Sublime

We are made into Christ (theosis) by experiencing the ministry of Christ, who gives us his life out of our deaths. Justification is not simply a picture of a sovereign, ruling God but the articulation of the depth of God’s own ministry. Justification begins with the divine proclamation that we are lost in sin and death and therefore always need the

Because faith is bound in this spatial conception, there is little need for the theologian, for there is little interest in speaking of distinct ontological realities and radical transformations by a wholly other Spirit.

St Bonaventure (c.1217–74), for instance, governor-general of the order from 1257 to 1274, was a university man and speculative theologian of enormous erudition who succeeded grandly in combining the mystical elations of Franciscan piety with the rational disciplines of academic philosophy.

But from the context of ministry (as a hypostatic and kenotic reality that brings forth theosis) there can be no separation between the work and person of Jesus. Work, for Jesus, is to minister to humanity by being a minister (the “although” is the “because”).

the strong pressure to accept a ‘heavenly power’ model is repeatedly resisted in the name, initially, of the need to affirm without ambiguity the vulnerability of Jesus to suffering

Saint Anselm was, like Lanfranc, an Italian, a monk at Bee, and archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109), in which capacity he followed the principles of Gregory VII and quarrelled with the king. He is chiefly known to fame as the inventor of the “ontological argument” for the existence of God. As he put it, the argument is as follows: We define “God”

What made Warren’s perspective both genius and problematic is that he offered Jesus at the level of the nova effect. Jesus was another third option amongst the thousands of others. Of course Warren was not shy in claiming that Jesus was the best option, a third way that could actually deliver in providing purpose and individual flourishing. But onc

Belief in the Incarnation is the belief that the specific concrete and historical agent that is Jesus of Nazareth simply is the act of God the Word in a unique sense, quite distinct from the way in which divine agency is universally the ultimate activator of any and every finite substance.

To be people of Secular 3, bound in the immanent frame, means cross-pressure can never be avoided. Cross-pressure may awaken us to echoes of transcendence, but it also coats these experiences in doubt.