Read. Reflect. Write.

Below is an excerpt from my exposition of St. Basil[1], from his treatise, On the Spirit . I thought it was a helpful example of doing theology correctly—the way of the Great Tradition. He begins this work examining the heretics’ (the Arians) “use of syllables” to distort the doctrine of the Trinity. They posit that when Scripture uses prepositional phrases (i.e., syllables) speaking of the activity of God, these phrases create a subordinate ranking, which makes the Son and the Spirit of a different nature from the Father. The heresy is promoted as such: In the words of the apostle: “‘One God and Father of whom are all things, . . . and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things’ (1 Cor 8:6) ‘Whatever, then,’ he goes on, ‘is the relation of these terms to one another, such will be the relation of the natures indicated by them; and as the term ‘of whom’ is unlike the term ‘by whom,’ so is the Father unlike the Son” ( Spir . 2.4). And following this manner of thought, the differing p...

  I recently presented a paper at the 2021 Southeastern Regional ETS Conference, March 19.  Below is the abstract, with a link to the article for those interested in reading further.   When it comes to the nature of divine power, non-classical theists, notably process theists, affirm a persuasive, indirect view of divine power. According to this view, God’s love entails freedom given to creatures, whereby God cannot unilaterally exercise his will in a manner that impinges on a creature’s free will/actions. A classical view ascribes to unilateral determinative power (not omnicausal), generally defined as God’s divine activity to bring about a state of affairs according to his specific purposes. [1] Detractors of the classical view claim that God’s loving nature and Scripture do not support it. The claim I will be making is that a general sense reading of Scripture more coherently aligns with a classical view of divine power. When I say general sense , I mean when one r...