Volume 8, Issue 5
Evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock appears to be the leading spokesperson for a growing trend toward what he and his colleagues call the "openness of God" theology. In this system, "God does not control everything that happens," or, for that matter, know everything that will happen. Rather, "In loving dialogue, God invites us to participate with […]
As great Christian minds have scoured the Scriptures they have been able to discern a number of God’s attributes-that is, characteristics affirmed by God as belonging to his nature. These fall into two categories: communicable and incommunicable. The former are those attributes that humanity can share with God as his image bearers (e.g., holiness, relationality); […]
Does God know the future? As a child in Sunday School, I was taught the answer to this question. My teachers comforted me with the certainty that God knows the future just as well as he knows the past and the present: in its entirety, down to the minutest detail. Moreover, I learned that God […]
Most evangelical philosophers today affirm God's knowledge of the future, but they deny that the source of God's knowledge is his decree. They insist that God's knowledge of the future does not conflict with libertarian human freedom because God's knowledge is based on an inference. Knowing precisely what every possible free creature would do in […]
In Lutheran denominational politics over the last decade, the phrase all theology is Christology has been exhaustively debated. Yet, though the statement and the resulting controversy arise from a particular Missouri Synod context, I submit that the substance of the debate is important to all who stand in the line of the Reformation tradition. Moreover, […]
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one!" In contrast to the polytheistic religions of her neighbors, Israel was made deeply conscious of the fact that there is only one God (hence, the term, "monotheism"). The monothe-istic doctrine of God is at the headwaters of the Christian faith, but it is the […]
Athanasius (293-373 AD) was the champion of orthodoxy against the Arian attacks on the doctrine of the Trinity. Though Athanasius was not actually the author of this creed (which is now widely believed to have been written in the early fifth century), it was generally attributed to him until the seventeenth century. It has also […]
This article pre-supposes that true doctrine is the foundation of true delight. If we do not get our doctrine of God right, we will destroy the foundations of delight. Joy may flourish for a generation when the root is severed, but in the end, delight in God will die without true doctrine. And the glorification […]
MR: What precipitated your interest in the doctrine of impassibility? Was it a theoretical or practical catalyst, or both? NW: The classical doctrine of divine impassibility affirms that God is not affected by anything that transpires outside of God-by anything that transpires in God’s creation. In particular, it affirms that God is not negatively affected […]
This work promises to be the first volume of a multi-author series entitled Foundations of Evangelical Theology. The title itself may raise some eyebrows, in light of the spectrum of theological opinions expressed in the evangelical community. Is there any distinctive system of doctrine that can coherently be called "evangelical theology"? This question is never […]