{"title":"Seeing God's Essence: A Teleological Coordination of the Beatific Vision and Christ's Work of Atonement","authors":"W. Bankston","doi":"10.1177/10638512211044981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211044981","url":null,"abstract":"Both Hans Boersma and Michael Allen have recently written important books on the beatific vision. This article engages these works in two main movements. In the first, the efforts of Boersma and Allen will be commended as much needed exhortations for the contemporary church. For the beatific vision combats the modern tendencies of demoting teleology and immanentizing the ultimate criteria of human flourishing. However, the second movement will critique a point that these two theologians share in their respective formulations of this eschatological act. Both posit the incarnate Son as the direct object of the vision. In contrast, this article contends that it is more theologically fitting to give this place to the divine essence. It does so by coordinating the beatific vision with the overarching telos of Christ's atoning work and its implications for theological anthropology.","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124097284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology by James K.A. Smith","authors":"R. J. Snell","doi":"10.1177/10638512211044976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211044976","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131617897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction to the Symposium","authors":"E. Newman","doi":"10.1177/10638512211054936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211054936","url":null,"abstract":"Shortly after World War II, the British Baptist theologian Robert C. Walton spoke powerfully about how Baptists and all Christians might see themselves as members one of another. This required, he argued, a “return to historical Christianity which is concerned not with what a man does with his solitariness, but with a distinctive type of communal life, largely created by and lived within a distinctive society—the Church.” Walton’s use and understanding of Church—and elsewhere “One Catholic Church”—did not negate his conviction that various traditions had unique contributions to make to the whole. Indeed, Walton urged Baptists not to “minimize the contribution which God has given us...” Walton’s poignant call for unity and the sharing of ecclesial contributions anticipated a key emphasis of Pope John Paul II. In Ut unum sint, the Pope describes ecumenism as not “simply an exchange of ideas,” but in some way always as an “exchange of gifts.”","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"6 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114014932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Triumphs and Limits of Platonism: A Trinitarian Account","authors":"Samuel J. Korb","doi":"10.1177/10638512211044506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211044506","url":null,"abstract":"Beginning with Augustine’s remark that he discovered the Logos of God in the Platonists, I consider how a certain trinitarian sensibility is endemic to Platonism that might be particularly helpful for working out a trinitarian theology. In particular, the Platonic axiom that the Good is generative and self-diffusive, especially in its Plotinian form, where the Good is considered an infinite power of generation, represents a point of contact between the best of Neoplatonic metaphysics and orthodox trinitarian thinking. At the same time, however, the Platonic insight ultimately fails outside a trinitarian context, where alone the infinite goodness and power of God are secured. Special attention is given to Dionysius the Areopagite and Bonaventure both for showing the great link between Neoplatonism and trinitarian Christianity and for exposing the incoherence of the Platonic account without the requisite trinitarian translation and transformation.","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117231275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Denominating “Justification” and “Faith”: Catholics, Lutherans, and a North American Baptist's Response to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification","authors":"B. Brewer","doi":"10.1177/10638512211044777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211044777","url":null,"abstract":"That the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Unity attempted a joint declaration on the doctrine of justification is worthy of commendation. The resulting Joint Declaration constitutes some of the best contemporary efforts at ecumenical dialogue in the spirit of Christian union. This essay outlines the development of both medieval Catholic and subsequent Protestant conceptions of justification that led to disunion in the Western Church, reviews the initial points of division on the doctrine during the era of the Reformation for the purpose of grasping more fully the ecumenical feat of the JDDJ, and seeks to clarify what issues appear to remain unclear or unresolved in the document. The article also outlines the history of how Baptists in America have understood the doctrine of justification in order to consider how such Baptists might perceive the promise and potential lingering challenges or questions regarding the joint declaration.","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122332404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Baptists, Scripture, and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification","authors":"D. Starling","doi":"10.1177/10638512211047174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211047174","url":null,"abstract":"The approach taken in this paper is based on two key considerations: (1) the emphasis that the Baptist theological tradition places on the role played by Scripture and its interpretation in the formulation, judgment, and renewal of our confessional statements; and (2) the testimony of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) that the common understanding it articulates is grounded in a “common way of listening to the word of God in Scripture” ( JDDJ §8) and was derived, at least in part, by “appropriating insights of recent biblical studies” ( JDDJ §13). Its primary content is a brief summary of relevant discussions on justification and related themes in recent New Testament scholarship, some reflections on those discussions, and some suggestions for how those understandings might inform a collective Baptist response to the Joint Declaration. It concludes that the JDDJ should be taken by Baptists as a sign of hope and an encouragement to further conversation, including a distinctively Baptist explication of the common understanding stated in JDDJ §§15–17.","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132533711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Christian Flesh by Paul J. Griffiths","authors":"Michon M. Matthiesen","doi":"10.1177/10638512211047192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211047192","url":null,"abstract":"I began this fascinating book two summers ago, but various exigencies forced me to put it aside before I was into the thick of it. This was fortuitous. Beginning the work afresh as the pandemic waned in this country allowed it to speak all the more potently. If there is any common discovery from the months of lockdown, quarantine, churches closing, and ZOOM virtuality, it might be that we humans are inescapably enfleshed creatures, whose flourishing is tied to the exchange of fleshly caresses. I thus suspect that readers will find themselves particularly vulnerable to Griffith’s speculative theological reflections on the realities of Christian flesh. In an important way, this book takes up a topic raised in Griffiths’ previous publication, Decreation, on the last things. In that intriguing book, he proposes that the beatific vision—the last thing for human creatures—must include (and wait upon) the resurrected flesh, for humans are fundamentally animated flesh. This depiction of resurrected flesh sensorially encountering the flesh of the ascended Jesus remains a central paradigm in this present work. Yet here Griffiths unblinkingly confronts the existential realities of living in “the devastation” (the post-lapsarian world) as baptized flesh. No whisper of a Christian Neoplatonism is permitted in these frank and challenging pages. Griffiths’ cogent examination of the caresses of Christian flesh, given and received, will make some Christian moral theologians uneasy. The first three chapters of Christian Flesh are a theological tour de force. Chapter 1 (“Flesh Devastated”) is a poignant portrayal of human life as haptic. Human flesh requires the capacity to touch and be touched; but this need also defines the vulnerability of human flesh to injury—both from","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122199900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: An Outline of its Genesis and Impact From a Baptist’s Perspective","authors":"Uwe Swarat","doi":"10.1177/10638512211044790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211044790","url":null,"abstract":"This essay outlines the genesis and impact of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) from a Baptist perspective. Starting with comparative studies of individual theologians from 1949 to 1980 it sketches the prehistory of the JDDJ including the results of ecumenical dialogues from 1972 to 1994. The essay then presents the origins and contents of the JDDJ from the draft version (1997) to the signing (1999), including the development and content of the “Official Common Statement.” The author includes as well the impact of JDDJ on the study on “The Biblical Foundations of the Doctrine of Justification” (2012); the Notre Dame Consultation (2019); and ecumenical dialogues on justification with Baptist participation. The author appreciates the JDDJ as the most significant result of ecumenical dialogues since the formation of the ecumenical movement and expresses his hope that the Baptist World Alliance too will assent to the consensus.","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132460784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Immigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940 by Antoine Arjakovsky","authors":"Craig R. Higgins","doi":"10.1177/10638512211047186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211047186","url":null,"abstract":"There is no denying the increasing interest in the theology of the Orthodox Church among Western Christians, particularly over the last twenty years or so. Even before then, in the 1980s, a significant number of evangelicals, most of whom had been involved in the ministries of Campus Crusade for Christ, were received into the Orthodox Church. (For this story, see Peter E. Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith [Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1990]). Within the last few years, InterVarsity Press, a leading evangelical publisher, has published Andrew Louth’s Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (2013) and his edited collection, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present (2015). A recent volume by one of the English-speaking world’s most productive theologians, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is entitled Looking East in Winter: Contemporary Thought and the Eastern Christian Tradition (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021). Williams, who provided the foreword for the volume under review here, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Vladimir Lossky and has written books on both Sergei Bulgakov and Fyodor Dostoevsky. In fact, this renewed interest in Orthodoxy is not limited to theology but also involves spiritual practice. Even evangelical Reformed pastors are recommending the Jesus Prayer—which would have been nearly unthinkable when I was ordained in the late 1980s! Arjakovsky’s massive volume will, therefore, be a welcome addition, at least to the scholars who are participating in this phenomenon. I must say at the outset, however, that this is not an easy volume to read. Not only is it very long and very thorough; the author himself says that he “favored a rather meandering account” (531). The book began as a doctoral dissertation, Book Review","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131354626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: The History of Scottish Theology by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott","authors":"R. David Nelson","doi":"10.1177/10638512211044793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512211044793","url":null,"abstract":"About halfway between Lumsden and Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, on the site of the lost parish of Auchindoir, stands the stark, gray ruin of St. Mary’s Kirk. I am told that the main structure (which, aside from the roof, remains intact) dates from the early thirteenth century. The south portal is Romanesque and capped by the characteristic arch with patterned mouldings. A few stonework decorations in the building’s interior have endured the ravages of time, including some inscriptions bearing names of patrons from a bygone age. A stately belfry overlooks a few dozen ancient gravestones in the kirkyard. By far the most interesting feature of the ruin, though, is a small sacrament house set within the north wall. When I visited the site in 2005 as a student of theology in nearby Aberdeen, I was drawn to the aumbry, observing how it varied architecturally from the rest of the structure. I could just make out and partly decipher the engraving above the cupboard wherein the elements once were held: HIC-E-CORP D N I C V M; shorthand for Hic est corpus Domini Nostri Iesu Christi Virginis Mariae—lit., “Here is the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Virgin Mary.” What I had not considered at the time is the extent to which a ruin such as St Mary’s—particularly, the well-preserved sacrament house—stands as a monument to an earlier era in the complicated narrative of the history of theology in Scotland. In his fascinating chapter on “Liturgical Theology before 1600” in the first volume of The History of Scottish Theology, Stephen Mark Holmes traces the origin of the aumbry to a period in the first half of the sixteenth century during which developments in liturgy and church architecture flourished, especially in the north-east (I, 54–68). Canon Alexander Galloway (d. 1552), one among the “Aberdeen Liturgists” and, as Holmes dubs him, a “Theologian in Stone” (I, 58), decorated a number of churches in the area and further south, embellishing their interiors with carved images, crosses, Book Review","PeriodicalId":223812,"journal":{"name":"Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132573856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}