To Think God as Love

If Moltmann is right about God and suffering, what does this mean for the Holy Spirit, specifically? If tt is clear that the Son’s suffering is uniquely his, then so must the Father’s and the Spirit’s be. Moltmann himself insists the Spirit suffers from the beginning of creation. As he writes in God in Creation, Through his [...]

Following Rahner, et. al., Moltmann refuses the distinction between the economical and the immanent Trinity. That is, he won’t allow us to divorce God’s ‘private life’ from God’s ‘public life’. God is who God is in creating and in saving. Further, Moltmann repudiates any claim that the Father and Spirit remained hidden beyond the world [...]

As I said, the doctrine of the Trinity began to emerge first from Jesus’ reflections on his unique – I insist on that word – experience of God, especially in prayer and the prayerful reading of Scripture. Jeremias famously claimed that in Jesus’ Abba-prayers we meet “something quite new, absolutely new,” ((Joachim Jeremias, The Lord’s [...]

The doctrine of God’s tri-unity began to emerge from Jesus’ worldly experiences – his unique 1 intimacy with God and the unique availability of God’s Spirit to him – and his own interpretation of his experiences. For instance,  he says of himself: All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son [...]

Because we love God, we strive to know God. For us worship and studious conversation are a single ecstatic movement; Christian thinking is prayerful and Christian prayer thoughtful. Our faith is seeking understanding, and as we know more completely, we love more truly. For this reason, and no other, we come to the discussion of the doctrine [...]

Introductory Unscientific Prescript I want to talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, but there’s so much that has to be said first. I’ll have to begin by making an apology for the discussion, explaining why it is that we should address such an obtuse and difficult subject. Then I’ll have to say something about [...]

Christian joy is God’s own joy, shared with us by the Spirit present in and among and for us. God’s own “private life” is a life of joy, for God is Father, Son, and Spirit eternally and infinitely enjoying one another. In the beginning is not the solitude of a One, of an eternal Being, [...]

“The market system depends on the logic of exchange, quid pro quo (this for that). No one can doubt the great benefit of exchange relationships in the distributing of goods and services. On the other hand, the history of economies that are ruled exclusively by the logic of exchange shows that the accompanying logic of [...]

Eugene Peterson is one of my favorite authors, primarily because of his commitment to the pastoral vocation as a life of serious prayer, thinking, and service rooted in a definite locale among specific people. In this interview, conducted by Mark Galli and published in Christianity Today, Peterson talks candidly about Christian spirituality. I’ll quote bits of it [...]

This Word & World archive contains an article on Trinitarian prayer and Christian worship by Eberhard Jungel – whom I’ve recently discovered – and includes some of his prayers. The following prayer is one of my favs.  Almighty God, heavenly Father, You are a praiseworthy God, for you are a friendly God. You forgive our sins and do not [...]