In this paper, I argue that John Calvin's problematic grant of magisterial authority to enforce proper religious worship contradicts much of his own political theology and in fact depends upon an ambiguity in his natural law theory. I demonstrate this ambiguity by examining the differing claims in the Institutes regarding which of the tables of the Decalogue are accessible through natural law reasoning. I also consider the significance of this ambiguity for Calvin's political theology. I then suggest a partial retrieval of Calvin's political theology which is both more compelling to many contemporary Christians and in a better alignment with much of Calvin's own political theory.

Today, Christianity is often described as a ‘worldview’, especially among Reformed evangelicals in the USA. In this article I return to the 1890 lectures where Scottish theologian James Orr adapted the concept of Weltanschauung for Christian purposes. Although it was coined by Immanuel Kant in 1790, and primarily used in subsequent decades to theorise cultural difference and evaluate aesthetic expression, Orr nevertheless claims that the idea of a worldview is ‘as old as the dawn of reflection’ and thus appropriate to articulating Christianity. I examine Orr's engagement with the Kantian and emerging historicist context, paying particular attention to his epistemological and aesthetic citations and showing how Orr both adopts and departs from the characteristic features of the Kantian subject. I conclude by assessing the philosophical and theological costs of this project that, among other things, positions Christianity for perpetual culture war within secular societies similarly shaped by the post-Kantian subject.

This project offers an expansive theological understanding of the relationship between suffering and the divine while providing grounds for constructive human responses to suffering. To do this, I use an ecomimetic investigation of bats – selected because of their relationship to the COVID-19 pandemic – to explore the complexity of creaturely suffering in an interdependent world. Next, I offer an explanation of vulnerable suffering that is grounded in God's faithfulness to all of the creation that God called good. Rather than using this explanation to excuse human indifference to suffering, I argue that embracing one's creaturely finitude authorises constructive responses to suffering.

This essay examines the popular claim that the apostle Paul deploys an apocalyptic ‘two-age’ scheme in his eschatology, adapted from Jewish apocalyptic thought but reworked in an ‘inaugurated’ configuration in his theology as ‘now and not yet’. This reading is challenged as representing an oversimplified and anachronistic reading of the Jewish apocalyptic literature, and in respect of its claim to be a Pauline innovation. Furthermore, it is a reading not adequately sensitive to the fact that Paul rarely (if ever) uses the phrase ‘age to come’. The second section of the essay examines this Pauline evidence, and some of the language Paul uses instead of this phrase. Finally, the essay closes with a theological proposal for why Paul might do this, and makes some suggestions regarding Paul's view of time, the relationship between time and eternity, and possible ways this might be articulated once dogmatically located within his christology.

This paper examines Aquinas’ reception of Peter Lombard's disputed thesis that the charity with which we love God and neighbour is not a virtue, but rather the Holy Spirit himself. Through a close reading of the four passages where Aquinas engages directly with the thesis, I show how this reception evolved over the course of his career, such that he gradually came to incorporate the trinitarian insight underlying Lombard's thesis into his doctrine of created charity. Although this doctrine is often viewed as an outright rejection of Lombard's thesis, I argue that it is in fact a substantial development of it that was made possible by Aquinas’ assimilation of Aristotelian naturalism.

I focus in this article on the work of the contemporary Thomist, David Burrell, and the ways in which he is influenced particularly by Robert Sokolowski and Kathryn Tanner in his articulation of the sui generis relation between creature and Creator. By paying close attention to Burrell's work on the metaphysics of creation I show how the notions of ‘distinction’ and ‘relation’ cannot be separated in his understanding of the world-and-God. I then examine how Thomas's own thinking through of these issues was carried out in engagement with voices from outside the Christian tradition and, finally, explore Burrell's invitation to extend the conversation beyond Abrahamic frontiers by turning to the work of a lesser-known Thomist scholar – Sara Grant.

This article demonstrates that an economic context is essential to the metaphor that Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard used in their arguments against a ransom theory of atonement. Contrary to typical analyses, which suggest their metaphor makes a point about obedience or honour that slaves or servants owe to a master or king, this metaphor in fact suggests relations between the lord of a manor and his servi – serfs bound to the land, perpetually indebted to the lord and effectively considered his property. Should servi attempt to desert their lord, he had the right simply to reclaim them wherever they went. Insofar as this right voided the servus’ choice to leave their lord, the metaphorical framework of manorial economy ruled out the ‘rights of the devil’ in a way previous debt-slavery and military frameworks for ransom theory (in themselves) did not.

T. F. Torrance is widely thought to be one of the most important recent theologians in the Anglophone world. There has been quite a lot of research done on his soteriology. This essay contributes to that discussion by assessing five soteriological themes in his thought. These comprise: his account of the vicarious humanity of Christ, the notion of incarnation as atonement, his christological understanding of the divine image, his wholly objective view of the nature of justification and his atonement mechanism. I use this analysis as a means to investigate two broader notions in his theology. These are theosis and universal salvation. In keeping with several other recent treatments of his work I conclude his theology implies a doctrine of theosis. I also argue that it implies universalism, despite his emphatic rejection of the doctrine.

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes Climacus, famously distinguishes two kinds of religiousness, kind A and kind B. He claims that, even though kind A is basic to kind B, including as represented in Christian religious commitment, kind A both has God ‘in its ground’ and ‘can be present in paganism’ that is atheist or agnostic. This apparent conflict calls for a resolution, if kind A is to be coherent. This article offers a new resolution with a familiar distinction between God de re and God de dicto, even though interpreters have overlooked the importance of this distinction for understanding Kierkegaard. In addition, the article contends that this distinction is supportable from Kierkegaard's own writings, even though he himself did not draw it explicitly. The article also explains the importance of the distinction for understanding Kierkegaard on religious diversity in intellectual content. It proposes that it enables Kierkegaard to offer a compelling position on such diversity, given his understanding of God's perfectly good character and activity.

Recent discussion regarding the beatific vision has concerned the object of the vision. Thomas Aquinas represents a robust account of the beatific vision according to which God will be seen in his essence by saints and angels in heaven. Others, however, have worried that such a view risks imperilling divine transcendence and incomprehensibility and favour instead an understanding of the beatific vision that is christologically oriented. This article offers a defence of the claim that we will see God's essence in heaven. First, it draws attention to various distinctions in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae concerning how we see the divine essence in heaven. Then, it demonstrates points of continuity between Thomas’ account and that of later Protestants, particularly Calvin and Turretin. Third, following Simon Gaine, it argues that Thomas’ account of the beatific vision is not christologically deficient. Finally, it argues that Thomas’ account has biblical support.

This paper seeks to examine Barth's ontology of holy scripture by appropriating the latest nomenclatural analysis of Barth's usage of Wesen and Sein. Given the difference between the Wesen and the Sein of the Bible, and the claim that the Sein-in-becoming of the Bible is determined by its Wesen-in-act, it follows that for Barth the Bible is ontologically the Word of God in the sense of Wesen, which underlies the Bible's becoming the Word of God in the sense of Sein. In short, the Bible ontologically becomes the Word of God in the sense of Sein because the Bible is the Word of God in the sense of Wesen.

Contrary to much of the recent literature on the trinitarian theology of John Owen, which often ascribes radical personal distinction to his account of triune relations and actions, this paper argues that Owen's account of distinct divine persons and trinitarian actions ought not to be contrasted with his theological forebears: Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Calvin. Instead, his account of trinitarian ontology and operation is thoroughly consistent with (and dependent upon) the Augustinian principles that these interpreters suspect Owen is rejecting. The argument unfolds by presenting four putative points of strong personal distinction in John Owen's trinitarian theology and then reinterpreting each of the themes and passages that these four points are supposedly rooted in, evidencing his Augustinian account of trinitarian unity and distinction.

In The Pillar and Ground of the Truth Pavel Florensky presents an account of hell, or ‘Gehenna’, that synthesises two seemingly irreconcilable claims: that God will save all people, and that some people will reject God forever. In insisting that both claims are true, and by recasting standard categories of final judgement, purgation and human identity, Florensky produces a novel contribution in contemporary debates about hell and universalism. I begin by surveying his account, then address two key interpretive questions raised by his critics, and conclude by situating his account within modern western conversations.

This paper gives an account of the religious epistemology and theological working methods used in Anne Conway's Principia Philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae (1690). It is argued that the epistemic foundations of Conway's philosophical theology are rooted in a personal revelation of the existence and nature of God, which forms a framework through which the natural world can be approached and studied as creation. In this way, we can clarify both the place of Conway's work in the intellectual currents of the seventeenth century and various aspects of her metaphysical system, such as her account of creation.

This article is a study of Pavel Florensky's philosophy of symbol in the context of his discovery of Palamism in the 1910s, when Florensky started to speak of symbol using Palamite language. It proposes a fundamental difference between Florensky's and Palamas’ teachings on symbol: Palamas views a natural symbol as the energy of an essence, while for Florensky symbol is the essence itself, the energy of which synergises with the energies of other essence. In this context the prehistory of the concept of synergy in Florensky is studied, leading to the identification of a further difference in the ontologies of Florensky and Palamas: while Florensky's ‘essence-energy’ has the property of necessary correlation with the ‘other’, following the tendencies of the philosophy of that epoch, in Palamas ‘energy’ does not presuppose any necessary correlation with the ‘other’. The author connects this difference in ontologies between the two thinkers with their respective teachings on symbol.

This article questions the value of the categories ‘the school of Antioch’ and ‘Antiochene christology’ on the basis of the significant theological differences between the two central figures in the school: John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, both of whom studied together at the school of Diodore of Tarsus in the late fourth century. Drawing on scholarship which has pointed to the coherence of Theodore's exegesis and christology, I show that Chrysostom's exegesis and christology are also coherent, but in a way which is at odds with those of Theodore. As opposed to Theodore's distinctions between the two testaments and between the human and the divine in Christ, Chrysostom has a strongly unitive reading of scripture's two testaments and of the person of Christ. In my argument I especially employ Theodore's and Chrysostom's respective exegetical works on the Gospel of John.

This essay begins with Pilate's question – ‘What is truth?’ – and notes the way it sets us up to long for a second-person experience of Jesus. I argue that this longing is met in the literary function of the Beloved Disciple, which prepares us for our own second-person encounter with Jesus. This raises some puzzles: can the Spirit convey to us a second-person encounter with Jesus? How do we know we have been so addressed by Jesus? Given John's above/below dualism, what does such an encounter mean for our theological language? I answer these questions in turn.

St Paul and the tradition which follows in his wake have often fallen victim to the circumstances and ideologies of their interpreters: used as ambassadors for patriarchy by some and rejected as misogynistic by others. This article reviews some of the contentious passages in 1 and 2 Timothy and concludes that they both challenge the mores of their environment and resonate with other (deutero-)Pauline teachings. To ensure that such claims do not fall prey to circularity in their arguments, a methodology is developed and applied in which claims of resonance are not predicated on the content of other writings.

Adolf Schlatter claims that the Protestant Reformation bequeathed us a lopsided understanding of human personhood. In his view, the Reformers offered a limited definition of sin that neglected our creatureliness, and a passive understanding of grace that rendered the believer inactive. Seeking to correct what he considers misrepresentations of religious and christological anthropology in (post-)Reformation theology, Schlatter suggests a view of sin that takes our humanity as God's creatures seriously, and he puts forward a view of grace that leads to an organic transformation of our volition and leaves our God-given creatureliness intact. Schlatter's active-volitional understanding of divine grace offers much by way of promise as we rediscover our responsibilities as God's active agents in a fallen world.

In his dramatic approach to the redemption, Balthasar takes seriously Christ's exchange of places with sinners. Christ upon the cross takes on sin itself, and not only its consequences, while remaining innocent. Balthasar critiques Aquinas for maintaining that Christ accepts only the consequences or punishments of sin. Aquinas strictly distinguishes between guilt and punishment, with Christ accepting only the latter out of charity to make satisfaction for sin. I argue that Balthasar does not get beyond Aquinas’ distinction between guilt and punishment but dramatises it for a more dynamic representation of the seriousness of sin and its redemption.