This article traces the role of the Holy Spirit throughout Augustine's De Trinitate. After situating Augustine's treatise in terms of texts of Athanasius and Basil on the Holy Spirit, it treats the place of the Holy Spirit in his critique of the existing dogmatic terminology and the distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity. In contrast with the dominant Western and Eastern traditions, for Augustine the Holy Spirit comes to be thought of as God in a privileged sense, that is, as the person of the Trinity who is the most proper bearer of certain privileged names of God, most notably love. The notion of the Holy Spirit as eternal ‘gift’ proves to be especially troubling for Augustine, but also especially productive, and the present reading explicates the complex interrelationships that he is forced to develop among the concepts of love, cupiditas, gift, communio and enjoyment. The analysis of the concept of enjoyment in particular leads to the claim that the notion of property or ownership is completely foreign to God and that the Holy Spirit as communio must be thought as ‘gift’ only insofar as it is disruptive of the realm of ownership, that is, the realm of sin. The article finishes, as the De Trinitate does, with the implications of Augustine's treatment of the Holy Spirit for ethics and ecclesiology.

The article presents one aspect of the theology of the leader of the Athonite followers of Onomatodoxy, Hieroschemamonk Anthony Bulatovich, namely his doctrine of divine revelation and words of God in the Bible as uncreated energies of God. This article shows that this doctrine is in conformity with the views of the Fathers of the Eastern Church as well as with the Old Testament theology of the Divine Name.

Many Christians in the Western tradition would find the idea of salvation as the deification of man alien because the concept of justification by faith has played such a central and influential role in Western soteriologies. There is, however, a renaissance of the concept of deification or theosis in contemporary theology even outside its traditional home in Eastern Orthodoxy. Many Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians have discovered that although the two metaphors, justification and deification, emphasise different aspects of salvation, they are not incompatible with each other. In addition, theologians in the Western tradition are arguing that although the forensic and declarative aspect of justification is important, justification also has a transformative aspect. An exploration of the transformative aspect of justification has resulted in the discovery of interesting ways in which this concept can be brought closer to that of theosis in the Eastern tradition.

Contra Academicos is not one of Augustine's masterpieces and, as such, modern scholarship has largely ignored this text in favour of examining Augustine's more mature works. Scholars do, however, attempt to use it as a way of interpreting Augustine's psychological state of mind at the time of his conversion because this is his first extant text. I argue that this attempt at reading Contra Academicos as autobiography is dangerous because Augustine was deliberately offering a self-representation to a pagan-philosophical audience and, therefore, scholars should not attempt to interpret this dialogue as if it offered neutral insight into Augustine's state of mind around 386. This article will first review the history of the scholarship which has attempted to read Contra Academicos as autobiography to prove that Augustine was only a Neoplatonist at the time of his conversion, or to disprove this theory. In either case, the authors of both positions have relied on Contra Academicos to support their claims. Then, I will make three arguments why reading Contra Academicos as autobiography is dubious. First, I will argue that the literary genre of the dialogue shows that Augustine's intended audience was for pagan-philosophers. Second, I will argue that the dedication of the text shows that Augustine's audience is a pagan-philosophical audience. Augustine's dedicatee plays a larger role in this text than do most dedicatees of texts in late antiquity. Third, I will show that the specific content demonstrates that Augustine's text was focused on a pagan-philosophical audience. Augustine never quotes scripture but goes to great pains to demonstrate his knowledge of Vergil and Cicero.

The work of Alister McGrath and Julius Kostlin challenges the often-cited claim regarding Luther's dependence on Augustine. The article demonstrates that such critics fail to recognise the rich diversity of the African father's thought, but have been inclined to read it systematically the way the Roman Catholic interpretative tradition has. Text study of Augustine's writings, as well as Luther's comments about the African father, reveals that the Reformer's insights about soteriology (including the externality and passivity of righteousness as well as other aspects of his dialectical thinking) are affirmed by Augustine. Likewise, even Luther's critiques of Augustine lend insight into the Reformer's appropriation of his thought. The article demonstrates that when Luther diverges from the African father the two men are addressing incompatible pastoral concerns, but when he is inspired by Augustine their pastoral contexts are similar. This insight sheds fresh light on the sense in which we can speak of an Augustinian character of the Reformation. The article's findings also lend further credence to the possibility that there is a pattern to the use of Christian concepts in the history of the church, whereby, in similar contexts such as in response to perceived Pelagianism, Christians have pretty much responded similarly throughout the centuries.

Although the term cosmos in Romans is largely used in a neutral fashion to refer to humanity, as has been demonstrated by Edward Adams, the cosmos is nevertheless the location of a conflict between God and anti-God powers, most prominently the powers of Sin and Death. This conflict comes into view in Paul's repeated use of the language drawn from the arenas of slavery, statecraft and the military (especially in Romans 5–8). In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Sin and Death are themselves defeated (5:12–21; 6:8–11), but they are not yet destroyed. The conflict continues in the present as comes to expression in Romans 8, where Paul claims that the whole of creation (both human and non-human) waits for deliverance. And the conflict continues especially in 8:31–9, with its strong assertions that no power is powerful enough to separate humanity from its rightful Lord, assertions that would be unnecessary apart from the conviction that there are indeed anti-God powers whose goal is to reclaim human lives. Paul's cosmology, then, is less concerned with the order and wonder of the cosmos than with its need of redemption, a redemption begun but not yet complete. Cosmology and soteriology are inextricably connected to one another.

In this article I argue that the effects of sin for our cognition of God primarily consist in a lack of knowledge by acquaintance of God and the relevant ensuing propositional knowledge. In the course of my argument, I make several conceptual distinctions and offer analyses of 1 Cor 13:9–12 and Rom 1:18–23. As it turns out, we have ample reason to think that sin has had and still has profound consequences for our cognition of God, but there is no reason to think that sin has taken away all knowledge of God or that sin has resulted in a loss of specific cognitive faculties which are orientated towards knowledge of God.

Giles of Viterbo's early sixteenth-century commentary on Peter Lombard's Libri sententiarum includes a discussion of the controversial Western doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (Filioque) in its regular place at distinction 11 of book 1. In treating this issue Giles remained true to his aim of producing a commentary ‘according to the mind of Plato’ (ad mentem Platonis). Giles had access to the dialogues of Plato but only limited access to original texts of the Greek Fathers. Nevertheless, he reviewed the Filioque controversy in a manner which respects the sententia Graecorum, even disagreeing with a line of argumentation championed by scholastic supporters of the Augustinian tradition, including Thomas Aquinas, over the related question of whether it should be said that there is one spirator or plural spiratores. Giles' conciliatory position owes much to his intellectual environment, which fostered a renewed admiration for Hellenism and classical humanism. Working largely without benefit of the emerging rediscovery of Eastern patristic theology Giles nevertheless reassesses the arguments for and against the Filioque which he received from the Latin scholastic tradition, seeking, as he does throughout his commentary, what is true on both sides of apparently divergent teachings on divine mystery.

This article explores Austin Farrer's contribution to trinitarian theology, arguing that he grounds understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity in the life of prayer. While Farrer nowhere offers a systematic presentation of the believer's experience of the Trinity, an investigation of his writings, particularly his sermons and devotional works, reveals that it is precisely in prayer that he thinks the force of the doctrine is revealed to the believer. Beginning with Farrer's ‘empirical principle’, the idea that to know anything one must exercise one's relation to it, the article attempts to show how the act of praying constitutes a living out of the doctrine of the Trinity. Living in the Son entails an adoption of an attitude of sonship towards the Father, which Farrer describes most succinctly as an ‘active openness of heart’. This filial attitude, which Christ expressed humanly throughout his life, is adopted by believers through the Holy Spirit who, according to Farrer, is not an object of direct experience. In this, his trinitarian understanding of prayer differs from Sarah Coakley's, whose reflection on this topic serves as a point of comparison at various places throughout the article. Through Coakley's work, the trinitarian nature of prayer has become a theme in contemporary theology. Thus, this article is aimed at more than simply illuminating a somewhat neglected aspect of Farrer's thought; it is also an attempt to contribute to an ongoing, constructive conversation about the Trinity in the life of faith.

Beginning from Richard Bauckham's proposal that the biblical theme of creation's praise is of considerable importance for an ecological spirituality, this article takes a close look at Luke 19:40, a text largely ignored in ecological readings of the Bible. An examination of Luke's distinctive account of the entry into Jerusalem and a consideration of the relevant Jewish parallels to the motif of the crying stone leads to a view of the stones’ cry as one of both praise and protest. The ecotheological potential of this text is then discussed and, in contrast to Bauckham's view of creation's praise as something creation always and already does simply by being itself, an eschatological view of creation's praise – and the combined expression of praise and protest – is presented as important, not least for its ecotheological and ethical potential.

This article considers Thomas B. Dozeman's ecumenically orientated and biblically situated theology of ministry (Holiness and Ministry, 2008) by assessing his utilisation of Rudolf Otto's ‘idea of the holy’. Despite significant promise, basic obstacles to appreciating Dozeman's theology of ministry appear to a Catholic perspective. In order to understand the reason for this tension, Dozeman's methodology is analysed. Because of the particular way in which he incorporates the work of Rudolf Otto on the nature of holiness, Dozeman is unable to present a model of ministry wherein ‘word’ and ‘sacrament’ exist in harmony, or a model of ministry which looks to Jesus Christ for its formal type – two issues which any Christian theology of ministry must find problematic. In general, ecumenical and ministerial theologies are ill served by methodologies which are based in a transcendental anthropology of holy experience.

The question of ecology is fundamentally a question of relatedness. Is the Christian tradition, at once incarnational and other-worldly, responsible for the ecological crisis? This article examines the position of Bonaventure whose unique theological-philosophical synthesis leads to a new understanding of created reality, which I term ‘kataphysics’. The foundation of kataphysics begins with Bonaventure's understanding of philosophy as a heteronymous discipline, insofar as philosophy is completed and perfected in theology. From this position he develops an understanding of Being as Goodness based on the Trinity. Bonaventure's integral relationship between Trinity and creation leads to an understanding of created reality as essentially good and intrinsically relational. The integral relation between Trinity and creation through the divine Word gives rise to a theological metaphysics; the metaphysical question becomes the christological question and hence a new understanding of created reality, kataphysics, emerges which involves relatedness. It is suggested that kataphysics undergirds a Christian philosophy of nature which has implications for an ecological stance today.

Karl Barth's ecclesiology has come under fire in recent years from those who find his work on the church insufficiently concrete. Proponents of concrete ecclesiologies argue that Barth's use of the wirkliche Kirche/Scheinkirche motif, and his general lack of attention to the way in which the assent of faith takes shape in the concrete church, result in the belittling of the concrete church. In turn, this lack of regard for the visible church creates problems relating to the role of the Holy Spirit. This article rereads Barth's lack of concentrated attention on the concrete church and argues that his ecclesiological minimalism functions as a theological crash barrier. By attending to the structure and doctrinal context of Barth's sections on the church in the Church Dogmatics, Barth's reticence to pronounce on the concrete church can be seen not as omission or denigration, but as a methodological principle preserving the freedom of the Holy Spirit in relation to the concrete church. The way in which Barth opens up space for the work of the Spirit in the historical, sinful church has much to offer those in search of a challenging, faithful, realistic and pastorally careful concrete ecclesiology.

Since Immanuel Kant, moral reasoning has been divorced from classical theology and reinscribed onto self-contained individuals. Shorn of theological particularities, modern ethics tries to identify behaviours to which every right-thinking person can assent. A basic premise of classical moral philosophy, however, was that if we know who we are and what our telos is, then we can have a good idea of how we ought to act. In his christology, Barth reappropriates this classical view of ethics and situates it christologically. Because Jesus’ human nature finds its being and telos in his divinity, Barth found an ethical pattern in the anhypostasis-enhypostasis doctrine. Restoring people to their proper place as creatures rather than Kantian demi-gods, Jesus shows us what it means to be truly human by being obedient to the Father. We cannot divinise individuals or the church, but the church exists enhypostatically. This anhypostatic-enhypostatic christological pattern orders our activities, making worship the first task of ethics. In prayer and in Sabbath keeping, Jesus shows us his utter dependence on God through supplication and rest. In these acts of worship, Christians act as they were created to act. We respond obediently to our Creator. But we also find an orientation towards other people in christology. Love of enemies has everything to do with the content and shape of God's command. It is involved in the telos of human life in being Christ-like.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Calvin's interpretation of biblical passages related to the question of the extent of the atonement differed significantly from the later tradition. This difference in interpretation is explained by the fact that Calvin did not share certain hermeneutical presuppositions which were to become almost universal among theologians of the later Reformed tradition. This article will examine two hermeneutical ‘rules’ which Calvin frequently employed in his interpretation of scripture and will contrast his handling of scripture with the interpretative practices employed by the later Reformed tradition. The first hermeneutical ‘rule’ involves those passages in scripture which state that Christ came to give his life as a ransom for ‘many’, or that he shed his blood for ‘many’. Contrary to the later Reformed interpreters of scripture, Calvin understands these passages to mean that Christ died for all people rather than just some. The second hermeneutical ‘rule’ concerns Calvin's frequent appeal to the fact that the word ‘all’ does not always mean ‘all’ when it is used in scripture. Certain present-day Reformed theologians argue that since Calvin shares this second hermeneutical rule with the later Reformed tradition, then his reading of scripture must not have differed significantly from that of the later tradition. Therefore, Calvin must have held to a limited atonement. However, this article will show that this conclusion only holds true if we read Calvin's own writings by means of this hermeneutic.

Scholarship on Karl Barth's engagement with so-called ‘personalist philosophy’ has claimed that the following three sources exerted a significant influence on this aspect of Barth's thought: (1) the founders of an interdisciplinary society known as the ‘Patmos Circle’; (2) Barth's fellow dialectical theologians, Emil Brunner and Friedrich Gogarten; (3) Martin Buber, in particular his classic work, I and Thou. In spite of these assessments, however, I argue that Barth's initial stance towards personalism is actually best characterised as one of resistance and criticism. Specifically, I claim here that Barth undertakes a highly critical appropriation of personalism in which the categories of encounter (Begegnung), co-humanity (Mitmenschlichkeit) and the I–Thou relation (Ich–Du-Beziehung) are deeply criticised and recast in an explicitly theological – not philosophical – mould. When Barth does use personalist categories in his own theological anthropology – particularly in the Church Dogmatics, III/2 – he roots his notion of the human being as a ‘being in encounter’ in his christology and trinitarian theology, comprehensively restructuring personalist categories by placing them on a new foundation.

To answer in the affirmative Barth's question ‘Is theology a science? is to acknowledge both that such a question has a history and that the predicate ‘scientific’ is a contested one. T. F. Torrance in Theological Science and subsequent publications, seeks to proceed with a minimalist conception of science, as a study whose methods are directed by ‘faithfulness to object’. Paul Feyerabend, in Against Method and subsequent publications, contends that such a minimalism amounts to an admission that there is no such thing as ‘the scientific method’, and that therefore the predicate ‘scientific’ lacks coherence and substance. According to Feyerabend, philosophers like Michael Polanyi (an important influence upon Torrance) are simply not bold enough to see their work through to the radical conclusions which it demands and he provides. For Feyerabend, science's reference to qualities such as ‘objectivity’ and ‘rationality’ are simply a smoke-screen for decisively influential vested interests of power and wealth – it is these which ultimately determine what we mean by science, and these which therefore must be unmasked in the cause of humanism. However, in the course of this dialogue we reveal that Feyerabend is too careless a thinker, given to rushing prematurely and too willingly to unwarranted and simplistic dichotomies. Thus Torrance's notion of the ‘scientific’ emerges intact, but not without Feyerabend's stimulating challenge raising important questions, not least to theology as a science. For here, above all, ‘human’ factors are likely unduly to influence scientific knowledge. Thus Feyerabend also points to areas where Torrance's project needs further development and closer scrutiny.

Albert Camus (1913–60), novelist, essayist, journalist and member of the French Resistance, reflected in his work the turbulent period through which he lived. His powerful portrayal of a world dominated by violence and suffering resonates with us today. An atheist, Camus had been, as a young man, drawn to the Christian faith: his postgraduate thesis was on the development of early Christianity. The thesis reveals the nature of the attraction which the faith held for Camus, and the unresolved problems which prevented him from embracing it. In maturity, Camus sought rather to convince fellow human beings of the need to work together to reduce suffering, without relying on belief in a transcendent being. He respected Christians, however, and welcomed dialogue with them. This article examines the possible basis for such dialogue revealed by the thesis. It goes on to consider the possibilities opened up by contemporary theology for dialogue between Christians and those unbelievers who share the perspective, the doubts and concerns of Albert Camus.

Katsume Takizawa (1909–1984) was one of the most innovative of twentieth-century Japanese philosophical theologians. His study with Barth (1935) led him to attempt to bring together aspects of Barth's theology with concepts derived from Jodo-shin and Zen. He found in both religions a basic relationship between God and man which transcended both identity and distinction, which he expressed in Nishida's concept of the self-identity of the absolute contradiction. This relationship he called ‘Emmanuel 1’. The fulfilment of the relationship is ‘Emmanuel 2’ and is reflected for Christians in Jesus.

The aim of this article is to provide a provisional review and evaluation of recent Christian endorsements of the notion of political forgiveness. Attention is given to the doctrine of forgiveness in the New Testament and to its distinctive theological grammar. The chief theological features of Christian accounts of political forgiveness are outlined, before a number of weaknesses in the literature are identified and discussed. The implication of our discussion is that Christian love is expressed in two different ways, that of forgiveness upon repentance within the church and that of justice tempered by mercy in the socio-political realm.