Theology

Here is a great quote from Luther:
For Holy Scripture is the garment which our Lord Jesus Christ has put on and in which He lets Himself be seen and found. This garment is woven throughout and so wrought together into one that it cannot be cut or parted. But the soldiers take it from Christ […]

In his Church Dogmatics Barth often calls Scripture “the Word of God.” For example, in Volume 1 (The Doctrine of the Word of God) we find a whole section entitled “Scripture as the Word of God” (Part 2). There he states: “Holy Scripture is the Word of God to the Church and for the Church” […]

In his Church Dogmatics (Vol 1. The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2) Karl Barth stuffs up the doctrine of revelation. Ironically, he does this by identifying revelation exclusively with Jesus Christ. But for Barth this means that the Old Testament is reduced down to being nothing more that “the witness to the […]

A while back I was reading an article in Philosophy Now by Russell Berg in which he presented 15 criteria for distinguishing between a scientific theory and a non-scientific one. Perhaps predictably enough, his first criterion, that a scientific theory uses natural explanations, takes us to the heart of major issues, which, however, were not […]

Karl Barth’s discussion of revelation in his Church Dogmatics suffers from his failure to treat the Bible as God’s self-revelation and to merely regard it as a witness to revelation. But Barth had a tremendous respect for Luther and often quotes him, sometimes at length. In one section Barth gives a great illustration of the difference […]

Read the latest Briefing today. I like the title THE GODNESS OF GOOD. Paul Grimmond makes the point that there is a level at which we need to say to those who charge God with not being good (e.g. because they might not like some of the things they read in the Bible), “God is […]

When I was in Dallas just over a week ago, I was driven around the city for three-and-a-half hours to see the sights. At one point I got out of the car to take some photos. A bikie rode by, conspicous for the fact that he was wearing no helmet. When I got back in […]

In Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics Volume 1 Part 2, he makes the mistake of making an identity relationship between the incarnation and God’s revelation, failing to recognise Scripture itself as God’s self-revelation, which he rather treats as but a witness to revelation. However, along the way he singles out some great quotes from Luther on […]