The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead at the end of time has often been the subject of speculation in the history of theology, seen especially in the influence of Augustine. The Reformers, seeking to avoid speculation here as elsewhere, turned to meditation on the risen Christ. This article expounds two Reformed accounts, those of Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) and Francis Turretin (1623–87), which follow an anti-speculative rule formulated by Calvin: ‘we keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’. This rule, it is seen, also presses them to deny the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's humanity.

Amanda Perreau-Saussine de Ezcurra saw positive law as a resource for uncovering natural law. She also saw our natural inclinations, especially our natural sociability and our natural tendency toward benevolence, as crucial to a proper understanding of natural law. Drawing on these two foundational ideas of hers, this article will look at the Decalogue, the pre-eminent example of divine positive law, and then our concrete experience of desire, as revelatory of what she called ‘a law-like ordering of the world prior to human thought and action, a natural ordering that constrains practical reasoning’. To her characteristic concerns, it will add attention to God's silence.

In both Theo-Drama IV and Mysterium Paschale, Balthasar suggests that the descensus existentially separates the divine hypostases of Father and Son. He also repeatedly argues that his position is faithful to the Great Tradition. While there has been much debate about Balthasar's view of the descensus, this debate has focused mostly on the issues of universalism and penal substitution, leaving the issue of trinitarian relations either to the side or without an analysis of its historical precedent. This article attempts to address this lacuna by asking whether Balthasar's view of the descensus is in fact supported by the Great Tradition, with a specific focus on second-century texts. After surveying the apostolic fathers, second-century Jewish and Christian traditions (e.g. the New Testament apocrypha), second-century apologists and Melito's Peri Pascha, the article concludes that Balthasar's position does not find historical support in the second century. His view may be in line with the Great Tradition elsewhere, but it is not grounded in this seminal century of Christian doctrinal reflection.

This article argues that the quests for the historical Jesus have largely operated with an understanding of history hindered by a severely constricted range of divine and human possibilities. By outlining human ‘self-understanding’ as a historiographical question, it emphasises the determinative role in historical judgement played by the historian's assumptions about the range of possibility available to the processes of human thought. Highlighting three particular concerns that historians tend to connect to ‘docetism’, it suggests a couple of ways that metaphysical and theological forms of reasoning could expand the horizon of possibilities available to historical Jesus scholarship in a way that will augment access to the historical figure of Jesus.

Augustine's identification of the Stoic therapy of passions (apatheia) as moderation (metriopatheia) has long been a focus of controversy. This article examines the theoretical foundation for Augustine's comments on the relationship between apatheia and metriopatheia in the Stoic and the Peripatetic contexts, with particular focus on whether Augustine misrepresents his predecessors’ doctrines. Based upon a critical examination of recent research and a systematic analysis of Augustine's position in various phases of his writing, this article argues for a dynamic scheme of the psychotherapy of passions in Augustine's late thought, in which he deliberately deviates from philosophical traditions by adopting new criteria to re-evaluate the quality of emotions from the perspective of theological anthropology. This dynamic theological vantage point contributes to Augustine's insight into passions as well as his new use of the philosophical terms in refuting the Stoic pride.

Many people have argued that God experiences the suffering of the oppressed, but does divine solidarity liberate? This article answers this question with incarnation-focused sketches of the doctrines of salvation, atonement and mission: God gives life and communion with God and neighbour (salvation) by living and communing with us in Jesus Christ (atonement); and God continues to give life and restore communion as the Spirit sent by the Father joins us to God and each other in Jesus Christ (mission). These doctrines are made explicitly liberationist by emphasising the sociopolitical dimensions and imperatives of life and communion with God and neighbour.