No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
In this article I shall try to argue that to accept polarities in theology is a discipline imposed by the subject matter itself, and that attempts to break out of the received polarities are likely, if not certain, to end in reductionism. The relation of paradox to polarity demands far more thorough treatment than I have been able to give it here. For example, the question as to whether all polarities are inherently paradoxical is one that I have not discussed. Neither have I made it a part of my case to contend for the paradoxical nature of Christian doctrine. I am inclined to think, however, that once we perceive creation itself to be paradoxical—in that God causes to be that which is not he, which seems to involve a self-limitation or even ‘kenosis’ of deity—we will be predisposed to accept the paradoxes of the Incarnation, justification (simul iustus et peccator), and eschatology (already and not yet). But I have used the word polarity in a broad sense which I hope will become clear as the argument proceeds. I eventually make some critical comments about ‘liberation theology’ and Professor Wiles's The Remaking of Christian Doctrine. But I begin by trying to advance the argument on a broad front.
page 402 note 1 Burrell, David, Analogy and Philosophical Language (Yale, 1973).Google Scholar
page 402 note 2 Whitehead, A. N., Modes of Thought (Cambridge, 1938), p. 14.Google Scholar
page 402 note 3 Hepburn, , Christianity and Paradox (London, 1958)Google Scholar. I have not ventured to discuss the theological significance of the various forms of polarity that have figured prominently in modern physics. For an introduction to this question see Austin, William H., ‘Waves, Particles and Paradoxes’, Rice University Studies, 53.2 (1967)Google Scholar. I have to thank Professor Torrance for drawing my attention to this monograph.
page 403 note 1 Kant, , Critique of Pure Reason (Everyman edn, London, 1934), pp. 259ff, 299ff.Google Scholar
page 404 note 1 Newsome, David, Two Classes of Men: Platonism and English Romantic Thought (London, 1974), pp. 62f, 71f.Google Scholar
page 404 note 2 See Brown, James, Subject and Object in Modern Theology (London, 1955)Google Scholar; Brandt, R. B., The Philosophy of Schleiermacher (New York, 1941 and 1968)Google Scholar; Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (Everyman edn, London, 1956), ch. xii; Kierkegaard, , Concluding Unscientific Postscript (ET Princeton, 1941), pp. 169ffGoogle Scholar; Temple, William, Nature, Man and God (London, 1934), ch. iiiGoogle Scholar; Tillich, , Systematic Theology I (London, 1953), p. 183Google Scholar & ad lib.; Torrance, T. F., Karl Barth: An Introduction to his Early Theology (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Theological Science (London, 1969), ch. if.; Oman, , The Natural and the Supernatural (Cambridge, 1931).Google Scholar
page 405 note 1 Kaufman, W., Hegel (London, 1966), p. 212Google Scholar. Recent studies of Hegel have argued that his programme for metaphysics was more modest than that ascribed to him in the ‘silly popular legend’ (ibid., p. 222) of Hegel as the arch-exponent of the limitless powers of pure reason. See also Findlay, J. N., Hegel: a Reexamination (London, 1958), pp. 20f, 348fGoogle Scholar. But cf. Soil, Ivan, An Introduction to Hegel's Metaphysics (Chicago, 1969), pp. 135ffGoogle Scholar, who reaffirms against Kaufmann the received view of Hegel. Hegel's view of unreconciled dialectic as a straightforward head-on contradiction (Findlay, pp. 65, 76f) is a stronger concept than polarity.
page 405 note 2 See McFarland, T., Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (London, 1969).Google Scholar
page 406 note 1 See McAdoo, H. R., The Spirit of Anglicanism (London, 1965), pp. 312f.Google Scholar
page 406 note 2 See my article, ‘Gore and Theological Synthesis’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 28:5 (October 1975).Google Scholar
page 406 note 3 Torrance, , Karl Barth, pp. 83f.Google Scholar
page 407 note 1 Przywara, Polarity (ET London, 1935), p. vii. The words are those of the translator, A. C. Bouquet.
page 407 note 3 Torrance, op. cit., p. 172.
page 408 note 1 Baillie, , Our Knowledge of God (London, 1939), p. 94.Google Scholar
page 408 note 2 Gutierrez, , A Theology of Liberation (ET London, 1974), p. 155.Google Scholar
page 409 note 1 ibid., pp. 159f.
page 409 note 2 ibid., p. 168.
page 409 note 3 ibid., p. 177.
page 411 note 1 Wiles, , The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (London, 1974), pp. 33f. The following references are all from pp. 33–8.Google Scholar
page 412 note 1 See Tennant, F. R., Philosophical Theology, vol. II (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 214fGoogle Scholar; Illingworth, J. R., Divine Transcendence (London, 1911), pp. 68fGoogle Scholar; and for Spinoza, Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (Penguin, 1951), pp. 43ff.
page 412 note 2 Oppenheimer, Helen, Incarnation and Immanence (London, 1973).Google Scholar
page 413 note 1 Przywara, op. cit., p. 29; Torrance, , Space, Time and Incarnation (London, 1969). PP. 74f.Google Scholar
page 413 note 2 Trethowan, I., Absolute Value (London, 1970), p. 94.Google Scholar