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13Apr/120

Geerhardus Vos and Biblical Astrology

Geerhardus Johannes Vos (1862–1949)

In Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, Geerhardus Vos engages criticism of Jacob and retells a very interesting recapulation of the story of Jacob where the Patriarchs are interpreted as referencing to Ancient Astrological gods. 

Thirdly, it has also been attempted to explain these names from Babylonian antecedents. Sarah was teh goddess of Haran, Abraham a god of the same place: Laban, the moon-god. The four wives of Jacob are the four phases of the moon. The twelve sons of Jacob are the twelve months of the year; the seven sons of Leah are the seven days of the week; the number of men with which Abraham defeated the invaders, 318, constitutes the nubmer of days in a lunar year. (pg 67, Chapter 7, Biblical Theology, Geerhardus Vos). 

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5Apr/120

Stanley Grenz on Physics and Postmodernity

Stanley J. Grenz (1950-2005) was a contemporary Baptist theologian who died tragically early, and had the potential to become a theologian known for centuries. A friend of mine described Grenz as a genius like Karl Barth, but accessible unlike Barth. Grenz wrote many books, the most famous is his systematic theology: Theology for the Community of God, of which I've only read selections but enjoyed it more than the more popular and comparable Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem. 

I've been reading several Protestant Church History books this spring, and the most recent was Grenz's Primer on Postmodernism that was commissioned from him by Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. The book is a summary of Postmodernism and the philosophers who represent the Postmodern World-View. In the last chapter, a Christian Gospel response to Postmodernity is included that praises Postmodernity's criticism of Enlightenment and Modernistic worldviews, and also criticizes its rejection of all metanaratives and pluralism. Overall the book is a plain summary of Postmodernity that's fair (in my opinion) that is very informative rather than bashing, especially with its overview of the primary Postmodern scholars and flash biographies of them: Michele Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, and Rotary. 

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30Mar/120

Philip Melanchthon against Thomas Aquinas: Do the sacraments benefits others besides the recipients?

In Melanchthon's Loci, he says that the belief that the Mass benefits others besides the recipient originated in Thomas' Summa, here's the quotation from Loci

"All Masses are godless, therefore, except those by which consciences are encouraged for the strengthening of faith. A sacrifice is what we offer to God, but we do not offer Christ to God. But he himself offered up himself once for all. Therefore, those who perform Masses in order to do some good work or offer Christ to God for the living and the dead with the idea that the oftener this is repeated, the better they become, are caught in godless error. I think that for the most part these errors must be blamed on Thomas who taught that a Mass benefits others besides the one who partakes."

pg 146., "On Participation In The Lord's Supper", Philip Melanchthon's Loci Communes (Library of Christian Classics)

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28Mar/120

Martin Luther and The Great Exchange

So I've been told that when Martin Luther commented on 2 Corinthians 5:21, he called this verses, "The Great Exchange."  

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
~ 2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

I've read many theologians say that Martin Luther called Penal Substitutionary Atonement "The Great Exchange" but I've been unable to verify that Luther actually used the term "The Great Exchange." Luther wasn't systematic in his writings, and there's a translation barrier since he wrote primarily in Latin and German. So it's possible he did use this phrase, "The Great Exchange" and maybe if someone has a citation, I'd be greatly indebted, but for the time being it seems that Luther never said the words "The Great Exchange". Even if "The Great Exchange" was a phrased coined by later theologians, the idea of Penal Substitutionary Atonement as first conceived in Anslem's Cur Deus Homo has been advanced and expressed in many works of Luther. 

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26Mar/120

Paul Tillich on Pantheism

Paul Tillich (1886 – 1965) was a famous German Lutheran Theologian. I was introduced to Tillich through Michael Horton's A Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way.  Horton made great use of Tillich's dialetic between "overcoming estrangement and meeting a stranger" to show the tension between deism and pantheism (See Tillich's Theology of Culture for more details.) 

Pantheism isn't what most people think it is, and those who are Pantheists do not describe themselves in the way that non-Pantheists describe Pantheism. There are some basic theological problems that Pantheism helps overcome, such as the problem of mathematical laws; are these laws created or eternally existing besides God? If they exist besides God, then they are uncreated and immaterial and that makes God subjected to the eternal Mathematical laws, which is a huge problem. There's also the idea of a Creator, and if something could exist without the sustaining power of the Creator, then it wouldn't have the feeling of absolute dependance (Schleiermacher) on God, but would become its own God. 

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15Mar/120

Abraham Kuyper’s Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology (Selections)

Abraham Kuyper's Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles is a large book that so-far-as-I-know has not been completely translated into English. Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) is a famous Dutch Calvinist, who was Prime Minster (circa 1901-1905) of the Netherlands and wrote many books. Kuyper's most widely read book translated into English is his Lectures on Calvinism and a fairly recent popular reader Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader. Kuyper is most import because he was able to implement Calvinist Theology in his Political Agenda in a synthesis rarely imitated, and in doing so, breaking ground and setting precedent towards implementing a Christian Government that we may pray comes to fruition in the future for all the World's States. (He's also an interesting character in the Two Kingdoms verse Federal Vision debates raging in your local Reformed Churches).

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8Mar/120

Rudolf Bultmann: de-mythologizing, Gnosticism and his works

Rudolf Bultmann  (1884-1976) was a German Lutheran theologian who taught at the University of Marburg. Bultmann is well know for his de-mythologizing method that he attempted to purge the New Testament of what he perceived to be legendary accretions to the Christian Tradition. The method is historically reminiscent of the penknife redaction of Marcion of Sinope (ca. 85-160) in the second century. Bultmann's de-mythologizing is part of the modern Higher Criticism and Form Criticism methodologies. Examples of Bultmann's de-mythologizing attempts are his all of his book, of which Jesus Christ and Mythology is arguably the most well known. Here is a helpful introduction from the appendix of Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth.

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3Mar/120

Friedrich Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers

Friedrich Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799) (online here) is a hallmark of Liberal Protestantism, and coupled with his magnum opus, Glaubenslehre (The Christian Faith) he has produced the two most significant works of Liberal Theology and he remains as the apex of the entire system even to today. Schleiermacher is also well known for his Life of Jesus and Commentary on Romans and many of his Letters. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers is commonly referred to as Addresses On Religion or even as Addresses for short (viz. henceforth). 

Schleiermacher is the apotheosis of Liberal Theology (first so coined by Johann Salomo Semler or by Karl Friedrich Bahrdt in the 18th century according to Karl Barth), which is an aberrant form of Protestantism that arose during the Enlightenment and famously described by H. Richard Neibuhr as such:

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." - H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America, pg 193.

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2Mar/120

Karl Barth’s “Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century”

Karl Barth's "Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: It's background and history" is a history book about the liberal protestant theologians from 1700-1900 AD written by an expert of this era including the most influential liberal Protestant theologians of the Enlightenment: Rousseau, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Novalis, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Wegscheider, De Wette, Marheineke, Baur, Tholuck, Menken, Feuerbach, Strauss, Schweizer, Dorner, Muller, Rothe, Hofmann, Beck, Vilmar, Kohlbrugge, Blumhardt, and Ritschl (all with dedicated chapters). And many others appear throughout without explicit chapters, most notably Kierkegaard, Goethe, Louis XIV, and others. This isn't a history of all Protestant theologians, but those in the long chain of Pietism and the Enlightenment. 

In this new edition, the prolegomena has been translated into English and included for the first time. To Barth's chagrin, the extended introduction to this history were omitted in the first translation of the book from German, and the truncated volume appear more as a collection of encyclopedia entries on theologians from Rousseau to Ritschl.   In this new English edition, the long introduction has been restored which includes the following sections to complete Barth's history: 1) The Task of a History of Modern Protestant Theology, 2) Man in the Eighteenth Century, 3) The Problem of Theologin in the Eighteenth Century and 4) Protestant Theology in the Eighteenth Century, and a new preface by the translator Colin Gunton (at King's College, London 2001).

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28Feb/120

Valentin Ernst Löscher’s Thirteen Objections To Pietism

Karl Barth called Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673-1749) the "last significant representative of Lutheran orthodoxy" before the church was rampaged by Pietism and the Enlightenment (see Barth's "Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History" pg. 126, where I found this list.)

  1. Indifference to the truth of the Gospel, boasting that Christianity is a Christianity of power;
  2. Devaluation of the means of grace by their association with human piety;
  3. Weakening of the ministry of the Church by the denial of the objective grace of the ministry (to be affirmed not for the benefit of godless pastors but by virtue of the matter itself);
  4. The confusion of the righteousness of faith with works, the understanding of justification as the process which in the last resort takes place within man;
  5. A tendency towards chiliasm; (*n.b. belief in a literal 1000 year reign of Christ after he returns). 
  6. The limitation of repentance to a particular time of life;
  7. Preciousness, that is the suppression of all natural pleasure and the so-called intermediates;
  8. A mystical confusion of nature and grace in the conception of an essential part of man which is pure and good in itself even before the rebirth;
  9. The annihilation of the so-called subsidia religionis, i.e. the outward and visible Church, by devaluation of its symbols and ordinances, by the contestation of the theological systems;
  10. The fostering and acquittal of manifest enthusiasts;
  11. The conception of an absolute perfection that is both possible and necessary, which leads to pride or despair;
  12. The undertaking to improve not only people but the Church itself, that is, the desire to alter it;
  13. The cause of manifest schisms.

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