In Part I and II of René Girard’s I see Satan Fall Like a Lightning, René Girard, a French Christian philosopher, offers a sociological and philosophical perspective on the atonement as understood in the Christian tradition emphasizing the similarities between the mythological and the biblical of the Gospels. For him the way in which mythology and the Gospels characterize their victims is noteworthy. In this respect, Girard introduces the concept of scapegoats which are “innocent targets of a senseless collective transference that is mimetic and mechanical.” (p. 1) In other words, the scapegoat is a member of a community who is …

James Bratt’s following words could summarize one of the goals Abraham Kuyper achieved as a Christian thinker. Kuyper “upgrade[d] Calvinism from an old dogma to an active life, to put Modernist methods to orthodox ends, and to redefine the church to make it fit, and challenge, the contemporary world” (p. 42). I concur. However, how did Kuyper do it in theoretical terms? In trying to answer the former question, I will look to another Bratt’s work on Kuyper. One of the issues that emerges from the chapters “Modernism” and “Conservatism & Orthodoxy” in James Bratt’s Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader is …

By exploring the implications of Augustine’s doctrine of sin, Christian theologian Jesse Couenhoven analyzes the link between the doctrine of original sin and sexism. He argues that sexism can be understood as a form or outworking of original sin. His point of departure is the existence of common elements between Augustine’s view of sin and the perspectives of many feminist scholars. One of those elements is the nature of sin/responsibility.  Original Sin and the Criticism Made by Feminist Scholars A general criticism made by feminist scholars (for instance, Valerie Saiving) is that the Christian tradition has paid nothing or little …

Alving Plantinga’s criticism of Aquinas’s Doctrine of Divine Simplicity cannot be ignored since currently numerous philosophers and theologians follow him regarding the downplaying or rejecting DDS. In fact, engaging Plantinga’s arguments against DDS is a needed step in order to explore whether divine simplicity can be recorded in the analytic tradition. Embracing a non-constituent ontological framework where human concepts can apply univocally to God despite the limitations of human language (p. 18), Plantinga explores how God relates to abstract properties and the conflict between DDS and attributes such as aseity and sovereignty. Plantinga discusses Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity and offers …

Although the covenant was a relatively known theme among sixteenth-century early Reformers, Bullinger’s theology —as reflected in his treatise A Brief Exposition of the One and Eternal Testament or Covenant of God (hereafter Covenant of God) — develops further Zwingli’s notion of the covenant. Although we can’t say that the covenant is a central hermeneutical principle to understand all Bullinger’s theology, his development of the covenant offers some good insights. Testamentum as Covenant Due to the diversity of meanings, Bullinger starts clarifying his understanding of the term ‘testamentum.’ He understands ‘testamentum’ as an oath-based promise taking into account what Scripture …

Pascal claims that pride and despair can be replaced by the virtues of humility and hope. I will explore in this post what Pascal means by pride and despair as spiritual vices, and how an encounter with Christ in faith engenders the spiritual virtues of humility and hope. When Pascal writes that the knowledge of God creates prides one should understand that such knowledge has been acquired without the proper contextualization: the knowledge of humanity’s own wretchedness or misery. Similarly, the knowledge of humanity’s wretchedness leads human beings into despair if they do not have the knowledge of God. In …