The Self Donation Of God

In The Self-Donation of God, Jack Kilcrease argues that the speech-act of promise is always an act of self-donation. A person who unilaterally promises to another is bound to take a particular series of actions to fulfill that promise. Being that creation is grounded in God's promising speech, the divine-human relationship is fundamentally one of divine self-donation and human receptivity. Sin disrupts this relationship and therefore redemption is constituted by a reassertion of divine promise of salvation in the face of the condemnation of the law (Gen 3:15). As a new and effective word of grace, the promise of a savior begins the process of redemption within which God speaks forth a new narrative of creation. In this new narrative, God gives himself in an even deeper manner to humanity. By donating himself through a promise, first to the protological humanity and then to Israel, he binds himself to them. At the end of this history of self-binding, God in Christ enters into the condemnation of the law, neutralizes it in the cross, and brings about a new creation through his omnipotent word of promise actualized in the resurrection.

In The Self-Donation of God, Jack Kilcrease argues that the speech-act of promise is always an act of self-donation. A person who unilaterally promises to another is bound to take a particular series of actions to fulfill that promise. Being that creation is grounded in God's promising speech, the divine-human relationship is fundamentally one of divine self-donation and human receptivity. Sin disrupts this relationship and therefore redemption is constituted by a reassertion of divine promise of salvation in the face of the condemnation of the law (Gen 3:15). As a new and effective word of grace, the promise of a savior begins the process of redemption within which God speaks forth a new narrative of creation. In this new narrative, God gives himself in an even deeper manner to humanity. By donating himself through a promise, first to the protological humanity and then to Israel, he binds himself to them. At the end of this history of self-binding, God in Christ enters into the condemnation of the law, neutralizes it in the cross, and brings about a new creation through his omnipotent word of promise actualized in the resurrection.

What are the things that God values in the creative process? How does one define God's activity in such a world? How is God's involvement different from a contingent--what this author labels contingentist--instance? Why do we need a God-idea at all? Herein, Bradford McCall addresses how divine, amorepotent love works with and within a contingentist (i.e., radically contingent) evolutionary theory and worldview. Within the course of this project, he reaches a via media between the (somewhat) radical formalist position of Simon Conway Morris and the veritably radical contingent position of Stephen Jay Gould. But . . . how is the contingentist amorepotent and uncontrolling love of God understood as purposeful? McCall argues in detail that there in fact is some sort of purposiveness that is nevertheless working in a chastened Gouldian position, and he distinguishes between contingency and veritable divine involvement. He contends that God does not insist upon a particular outcome but merely allows propensities to work themselves out. God amorepotently loves the population of the natural world into greater forms of complexity, relationality, and beauty in varied and multifarious forms, along with the extension of diversity.

The identity and nature of the Holy Spirit has long been a critical – and often divisive – topic among Christians. Yet it is one with which we must continue to grapple if we are to grow in our understanding of the personhood of God, the calling of the church and the life of the believer. The seventh volume drawn from the annual conference of the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology, this collection of essays addresses questions of pneumatology against the rich background of African church history. African theologians explore centuries of Christian understanding, from the writings of Augustine to the doctrine of African Instituted Churches, and examine the impact of pneumatological belief upon the life and worship of the believer. Serving as a corrective on pneumatological heterodoxies while making space for both the diversity and unity of the African church, this volume provides a powerful reminder of the centrality of the Holy Spirit to Christian doctrine and praxis.

In response to a contemporary cultural situation in which human dignity is gravely threatened, Christian Friendship proposes a recovery of friendship as a new way of re-establishing the interpersonal communion that characterizes the human person created in the image of God. The author seeks to recover a genuine understanding of friendship by exploring ancient philosophy and the Catholic theological tradition. By examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Anselm, and others, Christian Friendship proposes a new way for Catholics to address the cultural issues besetting the Christian community today.

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Ethical Personalism proposes to reflect on the person from at least three levels: ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Articulating from various philosophical and religious angles and traditions the ontological and inalienable value of the human person, i.e., her dignity, the contributors to this volume show not just what it means to be a human person, but also what it takes to live accordingly. Hence, beyond the purely theoretical elaboration on ethical personalism that reposes the crucial debates between relativism and realism on the one hand, and consequentialism and deontology on the other hand, this volume offers a range of insights useful for addressing concrete and practical matters that we, as humans, are confronted in our everyday life. With the call “back to the person!” which takes roots from a deep conviction to bring into light the value of the person, Ethical Personalism unequivocally affirms the necessity of (re)placing the person in the centre of our project of society, economic plans, political settings, and environment policies.

A re-reading of the Pneumatology in Western theology, particularly in Augustine and Barth.