Supralapsarian christologies all hold that the incarnation is not contingent upon sin but may differ on the nature of the gift given to us in the incarnation. In this essay I conceptualize and evaluate a crucial difference between two supralapsarian strategies. One strategy, exemplified by Kathryn Tanner, focuses on the natures of the incarnate One: it argues that in the incarnation the Word takes on a human nature which, being transformed in the act of assumption, becomes the conduit of grace for those who share in the same humanity. The other, represented by Samuel Wells, thinks of the incarnation as a gift of a transforming presence of the incarnate person. In taking on human form, the person of the divine Word comes as close to us as God can – the invisible God now can be seen, touched, heard – and draws us into a community of friendship and love.

Karl Barth's deeply rooted theological convictions directly shaped his pedagogical practice. These convictions continue to merit reflection today. Barth's theological pedagogy is dedicated to his convictions pertaining to: 1) the particularity of theology's subject matter; 2) the necessary embodiment of theology's practice in an ecclesial and confessional tradition; 3) an open and charitable reading of the church's past; and 4) a principled rejection of ideology. These four convictions are explored in this essay with an eye to their relevance and importance for the teaching of theology and contemporary challenges. The essay concludes with a brief account of the dispositions that should accompany these convictions.

Calvin's significance in the development of federal theology has received much attention. Scholars have often neglected, however, the role that his exegesis played in his own construal of covenant ideas. More specifically, Calvin's reading of covenant in the book of Hebrews has played a negligible part in reconstructing Calvin's broader understanding of covenant. By looking closely at Calvin's exegesis and the terminological diversity in his commentaries on Hebrews 8–10, a more complex picture emerges. The federal terminology employed in these sections of his commentaries evidences exegetical sensitivity and doctrinal complexity. Calvin not only stands in the stream of Reformed covenant doctrine, but his exegesis represents an early instinct that noticed the tension at work in passages like Hebrews 8–10.

The burden of this essay is to show that Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology of the atonement and account of Christ's soteriological work as priest is marked by recognisably Reformed commitments and logics that both build from and critique John Calvin and later Reformed scholastics. The essay contends that it is when Schleiermacher departs strongly from orthodox conclusions regarding substitutionary atonement that he mostly clearly appeals to key aspects of Reformed theology. Put differently, when Schleiermacher critiques the material content of Reformed orthodoxy, he does so by drawing on other doctrinal claims that are fundamental in Reformed thought: the divine decree, union with Christ, the import of sanctification and the interconnection between dogmatic expression and Christian piety. Schleiermacher presents creative solutions to theological conundrums, particularly those that plague Calvin and the later Reformed tradition about the relationship between God's eternal decree of grace and the appeasement of divine wrath on the cross.

One of the most puzzling features of Barth's ethics is the insistence that God's divine command encounters us so definitely and concretely that it simply requires immediate and unquestioning obedience. This article offers an interpretation of these comments by reading them through the framework of Barth's description of the secularity, one-sidedness and spirituality of God's Word in Church Dogmatics I/1. Such a reading suggests that Barth's comments are not promoting a foolproof and immediate way of adjudicating ethical quandaries but orient us to the commanding Lord who goes before us.

Critical theory represents the dominant theoretical framework currently deployed in the humanities, yet it is a framework that many theologians have been slow to engage. The recent ‘postcritical’ turn in critical theory, however, has striking affinities with several key concerns of Christian theology, as is becoming increasingly recognised. This article suggests that dialogue between critical theory and theology can be mutually beneficial, particularly in relation to hamartiology. It argues that there is a strong parallel between Martin Luther's theology of the law and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's account of critical theory's ‘paranoid’ hermeneutics. It then draws on this parallel to diagnose a weakness in Sedgwick's ‘postcritical’ response to such paranoia, and suggests that this weakness can be repaired by a specifically theological approach to hermeneutics.

This article expands our knowledge of the historical-philosophical process by which the dominant metaphysical account of the Christian God became ascendant. It demonstrates that Marius Victorinus proposed a peculiar model of ‘consubstantiality’ that utilised a notion of ‘existence’ indebted to the Aristotelian concept of ‘prime matter’. Victorinus employed this to argue that God is a unity composed of Father and Son. The article critically evaluates this model. It then argues that Augustine noticed one of the model's philosophical liabilities but did not publicly name Victorinus when he rejected it, thereby exemplifying the New Testament practice of private ‘rebuke’ (ἐλέγχɛιν).

Maximus the Confessor says that the Word of God wills to be embodied always and in all things. Against many who wish to render this ‘universal incarnation’ metaphorical, I attempt a literal reading. When Maximus speaks of the Word's universal incarnation, he refers to the deification of human beings, which constitutes a single reality with the Word's incarnation. For Maximus, deification perfectly realises and completes the very logic of the Word's incarnational descent: just as God became whole man while remaining whole God, human beings will become whole God while remaining wholly human. Herein all things become enhypostasised into the Word – rendered one by grace with Christ himself, through his humanity – and so the Word becomes embodied in all things.

Herman Bavinck's reception of the organic motif has become in recent years the central locus for discussing the means by which the unity of his thought may be recognised. This article provides a critical reading of Bavinck on Hegel on the locus of providence for the purpose of contributing to the ongoing discussion that identifies the unity of Bavinck's thought not in his confessional self in simple opposition against the philosophies of his day, but rather in characterising Bavinck as an eclectic, orthodox and modern theologian. To this end this essay moves in three steps. First, we provide an analysis that showcases the nuanced points of contact between Bavinck and Hegel on providence. Second, the essay homes in on the specific ways in which the two thinkers diverge on the Creator–creature relationship. Finally, we close the essay by sketching the salient dogmatic and philosophical implications of the preceding analysis.

The hypothesis of this article is that Anselm describes two consequences of sin for the human will in De casu diaboli, and these two consequences structure Anselm's later account of human salvation in the Cur Deus homo. First, sin causes us to deserve punishment for injustice; and, second, sin removes the grace by which humans were able to attain the goal of their creation, which is the happiness of heaven. Book 1 of the Cur Deus homo, then, deals with the need for satisfaction in the face of punishment, while book 2 addresses the need for a supererogatory gift that elevates human nature and restores it to its heavenly end. The article argues that, for Anselm, only a God-man can provide both the satisfaction and supererogatory gift necessary to restore humans to their original divine purpose.

In this paper, I seek to articulate a positive role for the body in our eschatological joy in God. I draw on Augustine's thought to argue that the body makes a positive contribution to our joy in God by being a pedagogy for our imaginations, training us to imagine the beautiful character of God in Christ through embodiment. While Augustine might seem like a surprising choice for this task, I argue that his concepts of ubique totus and the totus Christus provide fertile soil for the growth of an eschatological theology of the body.

This paper puts Ezekiel 37 in conversation with Robert W. Jenson's theological anthropology. It claims that a theological reading of scripture can clarify moral reflection on personhood in general, and the personhood of humans with disabilities in particular. Ezekiel 37:1–14, read through Jenson's exegesis and theology, offers a theological anthropology in which human personhood is given by God's address. To be a person is to be available to God's address. Such an understanding does not rely on capacities inherent to the person, but extrinsically in God's word and freedom to be available to human flesh.

Doctrines of the atonement have tended either to elevate the status of one biblical metaphor or to gather together various metaphors into a unified concept or chorus of equal metaphors. The purpose of this article is to shed light on how the biblical metaphors function, using by way of reference the contrasting interpretations of Charles Hodge and Joel Green, who tend towards opposing theories of language based on naïve realism and idealism respectively. Drawing on the work of Colin Gunton, I recommend a mediating approach based on a critical realist theory of language which aims to steer a middle course between rationalism and relativism. Such an approach, which values the epistemic and revelatory potential of metaphors, is facilitated by a more integrative theological method with respect to scripture, reason, tradition and experience.

Genre, parallelism and canonical shaping have long been important to Psalms studies. Scholarly advances on these fronts are easily observed. Instead of working the same ground once more, this article sets off on a different path. It aims to read Hebrew poetry, especially the Psalter, with poets. It intends to listen carefully to three influential voices: George Herbert (1593–1633), R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) and Malcolm Guite (1957–). These poets help shape our imagination and prepare us to read the Psalms as poetry. Specifically, this results in sounds, repetitions, the constraining and freeing possibilities of forms, and theological themes taking centre stage in experiencing the poetry of Psalms.

Many scholars dismiss Origen's theology of scriptural inspiration as hopelessly lacking in historical sensibility. They point to his anachronistic attribution to the Old Testament prophets of extensive knowledge of the details of Christ's incarnation and of the allegorical significance of their own writings. I dispute this assessment, arguing that Origen's view of prophetic knowledge is more sophisticated than scholars have recognised and can contribute to contemporary reflection on progressive revelation, both anticipating and chastening it. I conclude with three analogies Origen offers us for conceptualising the development of revelation and doctrine.

This essay considers the goodness of God and the psalmists’ gratitude toward God in connection with divine aseity and divine freedom. The plenitude of God's goodness entails that he is fully sufficient and actualised in himself. The psalmists’ gratitude toward God implies that he acts in freedom when he communicates his goodness to creatures. The essay then explores how contemplating this teaching in the Psalter can help us to articulate in a broader dogmatic scope the coherence of God's pure actuality, freedom and constancy.

Despite the strong interest of Eastern Orthodox theologians in the area of anthropology, their reflection has almost never included intellectual disability. The article aims to take the discussion further by providing the contours of an inclusive anthropological ethics. In this sense, it will develop constructively the three main principles of Dumitru Stăniloae's dialogical anthropology: (1) that each human being is a person because she is called to dialogue with God from the womb of her mother; (2) that this dialogue with God is mediated by one's neighbour; (3) that the materiality of creation is meant to be transformed into a gift of communion with other humans and God.

The notion of rest frames Augustine's Confessions: the expression of the desire for rest and the prayer for God's bestowal of rest. Between these bookends is an extended account of Augustine's past expressed in the form of a confession, one that is saturated with the Psalms. How are these major motifs – rest, memory, confession and the Psalms – related? And how do they relate to the seemingly paradoxical depiction of Augustine's own striving towards rest and God's bestowal of rest? This essay answers these questions by delineating the logic of grace and rest embedded in the Confessions.

This article probes into Karl Barth's theology of nationhood set forth in Gottes Gnadenwahl, a volume on the doctrine of election published in November 1936. I will attend to his use of Hegelian terms and concepts to demonstrate his refutation of secularist and immanentist reinterpretations of the Christian doctrines of election and providence under the Enlightenment principle of historical progress by modern German thinkers, most notably Hegel. As Barth sees it, Hegel was largely at fault for having provided theological and philosophical justifications for the rise of Germany's mystical nationalism in the name of German Christianity. Using Hegelian language, Barth insists against Hegel that election is God's predetermination of human existence in Christo. Rather than negating nationhood altogether, Barth's repudiation of nationalism is intended to stress that nationhood is an external basis of the communion of the elect, and that the election of the community is the internal basis of nationhood.

This article engages Thomas F. Torrance's landmark work, Space, Time and Incarnation (1969), suggesting that his approach needs amplification in the light of recent studies emphasising the importance of the affective aspects of theology. The alternative framework of ‘place, history, and incarnation’ is proposed as a means of safeguarding the important subjective aspects of the incarnation, and the theological task of interpreting its significance. The article makes use of Simeon Zahl's account of ‘affective salience’ in developing this richer account of the significance of the incarnation.