As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been preparing for an upcoming conference on Christian friendship and have been contemplating the possible ways in which Christian friendship and claims specific to Christianity are superior to claims found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Below is a new possibility that I am considering addressing in my [...]

“Philosophy can speak of the Cross in many tongues; when it is not the ‘Word of the Cross’ (I Corinthians I, 18), issuing from faith in Jesus Christ, it knows either too much or too little. Too much: because it makes bold with words and concepts at a point where the Word of God is [...]

In my preparation for a paper that I will be presenting at Baylor this Fall on von Balthasar and Christocentric friendship, I have been thinking about the ways in which the claims of Christianity with regard to love and friendship go beyond the possibilities offered in classical philosophy, viz., the philosophy of Aristotle. Though [...]

[As stated in part I, this series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing on Acts and selected epistles of St. Paul. Thus, the tenor [...]

[N.b. As stated in part I, this series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing on Acts and selected epistles of St. Paul. Thus, the [...]

This series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V., regarding the relationship between Christ and the Holy Spirit in the unfolding plan of redemptive history. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing [...]

The focus of this concluding post is Balthasar’s hermeneutical practice of interpreting the Bible as a Christocentric narrative. Here again Balthasar’s conviction regarding the canonical integrity of the Bible comes to the fore. For Balthasar, the Bible as a whole speaks of Christ, who is the climax of the one unfolding story from Genesis to [...]

As mentioned in Part I, Balthasar desired to reintroduce into the biblical hermeneutical project of his day, a number of premodern practices so as to attempt a recovery of theologico-aesthetic sensibilities that had been lost with certain modernist interpretive currents. In this post, I shall focus primarily on the first of two premodern hermeneutical practices [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything funny, so I decided to post this. Enjoy! [N.b. You have to click the silver box twice to make it play].

W.T. Dickens in his essay, “Balthasar’s Biblical Hermeneutics,” notes that according to Balthasar the vast majority of modern theologians and biblical scholars (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) had thrown theological aesthetics to the wayside and as a result a distorted view of Scripture prevailed (e.g., seeing the Bible as a principally a set of propositional [...]

In chapter 2 of his book Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa, Balthasar discusses two forms of becoming. In the previous chapter he had set forth that idea that time constitutes the foundation of material being. He then adds that if this is the case, then [...]

As Balthasar explains, the “matter” or res to which Christian dogmatic formulations refer is Christ—His Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. In Christ, the Son of the Father, we are given a revelation of the innermost nature of the Christian God, viz., the Trinity as love. The Christian of course in his/her act of faith [...]

In a little section entitled, “Joy and the Cross,” near the end of Balthasar’s work, Truth is Symphonic, he briefly describes an insoluble paradox of Marxism and Hegelianism and then presents Christianity as that which alone weds transcendence and immanence in triune love revealed in the shape of Jesus Christ. Turning first to Marxism, [...]

In his reflections on Job 4, Reardon provides some helpful background and commentary on Eliphaz, the first of Job’s “comforters.” Eliphaz is the eldest of the three men who interact with Job, and unlike the other two interlocutors, explicitly appeals to his own religious experience in his engagement with Job (4:8, 16; 5:3). Eliphaz’s deep [...]

“God’s presence in and absence from the world are a mystery that is impenetrable to thought and even more so to man’s senses and experience. It would seem that we can only think and speak of it in propositions that are dialectical, that is, which cancel each other out. For if we construct [...]

Along with Alastair, apparently I use the words “death” and “dead” too often. But what really put me over the top is the fact that I use the word “hell.”
Feeling a bit better today–out of 100%, I’m at about 50%, which is a great improvement from last week. The new antibiotics seem to [...]

Before jumping into this essay, I have a special request for my readers. I have been ill for the past week, running a pretty high fever. For whatever reason, I did not respond to the first round of antibiotics, and have had to return to the doctor for additional tests and new antibiotics. I still [...]

John Webster, in his essay, “Balthasar and Karl Barth,” discusses Balthasar’s friendship with Karl Barth and the various ways that Barth influenced Balthasar’s theology. As is well-known, Balthasar, was an avid reader of Barth, lectured on Barth’s works, and even devoted an entire book to Barth’s theology, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition [...]

In my personal/devotional reading of Scripture, I have recently begun reading the book of Job and am using as a supplement, Patrick Henry Reardon’s, The Trial of Job: Orthodox Reflections on the Book of Job. I plan to post my reflections on Job intermittently as my reading progresses.
In the introductory chapter, Reardon explains that there [...]