Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth

My wife is the best wife ever!  She got me the entire set of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Christmas!

Roger Olson: Calvinism & Arminianism

Thanks to MinistryDirect.com for this interview and Q & A with Dr. Roger Olson on the topic of Calvinism & Arminianism, which occurred Friday, December 3, 2010.

Moltmann: Abortion

In reading Moltmann’s, The Way of Jesus Christ, I’ve noticed his argument for the sanctity of life with relevance for the issue of abortion.  Early in the book, he grounds the sanctity of life based on the incarnation:

“If the Son of God became wholly and entirely human, and if he assumed full humanity, then this does not merely take in human personhood; it includes human nature as well.  It does not embrace adult humanity alone; it comprehends humanity diachronically, in all its phases of development–that is, it includes the being of the child, the being of the foetus [sic] and the embryo.  The whole of humanity in all its natural forms is assumed by God in order that it may be healed.  So it is ‘human’ and ‘holy’ in all its natural forms, and is prenatally by no means merely ‘human material’, or just the preliminary stage of humanity.”

-Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 85.

Later in the book, he grounds the sanctity of life his view of the resurrection and his theology of personhood:

“Many discussions about the concept of person unconsciously presuppose adults who are in full possession of their powers, and see them merely synchronically in the time of the present, but not diachronically in the transmutations of their temporal Gestalts.  A concept of person like this cannot of course be applied to someone who is old or handicapped, and even less to an unborn life or an embryo.  The breach of continuity with their own earlier temporal Gestalts makes it hard for many people to recognize themselves in a fertilized ovum, a foetus [sic] or an embryo, and to concede ovum, foetus [sic] and embryo full human dignity and full human rights, even though all human beings were once in that state, and although as soon as the ovum is fertilized the human person is genetically already perfect.  People then say that the foetus [sic] or embryo is human but not a person—human material but not yet a human being.  Is this not inflicting death on other people and oneself?  Hope for the resurrection of the body is not merely a hope for the hour of death; it is a hope for all the hours of life from the first to the last.  It is directed, not towards a life ‘after’ death, but towards the raising of this life.  If the whole human being is going to rise, he will rise with his whole life history, and be simultaneous in all his temporal Gestalts, and recognize himself in [267] them.  What is spread out and split up into its component parts in a person’s lifetime comes together and coincides in eternity, and becomes one.

Because the hope of the resurrection embraces the human being’s whole life history, this person will remember his past temporal configurations, and will be able and willing to identify himself with them.  He will not view any one of them as a mere preliminary stage to what he is at present.  Each temporal Gestalt has the same dignity in God’s sight, and hence the same rights before human beings.  Every devaluation of the foetus, the embryo and the fertilized ovum compared with life that is already born and adult is the beginning of a rejection and a dehumanization of human beings.  Hope for the resurrection of the body does not permit any such death sentence to be passed on life.  Fundamentally speaking, human beings mutilate themselves when embryos are devalued into mere ‘human material’, for every human being was once just such an embryo in need of protection.”

-Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 267-268.

Theology Christmas Wishlist

 

 

 

 

Experiences in Theology by Jürgen Moltmann

The Drama of Doctrine by Kevin Vanhoozer
Faith Thinking by Trevor Hart

Bonhoeffer: Faith and Love

“Faith acknowledges God’s rule and embraces it; love actualizes the Realm of God.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 165.

Q & A with Dr. Roger Olson

Thanks to MinistryDirect.com, we have an opportunity to participate in a Q & A discussion with Dr. Roger E. Olson on the topic of Calvinism & Arminianism.  This live event is on at 1:00PM CST, Friday, December 3, 2010 at ministrydirect.com/live.   His book, Arminian Theology, is an excellent resource to check out: