In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the poems on the Lord's Supper by the Dutch statesman and man of letters, Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687). Between 1642 and 1684, he wrote eighteen poems on this subject, sixteen in Dutch and two in Latin. The type of poem varies from pithy epigrams to sonnets, through to longer poems over fifty lines in length, replete with well-conceived poetic tropes. To date, these poems have received little scholarly attention. Huygens was a lifelong member of the Reformed church and his poetry considers themes which are central to Reformed theology, such as human sin, divine grace and human gratitude. In his poetry, he recognises that he is a sinner and that it is not sufficient merely to ask for divine forgiveness, and then sin again. He acknowledges the need to intend to change his ways, but also recognises that he can only do this with divine assistance. Huygens published most of these poems and although such a public acknowledgement of sin may seem strange to us, there is a sense in which he was performing a public act of confession, to make common cause with his fellow believers, and also perhaps to encourage them to do the same. Much of the poetry considers the ontology and efficacy of the Lord's Supper. As well as exploring familiar tropes such as the sacrament as a feast and a pledge for God's promises, Huygens also asks about the very nature of the bread and wine of the sacrament. We might expect him to ascribe little or no value to the elements themselves, beyond, to use Brian Gerrish's phrase, ‘presenting what they represent’. poetry. However, at some points, the language Huygens uses to refer to the elements, such as ‘holy bread’ and ‘healing dew’, suggests something more is at stake. Some may dismiss such phrases as mere lyrical flourish, but I argue that they point to a central tension inherent within Reformed eucharistic theology between sign and signified and, furthermore, that this poetry offers us the opportunity to explore that tension. Huygens’ poems bear comparison with the best English-language religious poetry of the seventeenth century, and remind us that poetry as well as prose can offer us valuable theological insight.

There are two different hermeneutical principles between the views of the fallen and unfallen humanity of Christ. Scholars who deny Christ's assumption of corrupted human nature emphasise that, due to a fallen humanity, Christ would have inevitably committed sin in the context of the original sin. However, theologians who are in favour of Christ's fallen humanity explain the issue in the person and work of Christ himself. Here, I present John Calvin's biblical views on the body of Christ as the vicarious humanity for all of us. With regard to the biblical truth that the Word became flesh without ceasing to be the eternal of God, Calvin describes the paradoxical character of the event in scripture. Although Calvin never supports the fallen nature of Christ at a literal level, he is inclined to accept the view of Christ's fallen nature at the level of interpretation, because Calvin has no hesitation in saying that Christ assumed a mortal body like us. Calvin is in line with the views of Christ's fallen human nature, for he uses the biblical concept of Christ's mortal body and the principle of sanctification in his own body through the Holy Spirit, except in that Calvin denies Christ's assumption of the sinful nature of Adam after the Fall. Calvin's opinions not only provide us with the common biblical ground with which the two theological camps would agree, but also demonstrate that Christ assumed fallen humanity for us. In this article, I will explain how the view of Christ's unfallen humanity has logical errors and how it distorts the integrity of the Gospel. Next, in order to demonstrate how Christ's assumption of fallen humanity accords with the orthodox faith in Reformed theology, I examine Calvin's biblical arguments of Christ's assumption of our true humanity. Then, I explain that without assumption of our mortal body by Christ there is no vicarious humanity of Christ in Calvin's christology. Particularly, in order to understand the original and biblical arguments for the humanity of Christ, I will use a dialectical approach to both the Institutes of Christian Religion (1559) and Calvin's commentaries, as the best way to grasp the essence of Calvin's theology.

Contemporary theology exhibits a lively interest in using the traditional doctrine of the munus triplex (the threefold mediatorial office of Christ as prophet, priest and king) to unify our understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ and ground it in the Old Testament witness. This article explores Karl Barth's contribution to this trend and draws from it a set of reflections for the church today. Scholarly consensus suggests that Barth offers an exceptionally robust development of the munus triplex in shaping the formal structure and material content of his doctrine of reconciliation. In this article I contend that his use of this concept is actually quite superficial in nature. As scholars are wont to point out, Barth incorporates the munus triplex into eye-catching summary statements throughout CD IV – but these statements are more ambiguous than they might at first seem. A closer examination of the details of his account of the work of Christ, and particularly his hamartiology, demonstrates that the munus triplex does not substantially inform his treatment of these subjects, and that his own unique christological concerns provide the determining influence. While Barth was eager to align his position with that of Reformed orthodoxy, focusing on the munus triplex ultimately distracts the reader from his primary concerns. Much the same is true for the church today – when used as a sufficient interpretative device for offering an account of the person and work of Jesus Christ, the munus triplex suffers the fate of many an artificial schema for biblical interpretation, distracting us from the breadth and depth of the biblical witness by offering an overly tidy, artificially organised account of the material. Nevertheless, when modestly employed, it remains a significant though limited conceptual device for understanding Christ's person and work, which the church should employ in several ways so as to integrate the Old and New Testaments in its proclamation of the Gospel.

In this article we will argue this thesis: even with classical theism and meticulous providence, one can properly say God exercises creativity. This is not merely to say that God is creative – which is perhaps tautologous given that God is the Creator – but further, it is to say that God's activity in relation to the cosmos displays creativity. We will examine open theism, which resides at the other end of the spectrum, in order to provide contrast with the position defended in this article. There are three aspects we intend to affirm in saying God exercises creativity. First, the product (the cosmos which God made) exhibits creativity. This should not be particularly contentious and we will not pursue this aspect here. Second, the agent (God) exhibits creativity. Third, the process exhibits creativity. Both of these latter aspects will be defended. In this article we argue that God's freedom, creation's contingency, creation's reality and actuality, and considerations from the incarnation all enable meaningful ways in which one can speak of divine creativity while still affirming classical theism and meticulous providence. First, in support of our thesis we will use possible world talk as a heuristic device. Possible world talk involves modal claims, modal logic and counterfactuals. We use this conceptual device, operating within a theistic framework, to approach with clarity theological issues such as the divine decree, creation ex nihilo and providence. Second, we will utilise a two-nature christology to speak meaningfully about divine creativity. Against those who describe God's creativity in terms of divine attributes, we suggest that it is possible to understand God's creativity in terms of the incarnation. Drawing upon the work of Thomas Weinandy, we suggest that it is possible to speak about God experiencing something genuinely new in the person of Christ. As such, one can hold to a classical doctrine of divine creation and use language associated with human creativity, such as ‘risk’, ‘process’ and ‘discovery’, to speak about God. We hope to demonstrate that the affirmation of divine creativity need not be exclusive to positions such as open theism.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in the United States (US) went through a shift because of the introduction of open theism into theological context of conservative evangelicalism. The response by the society to this new theology was swift and decisive. Not only were the memberships of certain evangelicals (i.e. Clark H. Pinnock and John Sanders), who were responsible for bringing open theism into the ETS, in danger of being revoked, but the ETS formally denounced open theism and changed its constitutional by-laws to safeguard itself against anyone bringing significant theological innovation into the society. It is important to re-examine the cultural ethos of the ETS in the US in terms of the underlying beliefs of the society in order to determine whether or not the changes the ETS made had basis in scripture or were simply motivated by the culture at large. To determine this, this article will begin by generally describing some of the main cultural beliefs of the ETS. Next, the discussion focuses on some of the major historical influences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which impacted the ETS to conform to an ethos more in line with the Enlightenment. Third, the article will critique these Enlightenment-based cultural beliefs linguistically, culturally and theologically. This article will demonstrate that because the ETS conformed more to the standards of the Enlightenment than to scripture, it is generally much more preoccupied with knowing the truth of scripture rather than walking in the way of Jesus Christ. Finally, this article suggests the way forward for the ETS is to become a more inclusive society by aligning itself with a more historical definition of evangelicalism rather than simply being defined by the evangelicalism of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article suggests that by making this move, the ETS will reclaim a much more grace-filled attitude towards its current members and give hope to those committed Christ-followers on the outside of the society, showing them they are welcome to be a part of such a prestigious theological group.

One of Alasdair MacIntyre's colleagues at Notre Dame once told me that of all the passages in all his books, there is one of which MacIntyre is most proud. It is found, of course, in After Virtue:

I am grateful to John Perry for his deft and illuminating review, which nudges in productive ways at the unity and shape of the story I have told in Putting on Virtue. In brief, Perry reads my book as a defence of Christian eudaimonism against charges of hypocrisy. He judges the defence to be a success, but suggests that I am conflating two distinct issues, only one of which is helpfully construed as hypocrisy. As a result of this conflation, I end up including topics and thinkers which don't properly belong under the same umbrella, and failing to do justice to those that do. I overlook the significance of the journey metaphor for Augustine's construal of pagan virtue, and so miss some of his most valuable resources for coming to terms with the character of all virtue in via. Furthermore, while Luther might appear to be the villain of my narrative, Perry argues that in fact he hardly deserves a place in it. Luther's rejection of eudaimonism is so complete that he doesn't really contribute at all to an ongoing conversation about it; his real concern is justification, with an unfortunate spillover into the foreign territory of ethics. It is Hume, Perry proposes, who is the proper villain, undermining the eudaemonist tradition by unashamedly setting aside the task of differentiating objective goods from subjective goods.