tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post8953833969405850934..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: Timothy George: God the Holy TrinityBen Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-68323457459704806252007-02-15T23:08:00.000-05:002007-02-15T23:08:00.000-05:00By far my favorite essay in the book was by Ellen ...By far my favorite essay in the book was by Ellen T. Charry (Princeton Theological Seminary). In fact, the volume would be worth getting (at least from a library) for her essay. Here's a bit (p. 141):<BR/><BR/><I>...I direct my concern to the other and more radical suggestion that God be defined by doing rather than being. The discussion often presents the reader with a choice. Either God is act/relation, as with Barth's act-ontology and Zizioulas's relational ontology, or we speak of God as meaningless static essences. This is an understandable response to the problem Kant posed, but it may not be necessary if we grant that Augustinian soteriology considers the perfections not to exist in some pure intellectual space but only in phenomena. Kant's rigid distinction between phenomena and noumena is not the absolute barrier to transcendent knowledge it appears, once we realize that we can see the perfections in the divine actions. Once we do so, we also see that they take up residence in us; they have a life of their own certainly in God but, in Augustine's teaching, also in us.</I><BR/><BR/>Her intention in the essay is twofold: (1) argue, contra Harnack and most of 20th century theology, for a positive evaluation of the Augustinian-Thomist discussion of the divine perfections, and (2) argue for an Augustinian soteriology that is strongly transformational and decidedly non-extrinsic (confirming Alister McGrath's findings in <I>Iustitia Dei</I>).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com