One Type of Person

On the Orthodox ecclesiastical calendar the three Sundays before Lent (this year, Feb. 9, 16, 23) are a group called the Triodian: The Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, and Judgement Sunday where the sheep and goats text from Mat. 25 is read. In a sense all three …

Torrance on Self-Will

T.F. Torrance (Reformed) and Tuomo Mannermaa (Lutheran) argued convincingly that Calvin and Luther are fundamentally misunderstood by their respective traditions. Both reformers so completely re-framed the Medieval theology they inherited that their followers were unable to make the same leap and thus fell back into Aristotelian categories. Thus both Lutheran and Reformed theology are reflections …

Dualism Postscript: Augustine and the Cosmos

I found a much clearer description of the dualism of Augustine in T. F. Torrance than anything I was able to say on my own. In the Augustinian outlook nature was looked at only to be looked through toward God and the eternal realities. As such it had no significance in itself but had significance …

Dualism 4: Identity

One of the deeply rooted cultural tropes about our longing for God is the idea that we have a God-shaped hole within us that we constantly try to fill with pleasure, goods, fame, or happiness. These pursuits fall short because only God can fill the hole. This trope originates with Blaise Pascal, but it’s not …

Dualism 3: Ethics

One of the burning questions in the mainline Presbyterian church, of which I was a pastor for 20 years, was how we go about helping people. There are two general Protestant answers to the question. One, which tends to be associated with fundamentalism is that we need to convert them. The second, which tends to …

Dualism 2: Embodiment

One of the most significant prophets of the new non-dualistic manner of thinking was Michael Polanyi. A chemist who began his illustrious career at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin shortly after WWI and emigrated to England just before WWII, Polanyi was in the thick of the new scientific approach pioneered by Einstein. Einstein’s theories …

Dualism 1: The End of Dualism

Back in seminary in the mid-80s, a major focus of my theological education had to do with the rise of post-modernity. No one yet knew the implications of this huge shift in philosophical thought and cultural sensibilities, but there were signs, some frightening and some hopeful. Among the hopeful signs was the rejection of dualism …

Dualism Series Intro

Sometimes my best Orthodox insights come from Karl Barth and his student Tom Torrance. They have insights into Christian theology that contemporary Orthodox theologians miss. This is because they immersed themselves in classic Christian theology from the context of modernity. They both recognized something had gone rotten in the West. They turned to the fathers …