Charles Hodge’s Famous Footnote on Friedrich Schleiermacher (February 12, 2015)

I had believed that Charles Hodge (1787—1878) would have spit on the grave of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768—1834) upon visiting him, but I have been proven wrong. To my surprise, I recently learned from W. Travis McMaken at Die Evangelischen Theologen about a famous footnote in Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology (II.iii.9) that shows Charles […]

Related: charles hodge, Friedrich Schleiermacher, systematic theology

Jürgen Moltmann on Who Will Be the Next Karl Barth? (January 29, 2015)

Who will be the next Karl Barth? This person may be out there among us now, or we may have to wait more than a millennium. Barth saw this person from afar, a man who would not merely repeat Barthianism, but would say something incredibly new! A New Creation in […]

Related: Church Father, Friedrich Schleiermacher, God in Creation, Holy Spirit, Jürgen Moltmann, Karl Barth, New Theology, Spirit of Life: An Universal Affirmation, Trinity and the Kingdom

15 Theology Books Defining My Autobiography (January 15, 2015)

I've read over 500 theology books in the last ten years. (Some people read these many books every year!) Of all these books, there are fifteen books that stand apart as guideposts in my journey of exploration in theology. I don't recommend all of these books today, but these books […]

Related: Dumitru Staniloae, Florovsky Society, Friedrich Schleiermacher, George Eldon Ladd, George Hunsinger, Georges V. Florovsky, Hans Küng, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Jaroslav Pelikan, John Calvin, john piper, Jonathan Edwards, Jürgen Moltmann, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, n.t. wright

Jürgen Moltmann’s Theological Method of Curiosity (January 9, 2015)

(Revised and updated on March 29th, 2019) What is Jürgen Moltmann's theological method? He says it is Curiosity! A curiosity for adventure and discovery into an unknown country. In the following quotation from the Jurgen Moltmann: Collected Reader, he explains that he is his own theological method, such that theology is a 'journey […]

Related: christian faith, Church Dogmatics, Curiosity, Doctrine of Faith, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Jürgen Moltmann, Jürgen Moltmann: Collected Reader, Karl Barth, Theological Method

D. F. Strauss’ Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (November 20, 2014)

David Friedrich Strauss (1808 – 1874)[source: wikpedia]The post-Enlightenment period exhausted printing presses with volumes titled, "The Life of Jesus", which used the historical-critical method to uncover the historical Jesus from the exalted Jesus proclaimed by the Church. The landmark and most famous Life of Jesus was David Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben […]

Related: Albert Schweitzer, D.F. Strauss, David Friedrich Strauss, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Heinrich Paulus, Life of Jesus, Life of Jesus Critically Examined, n.t. wright

Herman Bavinck’s Organic Inspiration of the Scriptures (September 24, 2014)

Herman Bavinck (source: rpcnacovenanter) Herman Bavinck was a Dutch Calvinist who wrote an influential Reformed Dogmatics, and this is part two in my analysis of Bavinck's Doctrine of Inspiration of the Scriptures. As I previously shared, the Dutch Calvinists were not encumbered in fundamentalist debates over inerrancy like their American Calvinist […]

Related: abraham kuyper, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Herman Bavinck, Higher Criticism, holy scriptures, Inerrancy, Inspiration of Scripture, Literal Theories of Inspiration, Reformed Dogmatics

Wolfhart Pannenberg on the History of Christology (June 9, 2014)

Wolfhart Pannenberg speaking at a CDU conference in Bonn, 1983 In Wolfhart Pannenberg's famous Christology book, Jesus: God and Man, he provided an impressive outline of how Christology as a dogma had developed historically. All Christian doctrines develop over time as the Church revises its talk about God, as Karl Barth would […]

Related: Albert Schweitzer, Anselm, Anselm of Canterbury, Athanasius, Friedrich Gogarten, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Irenaeus, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Martin Luther, Paul of Samosata, Rudolf Bultmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg

Bruce McCormack on Double Predestination is not the Central Doctrine of John Calvin and classical Reformed theology (May 19, 2014)

Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, by Bruce L. McCormack Friedrich Schleiermacher was a Calvinist, and although he is known as the father of Liberal Protestantism for his definition of god as "a feeling of absolute dependence", he was nevertheless a Calvinist and John Calvin was his […]

Related: Alexander Schweizer, Bruce McCormack, Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, calvinism, Calvinist, Double Predestination, François Wendel, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Institutes, institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin, Karl Barth, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, predestination, The Theology of Calvin, Wilhelm Niesel

John Calvin’s Epidemiological Method [Institutes I.i] (February 14, 2013)

The opening sentences of the Institutes of the Christian Religion are almost as famous as the entire book itself, "Nearly all the wisdom we posses, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one […]

Related: b.b. warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, epistemology, Friedrich Schleiermacher, institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin, knowledge of god, Knowledge of Man

John Calvin’s Proof for Satan’s Existence (October 22, 2012)

2019-03-29: An updated version of this article is available here: Does the Devil (or Satan) Exist? Friedrich Schleiermacher debates John Calvin Illustration of the Devil in the Codex Gigas, Early 13th Century John Calvin's proof for the existence of Satan in Institutes 1.14.17-18 continues to be useful, so I'm providing an extended […]

Related: christian faith, Devil, Friedrich Schleiermacher, institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin, Problem of Evil, Proof for the Devil, Proof of Satan, Satan, Theodicy