mortis
Dominus Mortis

Author: David J. Luy

Publisher: Augsburg Books

Published: 2014-11-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1451489595

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Modern interpreters typically attach revolutionary significance to Luther’s Christology on account of its unprecedented endorsement of God’s ontological vulnerability. This passibilist reading of Luther’s theology has sourced a long channel of speculative theology and philosophy, from Hegel to Moltmann, which regards Luther as an ally against antique, philosophical assumptions, which are supposed to occlude the genuine immanence of God to history and experience. David J. Luy challenges this history of reception and rejects the interpretation of Luther’s Christology upon which it is founded. Dominus Mortis creates the conditions necessary for an alternative appropriation of Luther’s Christological legacy. By re-specifying certain key aspects of Luther’s Christological commitments, Luy provides a careful reassessment of how Luther’s theology can make a contribution within ongoing attempts to adequately conceptualize divine immanence. Luther is demonstrated as a theologian who creatively appropriates the patristic and medieval theological tradition and whose constructive enterprise is significant for the ways that it disrupts widely held assumptions about the doctrine of divine impassibility, the transcendence of God, dogmatic development, and the relationship of God to suffering.